Game of Queens (55 page)

In Honour of That High and Mighty Princess Queen Elizabeth of Happy Memory, Anne Bradstreet, 1643

The game of chess, with its all-important queen, was both popular, and an acknowledged metaphor of rule, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Sofonisba Anguissola painted her sisters playing chess (above). Both Isabella of Castile, pictured with her husband Ferdinand (below left), and Anne de Beaujeu (below right) were notable players.

The young Margaret of Austria (left) could not have known that she would one day be seated across the conference table oppo­site her erstwhile playmate Louise of Savoy (right).

Louise’s daughter, Marguerite of Navarre (above) was also an important player in the great game of international diplo­macy, as seen at the spectacular festivities of the
Field of the Cloth of Gold
(below).

The Tudor dynasty was split by the contest between Katherine of Aragon (below) and Anne Boleyn (above right) – the first and second wives of Henry VIII. Henry’s sister Margaret Tudor (above left), married to the King of Scots, also got drawn into the debate.

The personal and religious conflict between Anne Boleyn and Katherine of Aragon would be inherited by their daughters Mary (above right) and Elizabeth (above left).
The Allegory of Succession
(below) – adapted in Elizabeth’s reign from an earlier painting – shows the Protestant Elizabeth I attended by the goddesses of peace and plenty, and the Catholic Mary by the god of war.

While in Scotland Marie de Guise (above left) fought to maintain Catholicism, religious divisions were also clear on the continent. As Regents of the Netherlands both Mary of Hungary (above right) and Margaret of Parma (below) were compelled to crack down on Lutheranism. Margaret is pictured fishing for goods in a river of blood as Protestant rebels are con­demned to death.

In France, Jeanne d’Albret (above left) became the heroine of the Huguenots, while Catherine de Medici (above right) was widely blamed for the Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Day (below).