historicwomendaily

[historicwomendaily]

"A similar item in all the biographies written about Fredegonde during the first half of the nineteenth century was the emphasis placed on her gender. When we recall what was written about Fredegonde in 1789, “Frédégonde seroit aujourd’hui le modele des reines, & peut-être des rois,” and compare it to what Langerack wrote in 1847, “Mais ce n’était pas assez pour Frédégonde d’être reine: il lui fallait être reine et roi tout ensemble,” we see how Fredegonde was viewed as crossing the line between feminine queenship and masculine kingship. The central ideas in the quotations are different–the first one emphasises her “crimes” as a leader and presents her masculine behaviour as a positive feature. In the second one, however, the criticism is aimed at her unfeminine ambition and lust for power. It was no longer the monarchy itself which was negative but the queen who did not behave like a good bourgeois queen should have behaved. The same image of Fredegonde subjugating her husband persisted throughout the early nineteenth century as it was used as an example of “unnatural” relations and as a sign of the Merovingian period’s decadence. She was thus perceived in many occasions as a masculine figure but her “greatness” was always attached to the political needs tied to historiography–just as Clovis’ “greatness” was tied to the rebirth of French monarchy in the beginning of the nineteenth century. Both figures were instruments used by historians to bolster their vision of the “French nation.”

Fredegonde’s role as a queen of France was partly based on second-hand sources written during the Ancien Régime, and as the use of these sources diminished, so did her role in the history of France. In addition, there are several revealing reasons why no one ever wrote any entire work about Fredegonde. First of all she was not perceived as a good role model for female readers and therefore no woman writer would or could write about her. The choice of topics for women authors was very limited–most of them wrote to make a living and it would have been very difficult to get a book about Fredegonde published as it could not have been sold to a bourgeois lady. Saint queens from the Merovingian period, Clotilde, Radegonde and Bathilde, were more suitable topics for biographies as they functioned as role models–even for queens such as Maria Amelia who identified herself to a bourgeois lady as well. Secondly the reason why there were no works about Fredegonde is that she did not represent the nineteenth-century idea of civilisation, whereas Brunhilde could be depicted as the well-educated patron of religious monuments. Fredegonde was in fact perceived as less “French” and more German than Brunhilde. But as Chilperic’s wife, as a “queen of France,” she could not be ignored, and queenship itself assured her a place among “famous women.” The new historiographical ideas which led to represent Gauls, and Gallo-Romans, as opposing the Franks brought about a slow change in Fredegonde’s role. She no longer represented the early monarchs but the German Franks who were perceived as oppressing the Gauls. Her history was thus a warning example of what might happen to a society if “natural” social classes or gender hierarchies were not respected. Eventually she also came to represent the threat of Germanic influence in France –all in one person."

— Heta Aali, "Fredegonde – Great Man of the Nineteenth Century", Les Grandes figures historiques dans les Lettres et les Arts 2 (2013)

[historicwomendaily]

"She came to the imperial palace as merely one among many, a girl plucked from obscurity to serve as a concubine. But from these humble beginnings, Kösem forged a legacy that would shape the empire for decades." - The Rise of Kösem Sultan: The Woman Behind the Throne, Pierce S. Gordon

[historicwomendaily]

“[Bertrade de Montfort], the second, bigamous, often excommunicate wife of Philip I, is a controversial figure censured by medieval and modern historians for ambition and intrigue. […] Nevertheless, Bertrade was successful in holding onto a queenship under constant attack, in balancing marital and natal family ties, and in securing for herself, as a dowager queen unwelcome at court, a prestigious site of retreat and eventual burial in a priory founded on her own dowager lands on the edge of the Royal Domaine.”

“Her reginal status is clearly attested by her signature or role as consentor on a number of documents during Philip’s reign. During Philip’s lifetime, Bertrade exercised substantial influence in such royal administrative matters as the appointment of bishops, to the consternation of Ivo of Chartres. Even after Philip’s death, Bertrade continued to think of herself as queen, despite the difficulties of her position as a dowager queen who was only the stepmother of the monarch, and a stepmother who had plotted against him, at that.

The clearest symbol of Bertrade’s claim to continued reginal status is her use, in the period of her widowhood and alienation from the royal court, of a personal seal bearing her image, the first ever used by a Capetian queen. The drawing made for Gaignières depicts an ovoid seal containing a standing figure, clearly that of a slender woman, who wears a crown and holds carefully delineated attributes. The inscription that encloses Bertrade’s image proclaims her “Queen of the Franks by the Grace of God,” in an unequivocal assertion of the role in which she still saw herself. Until Bertrade’s example, in France the practice of using a personal seal had been an exclusively male prerogative.”

— Kathleen Nolan, "The Tomb of Adelaide of Maurienne and the Visual Imagery of Capetian Queenship", Capetian Women / Ibid, Queens in Stone and Silver: The Creation of a Visual Imagery of Queenship in Capetian France

[historicwomendaily]

Recently discovered portrait of Princess Mary, the future Queen Mary I of England which has been attributed to be painted by Susannah Horenbout in c.1546.

[historicwomendaily]

Did these last night for fun

[historicwomendaily]

The more Elisabeth’s tendency to withdraw from the world and her fear of people increased, the more closely she became attached to her cousin King Ludwig II of Bavaria, who had turned out very like her. The relationship between the two had not begun as a particularly close one. [...] The eight-year difference in their ages played a large part in their early years; when Elisabeth left Bavaria in 1854 at the age of sixteen, the then Crown Prince Ludwig was only eight years old.

Ten years later, Ludwig became King. From approximately this time on—Ludwig was eighteen, Elisabeth twenty-six—they grew closer. Shortly after his accession in 1864, the young King visited his imperial cousin in Bad Kissingen, where he remained for some time, going on walks with her and talking with her so intimately and in such detail that Sisi told her family, “delighted by their being in unison, of many shared hours”—making her favorite brother, Karl Theodor (“Gackel”) jealous.

— Brigitte Hamann, 2011. The Reluctant Empress: A Biography of Empress Elisabeth of Austria [ trans. Ruth Hein ]

[historicwomendaily]

"The turbulent life and political career of Isabeau of Bavaria provides much material through which to approach a theme of queenship, reputation, and gendered power. Isabeau held an unprecedented position for a queen of France because of the extraordinary circumstances following the first attack of insanity suffered by her husband, Charles VI, in August 1392, and his subsequent descent into a distressing and debilitating state of mental illness. Isabeau was faced with political intrigues, assassinations, and acts of vengeance among the royal families of France that spiraled into civil war [...]. After the deaths of two of her sons in their teenage years from infections, Isabeau herself suffered a humiliating period of captivity at the hands of the Armagnacs in 1417, isolation politically from her last remaining son and, finally, by what one might call the most important victory of Henry V—when he negotiated an alliance with the Burgundians that would lead to the negotiation of the Treaty of Troyes.

[…] The 1402 ordinance had been a first attempt by a temporarily recovered Charles VI to break the cycle of feuding, by raising his queen as an independent force between the dukes of Burgundy and Orleans, while that of April 1403 sought to neutralize further the dukes’ potential for unlicensed absolutism through the check of quasi-majority rule. The collegiate administration was intended to prevent any one prince being able to intimidate his way to supremacy by keeping power and responsibility divided up as much as possible—as did the mere act of including the queen.

The sovereign status of Isabeau of Bavaria trumped any claims for preeminence based on seniority or blood relationship that might be pursued by the dukes, while she herself was not a force that could imperil the king. Her rank and position as queen gave her power, but that (quite clearly) was inextricably dependent on her relationship with the king and one might argue that this made her above all others more neutral, with no agenda of her own. As the king’s wife and the legal guardian of his heir, she was the most entitled to act as a proxy yet, unlike the rest of the royal family, could never be a successor herself; so she was no threat. A queen has power (the capacity to persuade people to act or make things happen) but no royal authority of her own, no publicly recognized right to rule. If authority was granted or sanctioned by the king, and recognized by his peers, a queen held it and it was legitimate, as was the case for Isabeau for most of her reign. The provisions establishing the queen as head (présidente) of the Regency Council set her into a position of substantial authority and great vulnerability. While being appealed to, buffeted and threatened by both sides in an increasingly acrimonious civil war, Isabeau was careful always to claim intermediary status for her acts, as the representative and deputy of her husband’s authority—and she needed to do so. By sheer definition, the role of queen consort was as a subordinate to the king and Isabeau had to maintain the perception that she was acting only in support of her husband, not as an independent political being with her own agenda. However, Charles VI’s selection of Isabeau as head of the Regency Council, ruling in the king’s stead in his periods of illness with all the powers of a lieutenant-general appointed in short periods of absence for war, demonstrates that the office of queen was not regarded as peripheral to monarchy, but an integral part of it that could be utilized when necessary in the service of the Crown as a corporate entity and invested by the king with the authority of kingship.

The queen’s authority would be tested to the full over the twenty years following the outbreak of the king’s madness in 1392, and first shared with, then gradually yielded to, her eldest son, the dauphin Louis, as he grew toward maturity, both in years and in diplomatic capability. As soon as it was legally possible, in the days before his thirteenth birthday, Isabeau organized Louis’s emancipation (his legal majority). Although Isabeau tended to retain chairmanship of the regency council, there were occasions after 1410 when she might easily have attended but chose not to, thereby pushing forward her son into the limelight as next in line after her as the king’s deputy. The dauphin Louis represented the king during the preliminary negotiations at Arras in September 1414, and at the later meetings at Saint-Denis and Paris in February 1415 that led to the eventual truce between the warring Burgundian and Orleanist/Armagnac factions. In fact, the phrase recorded by Michel Pintoin, the Religieux de Saint-Denis, in his account of the peace of Arras describes Louis’s role perfectly as the one “who held the reins of the State during his father’s illness.

However, the end of 1415 witnessed two disasters for France, with the desolation of the battle of Agincourt in October and the sudden death of the dauphin Louis in December. Grieving and politically isolated, Isabeau of Bavaria would spend the remainder of her life, another long 20 years, as subsumed and powerless as the rest of the country in the disaster of division and conquest. She was imprisoned by the Armagnac faction in 1417, who issued an ordinance establishing her last remaining son, the future Charles VII, as the king’s deputy instead. It is an interesting coda to this discussion of the regency provisions to consider their later misuse as well. Although Isabeau was in no position to exert power herself in 1417, the ordinance of April 1403 naming her as the king’s deputy in periods of emergency Council-run government seems only to have been replicated (not revoked) when the dauphin was granted his title. By arguing that the grant of powers to Isabeau in 1403 was irrevocable, as Burgundy would claim when releasing her from captivity in 1418, it was worth his while to fund her and establish her as the figurehead of a rival regime, seeking to regain possession of the person of the king. Isabeau of Bavaria found herself in an unenviable situation, with no financial backup of her own, no power base, and absolutely no prospect of being able to take back government herself. In such a scenario, control of the queen and her authority, by neutralizing her in prison like Armagnac or, like Burgundy, by persuasion or coercion, or perhaps even deceptive use of her titles and seals with no attempt or interest in gaining her consent or not, remained the ultimate weapon in the civil war. Regency authority somehow endured, despite the essential powerlessness personally of the individual regent queen."

-Rachel C. Gibbons, "Isabeau of Bavaria, Queen of France: Queenship and Political Authority as “Lieutenante-Général” of the Realm", Queenship, Gender, and Reputation in the Medieval and Early Modern West, 1060–1600 (Edited by Zita Eva Rohr and Lisa Benz)

[historicwomendaily]

Portrait of Elisabeth “Sisi” of Wittelsbach, duchess in Bavaria, on horseback in front of her family's summer residence, Possenhofen, by Karl Theodor von Piloty & Franz Adam.

The painting was commissioned in 1853 as a gift to Sisi's fiancé and cousin, Franz Josef I emperor of Austria.

[historicwomendaily]

A savvy businesswoman, Osoet Pegua (c.1615–c.1658) was connected to both the royal court of Siam (now Thailand) and the Dutch East India Company (VOC). Her business acumen helped her secure a role as an invaluable partner in the region.

Here is the link to my Ko-Fi. If you enjoy my content, your support would be much appreciated!

Early Life

Osoet was born around 1615 and was of Mon-Burmese descent, placing her at the margins of Thai society. By unknown circumstances, she ended up in the Dutch compound in Ayutthaya, then the capital of Siam and a major trading post. She lived in a world where female traders often held substantial influence and had strong networks.

Many foreign men who arrived were single and frequently took local wives or concubines. Osoet herself would be involved with three Dutchmen.

At age 16, she became the concubine of Jan van Meerwijck and later had a son with him. After his death in 1635, she sought a new relationship.

A Respected Trading Partner

Osoet’s next partner was Jeremias van Vliet, who became director of the VOC’s office in Ayutthaya. Osoet, already a skilled and well-connected businesswoman, proved invaluable to the Dutch by facilitating connections with the royal court, including the king himself. This helped advance Dutch commercial interests. She also worked with the wives of high-ranking officials, underscoring the political and commercial roles of aristocratic women.

Osoet had three daughters with van Vliet. He wanted to take custody of them and move them out of the country, but Osoet refused. The king supported her decision, a testament to her respected position. Osoet was thus able to keep her daughters.

Behind-the-Scenes Leadership

Osoet later met Jan van Muijden, who also became the VOC director. She entered into a relationship with him when she was around 31 and he was 25. Lacking experience in managing an office and barely speaking the local language, van Muijden relied heavily on Osoet. She unofficially took charge of VOC operations, using her contacts to secure trading licenses for him.

Her influence peaked between 1646 and 1650, during which the company prospered thanks to her court connections. She negotiated lucrative contracts and even gained a monopoly on supplying provisions for the Dutch establishment in Ayutthaya.

Osoet died in 1658 following a stroke that left her paralyzed and unable to speak. At the Dutch’s request, she was given a Christian burial in the Company’s graveyard, rather than being cremated

Further reading:

Delouche Gilles, Une femme d’affaires et d’influence à Ayudhya au XVIIe siècle : Dame O-Sut (? -1658)

Djik Wil O., “Sex and trade in seventeenth century Siam. Osoet Pegu and her Dutch lovers”

Smith Bonnie G., Women's History in Global Perspective volume 2

[historicwomendaily]

"There are indications that [King William the Lion of Scotland] relied on Queen Ermengarde and allowed her to play an increasingly influential part in public affairs. A resentful Glasgow canon was to allege that in 1207 Walter, a royal chaplain, obtained the position of bishop of Glasgow after bribing not only the King’s chamberlain but the Queen herself. There are signs that her relatives also profited from their relationship with her: Richard de Beaumont, possibly a brother or nephew, acquired a sizeable estate in the Crail area. Ermengarde appears to have acted as mediator when William was negotiating with King John of England in 1209, and she certainly did so with great aplomb when her husband met John at Durham in February 1212. According to Bower, she showed herself in their discussions to be ‘an extraordinary woman, gifted with a charming and witty eloquence’. As a result of her efforts, the peace between the two countries was renewed, and it was agreed that her son Prince Alexander should be given an English wife.

That same summer, William fell ill, and there are signs that Ermengarde exercised considerable influence during his sickness. The King was nearly seventy by now, and although he recovered, his health remained poor. He was well enough to travel as far north as Elgin in the summer of 1214, but the lengthy journey brought on some sort of collapse and he was taken south again to Stirling by very easy stages. Ermengarde was probably with him when he saw his lords for the last time and urged them to accept his sixteen-year-old son Alexander as king. He died in Stirling Castle at the beginning of December 1214.

Next morning, the prelates and nobles urged the Queen to supervise the arrangements for the funeral, but she was ���in a state of extreme mourning and worn out with grief’. Try as they might, they could not rouse her from her sorrow and so they hastily took Prince Alexander to be crowned at Scone while Ermengarde remained with her husband’s body. William was then buried in his abbey of Arbroath. Ermengarde lived for another twenty years, devoting her considerable energies to raising money to found a Cistercian abbey at Balmerino in Fife. She purchased the necessary land for a thousand merks and oversaw the construction of the building, which was made of local red stone. Monks from Melrose settled at the abbey on St Lucy’s Day, 13 December 1229 and both Ermengarde and her son Alexander frequently stayed there. When Ermengarde died on 11 February 1233, she was buried before the high altar at Balmerino. It is a pity that the records do not tell us more about this effective and influential Queen Consort."

-Rosalind K. Marshall, Scottish Queens 1034-1714

[historicwomendaily]

Portrait of Cristina Barbiano née Trivulzio, principessa di Belgioioso, by Henri Lehman. (image's source: cristinabelgiojoso.it)

Belgioioso commissioned Lehman the portrait for 4000 francs in 1843. When it was exposed at the Louvre for the first time, the painting received mixed reviews.

[historicwomendaily]

It was inevitable that Suleyman’s male and female favorites would either clash or combine. Rooted in the immediate vicinity of the sultan, their spheres of power overlapped. - The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire, Leslie P. Peirce

[historicwomendaily]

Lady Mary Tudor reunites with her father after their reconciliation. The Tudors 3x01 | Wolf Hall: The Mirror and The Light 2x01

Mary's capitulation was greeted with "incredible rejoicing" at court. Restored to favor, she was acknowledged as the king’s daughter once more and offered a sumptuous new wardrobe and a choice of servants. Cromwell returned to Hunsdon with “a most gracious letter” from the king and, “kneeling on the ground,” begged Mary’s pardon for his former harsh conduct.

Three weeks later, Mary journeyed to Hackney for a secret reunion with her father. It was their first meeting for five years. She had been a young teenager when Henry last saw her, and she was now a woman of twenty. Chapuys wrote that the kindness shown by the king to the princess was “inconceivable, regretting that he had been so long separated from her.” He showed her “such love and affection, and such brilliant promises for the future that no father could have behaved better towards his daughter.” Jane Seymour gave Mary a diamond ring and Henry 1,000 crowns for her “many pleasures.” They spent one night together and parted on Friday, July 7, with Henry promising that she would be brought to court to take her place immediately after the queen. (Whitelock, Anna. (2009) Mary Tudor: Princess, bastard, queen. London: Bloomsbury.)

edit suggested by @fideidefenswhore (you're the best)

[historicwomendaily]

11 Nov. 1276 - Magnus III (Magnus Ladulås) and Helvig of Holstein (sometimes wrongly called Hedvig) married at Kalmar Castle, which means Helvig became Queen of Sweden. Magnus had become King of Sweden the year before after deposing his brother Valdemar from the throne.

We don’t know when Helvig was born, but we know that her parents were Gerhard I, Count of Holstein-Itzehoe and Elisabeth of Mecklenburg. As a morning gift, Magnus gave her the farm Dåvö in Munktorp parish and three counties in Västmanland: Snevringe (where Dåvö is located), Fellingsbro and Åkerbo.

Magnus and Helvig are believed to be buried in the Riddarholms church in Stockholm. According to historical sources, Magnus, Helvig, one daughter and one grandchild were buried together in the family crypt. However, in 1915 it was discovered that the crypt housed the remains of eight people and not four. In 2011 the remains were investigated once again, only to show that no one in the crypt could be Magnus or his closest relatives.

Photo 1: Magnus's grave monument in Riddarholmskyrkan, photographed from above. The monument was sculpted by Lucas van der Werdt in 1574 and was placed over what was believed to be his family crypt (photograph from Wikimedia Commons). Photo 2: Imagined portrait of Helvig by unknown artist from unknown year (oil on canvas, 63,5 x 54,5 x 4 cm). Photo courtesy of Nationalmuseum.

[historicwomendaily]

In December 1174, Henry signed the Treaty of Falaise with the humiliated William King of Scotland who had been captured at Alnwick. With Richard and Geoffrey witnesses to this treaty, he agreed that Henry was his feudal overlord. Geoffrey should have had more than a passing interest in this because William was his fiancee's uncle. Constance's mother Margaret, who had returned to England after Conan's death, had also been captured in 1174, and was imprisoned first at Portchester Castle, then at Rouen. Henry II must have wanted to keep her under his control by marrying her to one of his men, for in 1175, he married her to his constable Humphrey de Bohun. More than a decade later he would treat her daughter in the same way.

-Kathy Carter, Arthur I, Duke of Brittany, in History and Literature

[historicwomendaily]

"[Angelberga] enjoyed a degree of autonomy that cannot be compared to that of any other royal woman in the same period. Private charters and juridical records inform us of the network of friends and clients that Angelberga was able to build. In a charter dating back to 865 a count called Ermenulfus asked the empress to provide him with a diploma that documented the grant of the monastery of Masina, which he had previously received from the emperor. In return, Ermenulfus promised to leave all his properties to Angelberga. It is uncertain what happened next and whether Angelberga fulfilled her promise and acquired the properties of the count. What we do know is that in 877 Angelberga was the owner of Masina, which the count had been so eager to protect, as she later left it to San Sisto. This charter shows that Angelberga had autonomy in shaping relationships with the political elite of the kingdom, and that she used this relationship to accumulate wealth. In 874 she presided over a placitum which granted some lands to a chaplain called Ratcausus – a member of Louis II’s entourage. The properties had been the object of a dispute between Ratcausus and a woman called Gernia and her husband, the Count Mantfrid. According to a charter issued the previous year in Capua, the chaplain had promised to sell his Piacenza properties to Angelberga if he won the case. It is evident that Angelberga used her role at court to carry out her project of territorial acquisitions in the area of Piacenza. Furthermore, in 877 she signed a libellum contract with the monastery of Saint Maurice in Agaune (Switzerland), through which she acquired two properties in Tuscany. The relationship with monasteries was therefore an important part of Angelberga’s career. Although she acted as intercessor on account of monastic and religious institutions - such as Bobbio, Milan and Piacenza – Angelberga stands out for the amount of royal estates granted to her and for their strategic location. This was related to her activity as founder of monasteries, a project started in the 870s and realized during her widowhood. [Angelberga was supported in her activities by Louis II, who was keen to stress on the perpetuity of her ownership of the properties that he had granted to her]."

Roberta Cimino, Italian Queens in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries (PHD Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2014)

[historicwomendaily]

Miniature portrait of young Cristina Trivulzio by George Emmanuel Optiz. (image's source: cristinabelgiojoso.it)

The exact date of the painting is unknown, however it seems to precede her marriage to Emilio Barbiano principe di Belgioioso in 1824, meaning that Cristina Trivulzio would have been sixteen years old at most when Optiz took her likeness.