Four Queens: The Provençal Sisters who Ruled Europe
Nancy Goldstone
Viking, New York 2007
978-0-670-03843-5
336 pages
$24.95
Today in the U.S., there are legitimate concerns about having two families alternately control the government for a period of two decades. We Americans get fidgety when power remains in someone’s hands for too long (think presidential term limits after FDR), and with control of the executive branch seeming to oscillate between members and even generations of only two families, we are beginning to question why we would intentionally install monarchs after fighting so hard to get rid of one. This attitude, however, is a fairly modern development. Centuries ago in Europe, familial rule was a standard form of governance embodied in the ubiquitous monarchies, some of which still symbolically rule today. In the Middle Ages, a close degree of consanguinity with the sovereign was a sign of legitimacy for a successor or vassal. Nancy Goldstone’s latest book takes place within this context, and it describes an exceptional situation where an entire family of sisters ruled contemporaneously as queens across Europe. Four Queens relates the remarkable stories of these women while exploring the complex politics of Europe in the Middle Ages.
This book chronicles the life stories of four sisters born to the Count of Provence, in what is now the south of France, in the thirteenth century. Marguerite, Eleanor, Sanchia, and Beatrice were raised at the genteel court that was the epicenter of the medieval troubadour culture-an upbringing that shaped them into refined ladies who appreciated beauty and the arts. But the political importance of their father’s realm also taught them respect for the continent-wide chess game that was European statecraft. The Count’s chief advisor had rightly reasoned, “…for if thou marryest the first well, thou wilt marry all the others the better for the sake of her kinship, and at less cost.” Once the eldest sister had become a queen, her younger sisters attained a new level of importance and desirability in the eyes of European noble bachelors. By the time they were teenagers, all four girls had married into key political alliances that formed part of the power balance in thirteenth-century Europe.
Marguerite and Eleanor became queens immediately, both marrying, respectively, the kings of France and England. Sanchia and Beatrice married men lower in the ranks of nobility and became queens later in their lives. Each woman endured trials and tribulations just as each enjoyed status and power. Marguerite and Eleanor receive the most attention in the book because their stories are the most complex, and they were intimately involved in many debacles of their husbands’ reigns.
Marguerite, who married Louis IX of France, survived her terror of a mother-in-law, her husband’s disastrous crusade of 1249, and Louis’s general weakness for politics that frequently endangered the crown’s control of France. Eleanor’s husband, Henry III, was downright incompetent in many situations, and Eleanor both supported and suffered for his political and military failures, including a civil war between the crown and the English nobility in the 1260s. Goldstone summarizes the difference between these two sisters, stating, “Events thrust Marguerite into a leadership position. Eleanor seized it.” Both women influenced policies and maneuvered their friends and relatives into positions of power.
Sanchia’s story is the saddest, as she was neglected by her husband, Richard of Cornwall, and died at a fairly young age. She and her husband briefly reigned as King and Queen of the Romans, which were misnomers since they ostensibly ruled areas of Germany, but the titles paid lip service to the idea of a Holy Roman Empire without calling this English couple “emperor and empress.” The story of power-hungry Beatrice provides an interesting glimpse into the mindset of a youngest sibling. After years of scheming and waiting along with her husband, Charles of Anjou, she finally became queen of Sicily after he conquered the southern Italian kingdom, only to die soon after her coronation. Throughout these intertwined tales of crusades, civil war, and shifting alliances, Goldstone maintains an impressive level of detail in her descriptions and wit in her writing.
By the late-thirteenth century, the sisters’ stories had taken a depressing turn, with Marguerite having suffered the loss of many family members in yet another failed crusade by Louis; Eleanor politically weakened and discredited after the English civil war; and the youngest two sisters dead. It is disappointing to have such fascinating lives peter out in sadness, but such were the realities of medieval monarchical politics. From their early childhoods to the zenith of their power in 1254 (when the sisters’ relationships brought about an historic peace between France and England) to their quiet exits from the political stage, the lives of these four women and the machinations around them are recounted meticulously.
Goldstone expertly makes sense of the complicated world of medieval politics, when alliances constantly changed and the players involved were very different from those in the modern world. She explains the logic behind marriage alliances and the competing interests at work between France, England, the Holy Roman Empire, the papacy, and other kingdoms and fiefdoms across Europe and the Middle East. But readers should be prepared for this avalanche of information and read closely to keep events and individuals clear. Significantly, Goldstone shows that women were often active players in the familial politics of the medieval era. Seventy-five percent of the Provençal sisters made critical decisions and impacted the political fortunes of their husbands and families. It is notable that Sanchia’s story is the exception: even though she was certainly not alone in her marginalized situation, Sanchia was not the archetypal female ruler, and as this book proves, women did indeed affect the politics of the medieval world.
The author’s common-sense tone makes this book suitable for non-specialists as well as historians, but her copious use of primary and secondary sources show this is a work of serious historical scholarship. Pivotal primary sources from this period, including Matthew Paris’s English history, Joinville’s chronicles of the life and deeds of Louis IX, and letters written by the queens themselves provide depth and legitimacy to this account. Unfortunately the book lacks notes, so the precise sources of information for certain parts of the narrative are not as clear for readers as they could be.
Readers must also remember that the author’s view of these women is largely positive, and they should not hesitate to read further in the sources for different points of view. These sisters acted in the same ways that male rulers did-namely, their decisions were not always driven by magnanimity but by the desire for self-preservation and self-aggrandizement. It is hard to escape the notion that underneath parts of Goldstone’s account lie pragmatic and sometimes even selfish motives she doesn’t discuss. Eleanor’s repeated aggravation of the English barons and Beatrice’s hoarding the of the sisters’ inheritances, for example, are perhaps not assessed as honestly as they could be.
But overall, this is an extremely interesting and well-researched chronicle of a fascinating medieval family. Goldstone has produced an admirable account of the methods of medieval European governance and the ways women impacted it.
