Doomed Queens (18 page)

         b. Her sublime skills as a mother.

         c. Fiscal brilliance to rival a Rockefeller.

         d. The serenity to accept the things she could not change.

ANSWER KEY

1, c: The Romans pushed Boudicca too far when they raped her daughters and stole their inheritances. 2, c: This was the final act that turned mother against son. 3, a and d. 4, c: Brunhilde had a happy marriage; Galswintha was murdered by her husband. 5, a: Irene’s icon-worshipping ways led her husband to reject her in the bedroom.

CHAPTER THREE

Middle Age Crisis

OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF BABES

I am much to be pitied both as a queen and as a woman: When one is fifteen a crown is heavy to wear, and I have not the liberty of the meanest of my subjects….

Joan of Naples, via Alexandre Dumas

O
ne would suspect that, after the travails of the Dark Ages, life could only improve for queens of the later Middle Ages. It didn’t. Next in line to ratchet up the royal fatality count were the Crusades and the Black Death (aka the bubonic plague).

To avoid infection by the plague, most blue-blooded females sought sanctuary from the larger populace. Boccaccio’s
Decameron
describes one such scenario, where a group of noblemen and-women retreat to an isolated villa to pass the time until the worst of the epidemic passes. Even so, without an emergency broadcasting system in place, there was little to prevent a princess traveling to a distant dynastic alliance from strolling straight into plague territory. Some ended up wearing their bridal veil as a burial shroud; Joan of England, fiancée of Pedro of Castile, was one such unfortunate victim. Feminine vulnerabilities were also made apparent in childbirth, which killed approximately 20 percent of medieval mama wannabes—clearly this was not the age of
Childbirth Without Fear
.

As for the Crusades, royal women were generally more prone to survival than their male counterparts—usually they weren’t the ones marching into battle. Nonetheless, Sibyl of Jerusalem chose to participate in the Third Crusade, only to lose her life and daughters as a result. It is hoped that the powers that be appreciated her sacrifice.

While it is unknown how many people died during these religious wars, it is estimated that as many as thirty million folks were killed by the plague—approximately half of Europe’s population at that time. That written, marriage proved to be a far more deadly enterprise for many queens. Without divorce readily available, murders were often initiated by unhappy spouses and uppity relatives eager to rid themselves of an unwanted alliance. The deaths of Gertrude of Meran, Blanche of Bourbon, Joan of Naples, and Maria of Hungary all serve as cautionary tales for those eager to embrace nuptial delights.

1126

n 1109 Urraca, the daughter of King Alfonso VI, became the queen of Castille and León; these two kingdoms sat cozily next to each other in what is now Spain.

Until this point, Urraca’s sheltered life was filled with the usual princess distractions of getting married and getting knocked up. She was wed as a child to Raymond of Burgundy, with whom she had a son and a daughter before his premature demise in 1107. Becoming queen wasn’t even on Urraca’s radar, but all this changed when Urraca’s only brother was killed in battle in 1108, making the widowed princess heir to the throne. Soon after, her father, King Alfonso VI, went to his eternal reward. Next thing Urraca knew, everyone was addressing her as “your majesty.”

Before his death, King Alfonso had arranged for Urraca to exchange vows with another Alfonso—Alfonso I of Aragon. This Alfonso was better known as Alfonso the Battler because of his prowess as a warrior. Problem was Urraca and Alfonso Junior shared the same great-grandfather—the church considered the union too close for comfort. The couple were wed nonetheless, but the ensuing
scandale
pushed the marriage to the breaking point, especially after Alfonso proved to be a battler at home as well as on the battlefield.

But Urraca was tough: The queen dumped Alfonso when she did not promptly conceive an heir by him. One wonders if the reason for their lack of issue went beyond the horrors of domestic abuse. The king was fond of declaring, “The man devoted to war needs the companionship of men, not women.”

Urraca and Alfonso’s disastrous union was annulled in 1114. Regardless, resentment between the two monarchs continued to simmer. It exploded into a long and bloody war after Alfonso used his finely honed military skills to grab some of his exwife’s lands. Urraca was woman enough to fight back and, with the aid of her son by her first husband, she emerged victorious.

Urraca proved to be as passionate in love as she was in war. While she never married again, she did enjoy a bevy of friendships with benefits. This ultimately proved to be her Achilles’ heel—in the end the woman who had reigned over much of Spain during such tumultuous times was most likely undone by childbirth. The
Historia Compostelana
, an anonymously written history of that era, relates that Urraca got knocked up by a lover and perished in labor.

At the time of her death, the queen had reached the advanced maternal age of forty-six, after reigning more than capably for seventeen years.

Childbirth