BBC Knowledge 2017 02

For more than 100 years from the late 15th century, women held

positions of power in Europe. Sarah Gristwood traces

the intricate network of interrelated queens and regents

Game of

Queens

A

FTER her accession ceremony on
13 December, 1474, Isabella of Castile rode
through the streets of Segovia – behind
a horseman holding a naked sword. Even her
husband, Ferdinand of Aragon, was shocked,
protesting that he had never before heard of
a queen “who usurped this masculine attribute.”
But Isabella’s reign ushered in an explosion of
female rule, unequalled until our own day.
In the 16th century, England, Scotland, France,
the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal and Hungary
all came at one time or another to be controlled
by a woman, whether as regent or queen regnant.
These rulers were linked by a complex
web of mothers and daughters, mentors and

protégés. Lessons were passed from Isabella

of Castile to her daughter Catherine of Aragon

and thence Mary I, and from the French regent

Anne de Beaujeu to Louise of Savoy, through

Louise’s daughter Marguerite of Navarre to

her daughter Jeanne d’Albret, to Marguerite’s

admirer Anne Boleyn and thus to Elizabeth I.

Their experiences are echoed today.

Headlines about Angela Merkel, Theresa May,

Nicola Sturgeon and Hillary Clinton emphasise

a powerful woman’s looks and likeability;

the problem of gendered abuse, of seeming tough

enough for high office without being dubbed

unfeminine; the question of whether female

leaders will relate to each other, and exercise

their power, in a specifically female way.

The age of queens did not outlast the 16th

century. Women had found themselves at

the forefront of the great religious divides that

tore Europe apart, but those divisions meant

that, though Anne Boleyn could be educated

in two foreign countries, her daughter

Elizabeth never set foot out of her own land.

Overleaf we introduce 10 key female figures

who dominated 16th-century Europe, and

explore the relationships that linked them.

ILLUSTRATIONS BY DAVIDE BONAZZI

Sarah Gristwood is the author of Game of Queens:

The Women Who Made Sixteenth-Century Europe

(Oneworld, 2016).

February 2017 83