Janet Kennedy, Royal Mistress

Janet Kennedy, Royal Mistress

Author: Ishbel C. M. Barnes

Publisher: John Donald Publishers

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 136

ISBN-13:

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The biography of a Scottish woman at court in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Janet Kennedy was the partner of at least four men, which was completely typical at the time. However, she was not typical in that she was married to the Chancellor, Archibald, Earl of Angus, and then became the mistress of James IV. Three of her partners were killed at Flodden, as were her brother and brother-in-law. Ishbel Barnes looks at medieval Scotland from a contemporary womans perspective in order to write about the fifty percent of the population that is largely ignored or under-discussed in histories of this period.


Obscene Pedagogies

Obscene Pedagogies

Author: Carissa M. Harris

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2018-12-15

Total Pages: 302

ISBN-13: 150173041X

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In Obscene Pedagogies, Carissa M. Harris investigates the relationship between obscenity, gender, and pedagogy in Middle English and Middle Scots literary texts from 1300 to 1580 to show how sexually explicit and defiantly vulgar speech taught readers and listeners about sexual behavior and consent. Through innovative close readings of literary texts including erotic lyrics, single-woman's songs, debate poems between men and women, Scottish insult poetry battles, and The Canterbury Tales, Harris demonstrates how through its transgressive charge and galvanizing shock value, obscenity taught audiences about gender, sex, pleasure, and power in ways both positive and harmful. Harris's own voice, proudly witty and sharply polemical, inspires the reader to address these medieval texts with an eye on contemporary issues of gender, violence, and misogyny.


Inglorious Royal Marriages

Inglorious Royal Marriages

Author: Leslie Carroll

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2014-09-02

Total Pages: 401

ISBN-13: 1101598360

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It’s no secret that the marriages of monarchs are often made in hell. Here are some of the most spectacular mismatches in five hundred years of royal history.... In a world where many kings, queens, and princes lacked nothing but true love, marital mismatches could bring out the baddest, boldest behavior in the bluest of bloodlines. Margaret Tudor, her niece Mary I, and Catherine of Braganza were desperately in love with chronically unfaithful husbands, but at least they weren’t murdered by them, as were two of the Medici princesses were. King Charles II’s beautiful, high-spirited sister “Minette” wed Louis XIV’s younger brother, who wore more makeup and perfume than she did. Forced to wed her boring, jug-eared cousin Ferdinand, Marie of Roumania—a granddaughter of Queen Victoria—proved herself one of the heroines of World War I by using her prodigious personal charm to regain massive amounts of land during the peace talks at Versailles. Brimming with outrageous real-life stories of royal marriages gone wrong, this is an entertaining, unforgettable book of dubious matches doomed from the start.


The Household and Court of James IV of Scotland, 1488-1513

The Household and Court of James IV of Scotland, 1488-1513

Author: William Hepburn

Publisher: Boydell & Brewer

Published: 2023-03-07

Total Pages: 201

ISBN-13: 1783276908

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Offers a fresh perspective on the role of the court in late medieval Scotland, framing it within the wider field of court studies, highlighting its centrality to the effective government for which James IV is renowned. James IV is regarded by many historians as the most charismatic and politically successful of Scotland's rulers, with his royal court, and the institution of the royal household which underpinned it, at the heart of his reign. This book, the first comprehensive examination of the subject, takes the structures and personnel of the household - from councillors to stable-hands - as the foundation for its study of the court and its role. Beginning by looking at the distinction between household and court and the structures imposed by the household on the court, Hepburn utilises this framework to explore the lives of the people moving within it, both in terms of their duties as royal servants and their broader social and political worlds. The book argues that these people were both audience and performer in the court, receiving and producing messages about the king, royal government and the status of groups and individuals. Association with the household also became a feature of life for people away from the court, through the household-related terms in which they were described and through the lands they held. Overall, it highlights the central role of the court in the effective conduct of royal government for which James IV is renowned.


The Stewarts

The Stewarts

Author: Richard Oram

Publisher: The History Press

Published: 2011-08-26

Total Pages: 124

ISBN-13: 0752469231

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This is an accessible, illustrated history of the Stewart royal family, kings and queens of the Scots from Robert II (1371-90) to James VI (1567-1625), the last Stewart monarch to really know and understand the Scots.


The Afterlife of King James IV

The Afterlife of King James IV

Author: Keith John Coleman

Publisher: John Hunt Publishing

Published: 2019-04-26

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 178904118X

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The Afterlife of King James IV explores the survival stories following the Scottish king's defeat at the battle of Flodden in 1513, and how his image and legacy were used in the years that followed when he remained a shadow player in the politics of a shattered kingdom. Keith John Coleman has written a legend-based biography of James IV that straddles the gap between history and folklore that looks at the undying king motif and otherworld myths of James IV, one of Scotland's most successful rulers.


Tudors Versus Stewarts

Tudors Versus Stewarts

Author: Linda Porter

Publisher: Macmillan + ORM

Published: 2014-07-01

Total Pages: 602

ISBN-13: 1466842725

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The war between the fertile Stewarts and the barren Tudors was crucial to the history of the British Isles in the sixteenth century. The legendary struggle, most famously embodied by the relationship between Elizabeth I and her cousin, Mary Queen of Scots, was fuelled by three generations of powerful Tudor and Stewart monarchs. It was the marriage of Margaret Tudor, elder sister of Henry VIII, to James IV of Scotland in 1503 that gave the Tudors a claim to the English throne—a claim which became the acknowledged ambition of Mary Queen of Scots and a major factor in her downfall. Here is the story of divided families, of flamboyant kings and queens, cultured courts and tribal hatreds, blood feuds, rape and sexual license, of battles and violent deaths. It brings alive a neglected aspect of British history—the blood-spattered steps of two small countries on the northern fringes of Europe towards the union of their crowns. Beginning with the dramatic victories of two usurpers, Henry VII in England and James IV in Scotland, in the late fifteenth century, Linda Porter's Tudors Versus Stewarts sheds new light on Henry VIII, his daughter Elizabeth I and on his great-niece, Mary Queen of Scots, still seductive more than 400 years after her death.