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...

A wide-ranging analysis of medieval queenship is provided by these essays, written by North American and European historians who have mined a rich variety of diplomatic, literary, and archaeological sources. Far more than simple biographical sketches, this volume examines queenship across a broad geographical and chronological spectrum.

Eleanor's patrilineal descent, from a lineage already prestigious enough to have produced an empress in the eleventh century, gave her the lordship of Aquitaine. But marriage re-emphasized her sex which, in the medieval scheme of gender-power relations relegated her to the position of Lady in relation to her Lordly husbands. In this collection, essays provide a context for Eleanor's life and further an evolving understanding of Eleanor's multifaceted career. A valuable collection on the greatest heiress of the medieval period.

In 19 essays, this study offers a range of approaches to medieval society's understanding of mothering and the uses to which the practice and imagery of mothering could be assumed by females and males alike. The study also focuses on representations of motherhood in Old Norse and Icelandic literatures, and on record evidence for the maternal behaviour of actual mothers in medieval France, England and Spain.