PREFACEThis book, Queens Regnant of England of the Middle Ages and the Reformation, is a factual account of the lives of the Norman, Plantagenet and Tudor queens regnant from the Norman Conquest of 1066 until the death of Elizabeth I in 1603. Among the thirty-two biographies summarized here are the four royal women who ruled or attempted to rule in their own right: these regnant queens are Empress Matilda, Lady Jane Grey, Queen Mary I and Queen Elizabeth I. They each received the same level of attention in the author's previous work, Lives of England's Monarchs (2005), as that given to their male counterparts. Major events in the lives of these reigning queens are readily available in the preceding companion work and in many other sources; thus, the lives of the reigning queens are only briefly reviewed in the present study. Here the focus is on the queens consorts, the wives of the ruling kings of England. Histories of England generally consider it sufficient to credit these great ladies with little more than the fact that they were the mothers of a rising heir apparent. Aside from producing an heir to the throne – or failing to do so – the queens consorts are notable more for their neglect than for their recognition of the roles each consecutively played in the spectacle of England. The queens consort recounted here are those of the Norman, Plantagenet and Tudor dynasties: namely, the Norman queens consorts, Matilda of Flanders, Matilda of Scotland, Matilda of Boulogne; Consort of queens Plantagenêt, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Bérengère of Navarre, Joan of Gloucester, Isabelle of Angoulême. Eleanor of Provence, Eleanor of Castile, Margaret of France, Isabella of France, Philippa of Hainaut, Anne of Bohemia, Isabella of Valois, Joan of Navarre, Catherine of Valois, Marguerite of ...... middle of paper... ...is necessary to clarify important events, long footnotes called "Digressions" are inserted. Like any footnote, they can be ignored without fatal harm to the narrative that follows. An appendix titled "Royal Lineages" summarizes the lineages of the ruling monarchs in the seven English dynasties that ruled England from Saxony to modern times. The appropriate part of this table is repeated in the introduction to each dynasty as it is introduced in the text; the seven lineages are 1. Saxon-Wessex Dynasty Earl-King (802-1066); 2. Norman dynasty (1066-1154); 3. Plantagenet dynasty (1066-1485); 4. Tudor dynasty (1485-1603); 5. Stuart dynasty (1603-1714); 6. Hanover dynasty (1714-1901); 7. Saxe-Coburg-Gotha—Windsor Dynasty (1901—present). Queens of the Stuart, Hanover and Windsor dynastic lines are the subject of a work-in-progress volume to follow.