70 thoughts on “Queens of England – Who Am I?”

  2. Araminta

    4. Eleanor of Castile (1241-1290), first wife of Edward I, was the daughter of Ferdinand of Castile and Joan, Countess of Ponthieu. Eleanor had at least sixteen children, most of whom died before Edward. Eleanor is remembered warmly by some historians, but she was not so loved during her life: the English saw her as a greedy foreigner. However, the available evidence shows that Edward and Eleanor couple were devoted to each other – Edward is one of the few medieval kings not to have had extra-marital affairs or fathered illegitimate children. Eleanor died in Harby, Nottinghamshire, approximately 10 miles from Lincoln. Edward followed her body to burial in Westminster Abbey and erected memorial crosses at the site of each overnight stop between Lincoln and Westminster. The main purpose of these crosses was to attract prayers for Eleanor’s soul from passers by.

  3. #3 Catherine of Aragon, I think, or at least this is supposed to be her. Married to Henry VIII of course.

  4. FEEG
    3. Catherine of Aragon (1485-1536), first wife of Henry VII, was the daughter of King Ferdinand of Aragon and Queen Isabella of Castille. Originally married to Henry’s brother, Arthur in 1501, Catherine was widowed the following year. Henry VII betrothed his second son, Henry, to Catharine – but the betrothal was very much an on-off-affair, during which time Catharine was reduced to penury – well penury royal style! She married Henry VIII shortly after his accession to the throne in 1509. Mary had at least six pregnancies: the only child to survive was a daughter, the future Queen Mary I. Her marriage was annulled in 1533 so that Henry could marry Ann Boleyn. It is often forgotten or overlooked that Henry and Catherine were married for over twenty years.

  7. Sipu

    Now I wonder how you got that one!!

    5. Elizabeth Woodville (c.1437-1492), wife of Edward IV, was the daughter of Richard Woodville, 1st Earl Rivers, and Jacquetta of Luxembourg. Elizabeth was the widow of Sir John Grey of Groby, by whom she had two sons. Elizabeth was the first commoner to marry into the Royal House of England. Edward IV had many mistresses, and did not have a reputation for fidelity. He married Elizabeth Woodville secretly in 1464, and it was the secrecy surrounding the marriage that caused problems later – since it was later asserted that Edward had been betrothed at the time of this marriage and that the Woodville marriage was not valid, and that the ten children of the marriage were, therefore, illegitimate. Elizabeth was not popular – she had a large family who benefitted extremely well though her marriage to the King. There can be no doubt that Elizabeth was deeply involved in the plot to replace Richard III with Henry VII.

  11. Well in that case I will go for 9 = Margaret of Anjou and wife of Henry VI. Will have to research No 7.In the meantime, I wont suggest any more.

  12. Araminta

    It is – this is her funeral effigy in Westminster Abbey

    2. Catherine de Valois (1401-1437), wife of Henry V, was the daughter of Charles VI of France and Isabella of Bavaria. In 1420 a peace treaty was made between France and England, and Charles VI acknowledged Henry V as his heir. Henry and Catherine were married later that year, and their son was born in December 1421. Henry V died in 1422, and Charles VI died a few months later. Theoretically Catherine’s son by Henry V, Henry VI, was king of England and France. The Parliament of 1427 passed an Act regulating the Queen’s remarriage – nonetheless Catharine entered into a relationship with Owen apt Maredud ap Tudor of Wales. There is no evidence that Catherine and Owen married, and there is also the question as to whether, in view of the Act of 1427, any marriage between them would have been legal. The couple had at least five children, the eldest, Edmund, was the grand-father of Henry VII. Needless to say, the Tudors claimed that there had been a marriage and that it was legal.

  13. Sipu
    9. Margaret of Anjou (1430-1482), wife of Henry VI, was the daughter of René I of Naples and Isabella, Duchess of Lorraine. She married Henry in 1445, aged 15. Due to Henry’s frequent bouts of insanity she ruled in her husband’s name. The couple had one son, Edward. Margaret did not display any signs of overt belligerence until she believed her husband was threatened with deposition by the ambitious Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York who had been appointed regent while Henry was mentally incapacitated from 1453 to 1454. The duke was a credible claimant to the English throne and by the end of his regency there were many powerful nobles and relatives prepared to back his claim. The Duke of York was powerful; Henry’s advisors corrupt; Henry himself trusting, pliable, and increasingly unstable; Margaret defiantly unpopular, grimly and gallantly determined to maintain the English crown for her progeny. Yet at least one scholar identifies the source of the eventual Lancastrian downfall not as York’s ambitions nearly so much as Margaret’s ill-judging enmity toward York and her over-indulgence in unpopular allies. Nevertheless, Queen Margaret was a powerful force in the world of politics. King Henry was putty in her hands when she wanted something done. After the second defeat of the Lancastrians at the Battle of Tewkesbury in 1471, where Henry and Margaret’s son, Edward, died. Margaret was captured and ransomed by the king of France. She died in Anjou.

  15. Sheona

    No I haven’t – I thought that was far too big a clue with so few choices. However, you might find something else to help you – I’m sure you’ll be able to work it out!

  17. Sipu

    That’s the problem with the really early stuff – there was a ‘standard’ style for kings, queens, knights etc. They really weren’t too bothered with genuine likenesses – as long as the image was dressed appropriately that was all that really mattered.

    I’ve already used Eleanor of Acquitaine – so I wasn’t going to use her again.

  19. Donald :

    10 = Matilda Flansomething? Married a guy called William the conqueror :-)

    PS: As a wog I expect a bit of leeway 🙂 Flening, flanigan, flounce? I can’t remember any more 😦

  21. Is 10 a young Queen Victoria and therefore Prince Albert as the hubby? I know the dress is all wrong, but you know what those Victorians were like when it came to pseudo-classical public display.

    OZ

  22. 6 looks a bit ‘Bayeux’ to me. Is it Matilda of Flanders, wife of Bill the Conker? Yes, I know it is out of the ‘timeline’, so probably not.

    OZ

  23. OZ: Be polite “Bill the Conker” you mean “William the Bastard” surely.

    I was going to suggest

    1. The head of Elton John, married to David Furnish

    but I will refrain.

  24. LW – Good idea. Surely a combination evolving into ‘Bill the Bastard’ scans better?

    Presumably 1. was before Elton’s hair transplant and coupling with Mr. Furnish? Whoever it was, I wouldn’t have fancied being the husband of that, nor indeed of any of them, although Eleanor of Castile holds a beguiling charm.

    OZ

  25. Re Henry VI and his mental and physical shortcomings, he had an interesting reign.

    “Considering Henry VIth wasn’t strong
    It’s awfully surprising he lasted so long
    At the age of nine months he came into his own
    And for 39 years kept his seat on the throne.

    He had troubles at home with the rebel Jack Cade
    He had troubles in France with Orleans’ Fair Maid
    But the worst of his troubles as everyone knows
    Was the war that was fought ‘twixt the red and white rose.”

    I have forgotten the rest, it is all about the various battles.

  29. Donald

    Well done!
    10. Matilda of Flanders (c.1031-1083), wife of William the Conqueror, was the daughter of Baldwin Count of Flanders and his wife Adele Capet (daughter of the King of France). Quite how William came to marry Matilda is not known – she was far too high-born to marry a Bastard, but marry they did even though the Pope banned the marriage on grounds of consanguinity. The couple built two Abbeys in Caen as a penance. Matilda had probably had ten children: two of whom became King of England.

  30. Peter Barnett

    1. Anne of Bohemia (1366-1394), first wife of Richard II, was the daughter of Charles V Holy Roman Emperor and Elizabeth of Pomerania. The marriage was not popular. Ann brought no dowry, indeed Richard paid around £13,000 to her brother for her hand. There is some evidence that she became more popular in time. She is known to have procured a number of pardons for those involved in the Peasants’ Revolt, and for other wrong-doers. The Evesham chronicler said, “this queen, although she did not bear children, was still held to have contributed to the glory and wealth of the realm, as far as she was able”. Anne died of the plague in 1394.

  31. Christopher

    7. Isabella of Angouleme (1188-1246), second wife of King John, was the only daughter and heir of Aymer Taillefer and Alice of Courteney. Isabella was betrothed to Hugh the Count of Lusignan at an early age. But by the time she was 12 she was already renowned for her beauty – King John got his first marriage annulled and married Isabella in 1200. Unfortunately the Lusignans and their allies were not happy at having Isabella, and her lands, snatched from them – and war broke out. Isabella had five children by John. John died in 1216 and in 1217 Isabella married Hugh of Lusignan.

  32. Araminta

    6. Emma (c.985-1052), wife of both Ethelred the Unready and Cnute, was the daughter of Richard the Fearless Duke of Normandy. She had three children by her first husband, and two by her second. Her son by Cnute, Harthacnute, became King of England in 1042 following the death of his half brother, Harold Harefoot. Harthacnute was succeeded by Emma’s son by Ethelred, Edward the Confessor. William the Conqueror was her nephew.

  34. You saw that dreadful film, too did you Peter? Give me a name so I can shut this down!! 🙂

  35. Well Boadicea it was entertaining and was before Mel Gibson fell from grace (but yes I do like some accuracy in my films and novels)! I wanted my eldest son to go to Stirling university. My own experience was of leaving home at 16 – no such luck – I’m still being called on when they’re in there 40s.

  38. Peter

    My daughter wanted to see the film – and we went together, despite her vowing she would never watch a historical film with me! I managed (with great difficulty!) to keep quiet while we were in the cinema – oh! it was difficult. It really annoys me that “History” can be rewritten like that.

    8. Isabella of France (c.1295-1358), wife of Edward II, was the daughter of Philip IV of France and Joan I of Navarre. Isabella arrived in England at the age of twelve. Her husband was notorious for the affection he lavished on his favourite Piers Gaveston. Isabella supported her husband and formed a working relationship with Gaveston. However, after Gaveston’s death in 1312, Edward found a new favourite, Hugh Despenser. Isabella could not tolerate Despenser and by 1325 her marriage was at breaking point. By this time Isabella had five children. Travelling to France, Isabella started an affair with Roger Mortimer. They set up a plan to depose Edward and it seems probable that she was party to Edward’s murder. She and Roger ruled in the name of her son, Edward III. In 1332, Edward deposed and executed Mortimer. Isabella lived for many years in considerable style. Isabella is known as the She Wolf of France.

  39. “Matilda Flamsomething, Flening, Flanigan, Flounce? “ wins ‘Matilda of Flanders’???

    Referee!!!!

    🙂

    OZ

  42. OZ!
    I’m the Referee!

    Matilda F + William the Conqueror = Near enough to be good enough 🙂

    PG

    Well I suspect that Elton may consider himself to be a Queen of England 🙂

  48. While “Braveheart” is not historically accurate, Boadicea, as a Scot I did like the idea that the next king of England was going to be a Franco-Scottish one. And I loved the scene where the Isabelle told the dying Edward I.

  49. Sheona

    The trouble with films like Braveheart is that far too many people think they are historically accurate – or, at the very least, have some grain of truth.

    Isabella was only ten and still living in France in 1305 when Wallace was executed. There’s ‘stretching’ the truth and there’s distorting it out of recognition.

  50. You are a historian, Boadicea, and I am a romantic Scot. I have always felt very sorry for Isabelle. She did not have an easy marriage, after being the adored daughter of Philippe le Bel. What a let-down for her. I have no sympathy for Edward II. Husband says the scene he enjoyed most in Braveheart was where Edward I, brilliantly played by Patrick McGoohan, defenestrates the boyfriend. Have you read “Les rois maudits” by Maurice Druon? I think it’s “The accursed Kings” in English. A great series of books, a mon avis.

  51. Ah! Well! Sheona, I have some sympathy for Edward. He was patently unsuitable to be the Edward I’s successor – he enjoyed such ‘unmanly’ pursuits as swimming and messing around in boats!

    Isabella, I don’t think needs much sympathy – admiration, perhaps, from a modern perspective, but not sympathy. She was clearly no one’s fool, and managed a working relationship with Edward and his first ‘favourite’ and it took a fair bit of courage to openly take a lover.

    No I haven’t read “The Accursed Kings” – my French is no way good enough to tackle a book in that language. I can manage the early Parliamentary Rolls but that’s about it!

  52. I watched said piece of historical fiction. Personally, a handful of flying saucers and alien can-can dancers breaking out into dance routines in the middle of battle scenes wouldn’t have changed the accuracy of the film one bit!
    I find it frustrating that films based on British history could be illuminating and inspiring. Britain, in my opinion, was the greatest land ever to have existed before it set off on its course of self-destruction. (Australia took on that mantle) Films such as the Young Victoria, though somewhat lacking in historical accuracy, showed that a film without an ardent anti-British bias could be delightful. Now how about making an accurate film without an anti-British bias? Certainly not something the US is capable of, maybe the UK could try?

  53. Christopher

    What a fantastic comment!

    The problem with ‘Hollywood’ is that it has a set formula: there must be lots of blood and gore, there must be a romantic interest, preferably with sex scene or two thrown in, etc, etc – and whatever happens one must never, ever let the facts stand in the way of a ‘good’ story.

    I’ve just watched a documentary about the attempt to make a film of ‘I, Claudius’ in the 30s (with Charles Laughton). The costume designer made reasonably accurate (chaste) costumes for six Vestal Virgins – that being the original number. The director demanded that there be about 90+ Vestal Virgins all clad in diaphanous drapery… Guess who won!

  54. I am reliably informed that ‘The Madness of King George’ was so titled because if they had used the working title, ‘George III’, none of the Septic audience (particularly those who understood Roman numerology) would have gone to see it as they would have assumed they had already missed the first two episodes of ‘George’.

    OZ

  55. O Zangado :

    I am reliably informed that ‘The Madness of King George’ was so titled because if they had used the working title, ‘George III’, none of the Septic audience (particularly those who understood Roman numerology) would have gone to see it as they would have assumed they had already missed the first two episodes of ‘George’.

    OZ

    That is debatable. Quite a few Septics do, in fact, know who George III was. The problem is that they usually only know the anti-British propaganda they have been spoon-fed from birth. I was actually debating something like this with a fellow history student. (She holds a degree in US history, I am working on a degree in East Asian history, but study British and Commonwealth histories in my spare time. More recently I have begun delving into Portuguese history and the history of the Portuguese Empire, especially Macau) She was going on about how the colonists only wanted representation in Parliament and that they were justified in rebelling. I replied that the taxes were not that extreme, nor were the requests for it unreasonable. The point which she had to concede was that the colonists did not, in fact, demand parliamentary representation when Britain was bleeding itself dry paying for their defence.

  56. Christopher – My original comment should have had a smiley thing as I had forgotten there are cerebral posters here. 🙂 I am presently doing a specialist one-on-one course in grammatical and idiomatic Portuguese (homework this week includes writing pomes in Portuguese and updating my diary) combined with my own interest in the history of the Peninsular Wars. When I am reasonably fluent and have read a lot more, I intend to travel around Portugal following the route marches, visiting the battle sites and enjoying the regional cuisine and culture.

    OZ

  57. Thinking about your project should cheer you up OZ and stop you morphing into anything. I found Portuguese a difficult language to pronounce and kept lapsing into Spanish and being ticked off. Good luck with your studies.

  58. Boadicea, the reason I mentioned “The Accursed Kings” is because all the books have been translated into English.

  59. Hollywood, and Disney, have much to answer for.

    Many years ago I went to the Florida Disneyland. It was a real eye-opener as to what shapes the US mindset. There were fantastic displays of the history of printing and other things – but it was so noticeable that after the end of the 1700s there was not one display of anything from anywhere other than America. It was as if the rest of the world ceased to exist and only America discovered, created or did anything worth while.

    Fed such a diet, it is not surprising that I read a comment from an American about Washington’s business enterprises which said “Wow! So he wasn’t only the Leader of the World, but also a great entrepreneur”.

  61. Boadicea :

    Hollywood, and Disney, have much to answer for.

    Many years ago I went to the Florida Disneyland. It was a real eye-opener as to what shapes the US mindset. There were fantastic displays of the history of printing and other things – but it was so noticeable that after the end of the 1700s there was not one display of anything from anywhere other than America. It was as if the rest of the world ceased to exist and only America discovered, created or did anything worth while.

    Fed such a diet, it is not surprising that I read a comment from an American about Washington’s business enterprises which said “Wow! So he wasn’t only the Leader of the World, but also a great entrepreneur”.

    Never mind the fact that the USA only ceased being an economic backwater in the mid 19th century and did not became a major world power until the early 20th.

  62. Good luck with your Portuguese lessons, meu lobo. I am currently taking a Japanese language class as well as one-on-one lessons in reading and writing the language, as well as help with the grammar and conjugation. (A much easier task than one might think, the Japanese only have one form per tense)

  64. I am currently taking a short course in the English language, been at it 40 years and I still have a bleeding accent … should’ve learnt Swahili instead, much easier 😦

    🙂

  65. Long comment coming up for Donald –

    Accents? Piece of cake, mate. Use Bearsy’s theorem.

    It’s all down to two things. The first is how you hold your mouth, the second is the song you sing. Never mind all the posh linguistic theory about vowel formation and stress patterns (there, I’ve made more enemies in the Chariot already), just remember these two rules.

    For example, if you want to speak Jockenese like a Glaswegian, imagine your mouth is tied up inside with a load of very tight rubber bands. Then force out the immortal words, “I’ll gi ya’ a bunch a fives, Jimmy”, struggling against the tension in the rubber bands to expel the sound, as though each phoneme was costing you $100. Keep in mind the tune “The flight of the bumble bee” [Rimsky-Korsakov] while you do it and lo and behold, you’ll sound exactly like Billy Connolly.

    Strine is a bit harder, but you can master it. You must move your lips only slightly, but make exaggerated movements with your jaw and tongue, imagining that the muscles have all gone a bit slack (the opposite of the rubber bands) – that’ll turn all you diphthongs into triphthongs, which is one of the secrets of Strine. Make sure that however long or short the sentence, it takes exactly the same length of time to say it. So “Strewth” comes out long and drawled, whereas “p*iss off you whinging pommie bastard” sound a bit quick, and “I wouldn’t vote for a banana-bender if you shouted me a full slab of ice-cold VB” must be positively machine-gun-like.

    If you can also remember to sound the ‘n’s at the end of words like ‘known’ and ‘shown’ (the Poms and Yanks don’t do that), make every statement into a question with an upwards terminal intonation, and keep “True Blue” and “The man from Snowy River” playing silently in your head, then people will mistake you for an 18-year old from Parramatta or Blacktown, and you’ll be right! 😆

    Seriously, watch the way your mates hold their mouths, and the tightness or slackness of their lips, tongue and jaw, and copy ’em. Never fails!

  66. For the pedants – yes, you do pronounce the ‘n’, but you say “nohn” (one syllable), whereas we say “noh – ən” (two syllables). Shown, show-ən. (I think the sound is a schwa, but I’m open to correction. Come on linguists, put me straight. :???:)

  68. Don’t know if you have read this OZ, “Rifles.” Mark Urban. Well worth a read if you are interested in The Peninsular Wars.

  69. I’ve never had to learn Strine and have absolutely no problem with sounding like a Glaswegian. Your method seems very complicated.

  70. Fair comment, Sheona, but can you speak English in such a way that your audience doesn’t immediately ask which part of Scotland you come from? 😕

    I am reminded of an evening when a Jock friend of ours in Darwin, a fluent speaker of Indonesian and a frequent visitor there in pursuance of his profession, decided, after many jars of the amber nectar, to regale us with his caricature of himself abroad, speaking Indonesian with a broad Scots accent complete with appropriately aggressive body language. Somehow I can never now read the words Selamat pagi without bursting into laughter. 😆

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