During the Elizabethan era, writers such as Shakespeare, Spenser, Sidney, Daniel, and others frequently expounded on mercy, exploring the sources and outcomes of clemency. This fresh reading of such depictions shows that the concept of mercy was a contested one, directly shaped by tensions over the exercise of judgment by a woman on the throne.

Original edition entered under: Kinney, Arthur F.

This book compares two successful, elite women, Empress Adelheid (931 999) and Countess Matilda (1046 1115), for their relative ability to retain their wealth and power. Both owned extensive property in and exercised power across overlapping geographical regions, at either end of a century that proved formative for the rise of a more organized society. The comparison between these two women informs and transforms the debate about the change in opportunities for women to access wealth and power. It is particularly revealing because the general changes of the eleventh century brought about a...

It shows that the need for heirs and the acquisition and preparation of heirs had a critical impact on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century culture and politics, from the appropriation of culture to the influence of language, to trade and political alliances.

This study of early modern queenship compares the reign of Henry VII's queen, Elizabeth of York, and those of her daughters-in-law, the six queens of Henry VIII. More than a series of biographies of individual queens, Elizabeth of York and Her Six Daughters-in-Law is a careful, illuminating examination of the nature of Tudor queenship.

This collection brings together essays examining the international influence of queens, other female rulers, and their representatives from 1450 through 1700, an era of expanding colonial activity and sea trade. As Europe rose in prominence geopolitically, a number of important women--such as Queen Elizabeth I of England, Catherine de Medici, Caterina Cornaro of Cyprus, and Isabel Clara Eugenia of Austria--exerted influence over foreign affairs. Traditionally male-dominated spheres such as trade, colonization, warfare, and espionage were, sometimes for the first time, under the control of...

This book examines how early Stuart queens navigated their roles as political players and artistic patrons in a culture deeply conflicted about the legitimacy of female authority.

Elizabeth I looms large in this volume, but the interrogation of queenship extends from Elizabeth's historical counterparts, such as Anne Boleyn and Catherine de Medici, to her fictional echoes in the pages of John Lyly, Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, Mary Wroth, John Milton, and Margaret Cavendish.

Pop culture portrayals of medieval and early modern monarchs are rife with tension between authenticity and modern mores, producing anachronisms such as a feminist Queen Isabel (in RTVE's Isabel) and a lesbian Queen Christina (in The Girl King).