Eleanor of Castile

Eleanor of Castile

Author: Sara Cockerill

Publisher: Amberley Publishing Limited

Published: 2014-09-15

Total Pages: 728

ISBN-13: 1445636050

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The untold story of the remarkable woman behind England's greatest medieval king, Edward I


Eleanor of Castile

Eleanor of Castile

Author: John Carmi Parsons

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Published: 1998-01-11

Total Pages: 364

ISBN-13: 9780312172978

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Medievalist feminist studies' early concentration on the lives of prominent women has more recently given way to an interest in their less exalted sisters. Historians have seemingly avoided the careers of medieval queens, creatures of romance and legend, women who enjoyed rank and wealth merely as a consequence of birth or marriage. A renewed interest in such women has, however, followed the opening of new avenues to the study of women and power in the Middle Ages. That the lives of these women will reward reconsideration has been amply proven in the works of such historians as Pauline Stafford and Janet Nelson. Eleanor of Castile studies the wife of Edward I of England, a woman eulogized since the sixteenth century as a model of virtuous womanhood and queenly excellence, who overcame the impediment of her foreign birth to win all English hearts. This book shows that Eleanor's contemporaries in fact had a disquietingly different opinion of her, and develops as a central theme the formation of that opinion as her behaviour was observed by her subjects. The book thus becomes a study in the construction of one woman's imagery of power and her society's perception of that imagery. The evolution of the queen's posthumous legend is considered as well, as her reputation was fashioned and refashioned in response to changing opinions on women and power and about the medieval period itself.


Eleanor of Aquitaine

Eleanor of Aquitaine

Author: Sara Cockerill

Publisher: Amberley Publishing Limited

Published: 2019-11-15

Total Pages: 602

ISBN-13: 1445646188

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'Impeccably researched and beautifully written, this book offers a fresh perspective on one of the most controversial queens in history. Not to be missed.' Tracey Borman


Berenguela of Castile (1180-1246) and Political Women in the High Middle Ages

Berenguela of Castile (1180-1246) and Political Women in the High Middle Ages

Author: M. Shadis

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2009-10-26

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 0230103138

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The women in the family which ruled thirteenth-century Castile used maternity, familial and political strategy, and religious and cultural patronage to secure their personal power as well as to promote their lineage. Leonor of England, and her daughters Blanche of Castile (queen of France), Urraca (queen of Portugal), Costanza (a Cistercian nun of Las Huelgas) and Leonor, (queen of Aragon) provide the context for a study focusing on Berenguela of Castile, queen of Leon through marriage and of Castile by right of inheritance, whose most significant accomplishment was to enable the successful rule of her son Fernando.


A Great and Terrible King

A Great and Terrible King

Author: Marc Morris

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2015-03-15

Total Pages: 790

ISBN-13: 1605987468

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The first major biography of a truly formidable king, whose reign was one of the most dramatic and important of the entire Middle Ages, leading to war and conquest on an unprecedented scale. Edward I is familiar to millions as "Longshanks," conqueror of Scotland and nemesis of Sir William Wallace (in "Braveheart"). Yet that story forms only the final chapter of the king's action-packed life. Earlier, Edward had defeated and killed Simon de Montfort in battle; traveled to the Holy Land; conquered Wales, extinguishing its native rulers and constructing a magnificent chain of castles. He raised the greatest armies of the Middle Ages and summoned the largest parliaments; notoriously, he expelled all the Jews from his kingdom. The longest-lived of England's medieval kings, Edward fathered fifteen children with his first wife, Eleanor of Castile and, after her death, erected the Eleanor Crosses—the grandest funeral monuments ever fashioned for an English monarch. In this book, Marc Morris examines afresh the forces that drove Edward throughout his relentless career: his character, his Christian faith, and his sense of England's destiny—a sense shaped largely by the tales of the legendary King Arthur. Morris also explores the competing reasons that led Edward's opponents (including Robert Bruce) to resist him. The result is a sweeping story, immaculately researched yet compellingly told, and a vivid picture of medieval Britain at the moment when its future was decided.


Daughters of Chivalry

Daughters of Chivalry

Author: Kelcey Wilson-Lee

Publisher: Picador

Published: 2019-03-26

Total Pages: 343

ISBN-13: 1760785938

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Virginal, chaste, humble, patiently waiting for rescue by brave knights and handsome princes: this idealized – and largely mythical – notion of the medieval noblewoman still lingers. Yet the reality was very different, as Kelcey Wilson-Lee shows in this vibrant account of the five daughters of the great English king, Edward I. The lives of these sisters – Eleanora, Joanna, Margaret, Mary and Elizabeth – ran the full gamut of experiences open to royal women in the Middle Ages. Living as they did in a courtly culture founded on romantic longing and brilliant pageantry, they knew that a princess was to be chaste yet a mother to many children, preferably sons, meek yet able to influence a recalcitrant husband or even command a host of men-at-arms. Edward’s daughters were of course expected to cement alliances and secure lands and territory by making great dynastic marriages, or endow religious houses with royal favour. But they also skilfully managed enormous households, navigated choppy diplomatic waters and promoted their family’s cause throughout Europe – and had the courage to defy their royal father. They might never wear the crown in their own right, but they were utterly confident of their crucial role in the spectacle of medieval kingship. Drawing on a wide range of contemporary sources, Daughters of Chivalry offers a rich portrait of these spirited Plantagenet women. With their libraries of beautifully illustrated psalters and tales of romance, their rich silks and gleaming jewels, we follow these formidable women throughout their lives and see them – at long last – shine from out of the shadows, revealing what it was to be a princess in the Age of Chivalry.


Daughters of Edward I

Daughters of Edward I

Author: Kathryn Warner

Publisher: Pen and Sword History

Published: 2021-08-18

Total Pages: 286

ISBN-13: 1526750287

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A colorful biography of five royal sisters in medieval England. In 1254 the teenage heir to the English throne took a Spanish bride, the sister of the king of Castile, in Burgos. Their marriage of thirty-six years proved to be one of the great royal romances of the Middle Ages. Edward I of England and Leonor of Castile had at least fourteen children together, though only six survived into adulthood, five of them daughters. Daughters of Edward I traces the lives of these five capable, independent women, including Joan of Acre, born in the Holy Land, who defied her father by marrying a second husband of her own choice, and Mary, who did not let her forced veiling as a nun stand in the way of the life she really wanted to live. These women’s stories span the decades from the 1260s to the 1330s, through the long reign of their father, the turbulent reign of their brother Edward II, and into the reign of their nephew, the child-king Edward III.


Philippa of Hainault

Philippa of Hainault

Author: Kathryn Warner

Publisher: Amberley Publishing Limited

Published: 2019-10-15

Total Pages: 452

ISBN-13: 1445662809

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Philippa of Hainault: Mother of the English Nation. The first biography of a remarkable and influential English queen.


Queen Isabella

Queen Isabella

Author: Alison Weir

Publisher: Ballantine Books

Published: 2006-12-26

Total Pages: 530

ISBN-13: 0345497066

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BONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from Alison Weir's Mary Boleyn. In this vibrant biography, acclaimed author Alison Weir reexamines the life of Isabella of England, one of history’s most notorious and charismatic queens. Isabella arrived in London in 1308, the spirited twelve-year-old daughter of King Philip IV of France. Her marriage to the heir to England’s throne was designed to heal old political wounds between the two countries, and in the years that followed she became an important figure, a determined and clever woman whose influence would come to last centuries. Many myths and legends have been woven around Isabella’s story, but in this first full biography in more than 150 years, Alison Weir gives a groundbreaking new perspective.


Edward II's Nieces, The Clare Sisters

Edward II's Nieces, The Clare Sisters

Author: Kathryn Warner

Publisher: Pen and Sword History

Published: 2020-03-20

Total Pages: 301

ISBN-13: 1526715597

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“A great book to introduce you to three fascinating sisters whose marriages during the reign of the infamous Edward II transformed England.” —Adventures of a Tudor Nerd The de Clare sisters Eleanor, Margaret and Elizabeth were born in the 1290s as the eldest granddaughters of King Edward I of England and his Spanish queen Eleanor of Castile, and were the daughters of the greatest nobleman in England, Gilbert “the Red” de Clare, Earl of Gloucester. They grew to adulthood during the turbulent reign of their uncle Edward II, and all three of them were married to men involved in intense, probably romantic or sexual, relationships with their uncle. When their elder brother Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester, was killed during their uncle’s catastrophic defeat at the battle of Bannockburn in June 1314, the three sisters inherited and shared his vast wealth and lands in three countries, but their inheritance proved a poisoned chalice. Eleanor and Elizabeth, and Margaret’s daughter and heir, were all abducted and forcibly married by men desperate for a share of their riches, and all three sisters were imprisoned at some point either by their uncle Edward II or his queen Isabella of France during the tumultuous decade of the 1320s. Elizabeth was widowed for the third time at twenty-six, lived as a widow for just under forty years, and founded Clare College at the University of Cambridge. “Another enjoyable read on women in history that don’t always get the limelight that they deserve. Kathryn Warner has done it once again by providing a well-written, well-researched, informative and engaging read.” —Where There’s Ink There’s Paper