I've just started reading Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon. In this novel, Igraine belongs to a noble family yet she seems a bit obsessed with spinning and the author seems to feel that this is something ladies should know how to do and occupy their time with. And then I remembered, Sleeping Beauty, another famous story where a princess (spoiler alert) pricked her finger on a spindle.

Having never been royalty, I don't know what a royal lifestyle might normally be or have been like, but I would not have imagined manual labour would play a normal role in it. Rather, I'd have expected spinning would have be done by servants, craftsmen, or cottage industries, or rather anyone not of blue blood.

So, was spinning actually once a suitable or even expected activity for noble woman? If so, was this manual labour an exception or were noble women expected to engage in a range of physical jobs? When did this end? (I can't imagine Queen Elizabeth sitting at a spinning wheel making yarn.)