Welcome to Tuesday Trivia!
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this thread is for you ALL!
Come share the cool stuff you love about the past!
We do not allow posts based on personal or relatives' anecdotes. Brief and short answers are allowed but MUST be properly sourced to respectable literature. All other rules also apply—no bigotry, current events, and so forth.
For this round, let’s look at: Power & Authority! Tremble and be fearful, fellow AH members! Behold the Power and Authority of this week's theme! From getting, holding, usurping, abusing, overthrowing or respecting, use this week's trivia thread to seize the power and make others respect your authority!
One of the reasons I'm so interested in the history of queenship is that it offers a complex interplay between power and subordination. Traditionally, European queens consort have been seen as powerless women whose "job" was only to bear the king's heirs, subject to his whims and to society's requirements for femininity; in some cases, they've embodied stereotypically negative feminine traits like violent and cruel jealousy, unbridled consumerism and luxury, or treachery and adultery. This is definitely still the case in pop culture! But over the last 20-30 years, historians have reexamined the evidence to find all the many ways queens actually participated in public roles relating to ruling the kingdom and exercised their own autonomy. Unfortunately, I do find that people often seem to take this as "girlbossing history" rather than just seeing it as interesting revision, but hopefully it will even out and become accepted eventually.
Some past answers of mine on the subject:
History of Queen Consorts? (relating to The Last Kingdom)
Theresa Earenfight defines the EMA in Queenship in Medieval Europe as the one in which the role of queen became defined and part of the institution of monarchy. While local traditions and variations abounded, she notes four specific and intereconnecting trends common across Europe during this period, which relate to the situation described above: the necessity of a religious marriage for a king's wife/consort to be considered a queen, the fitness of a queen to counsel her husband or even rule, the possibility for queens to use Christianity to increase their own standing, and the importance of the queen's role in managing social relations between the king and nobility.
A previous Tuesday Trivia post on Catherine de Medici
The dissolution of her marriage was brought up at this time, since the new dauphin could be remarried to someone with better connections and potentially a more fertile womb, but she kept herself in the French court by using the affection she'd generated in these cultivated relationships, particularly with François, and the piety she had been conspicuously and privately displaying in those relationships as well. While Henri as king would neglect her and favor his mistress, Diane de Poitiers, she continued to build networks that would eventually lead to her emergence as a serious political power.
A floating feature post on Berenguela of Castile
Berenguela didn't really inherit the throne the way we think of that kind of thing, in the pattern of Mary or Elizabeth of England. However, her entire successful career as queen took place because of her inheritance. She was made more powerful as Queen of Léon than most consorts because she was second in line for her father's throne; she had the opportunity to act as regent for her brother because she was the most powerful woman at court; she kept power during her son's reign because she had given him his title.
It's not related to anything I've ever studied, but I find it fascinating that the Portuguese court was forced to move to its colony Brazil and ruled from there for thirteen years. Can anyone recommend books on the topic—in particular ones that discuss not just the historical blow-by-blows, but an analysis of how this affected power, authority, and the relationship between colonizer and colonized?