Doomed queens, p.7
Doomed Queens, page 7
A BRIEF DIGRESSION
What makes black magic different from white or other types of magic? It’s all about intention. With black magic, the sorcerer manipulates forces or spirits to perform his will without consideration of how it could affect or harm others. While white magic may also be used for selfish reasons, it cannot be employed to injure another.
As for Oghul herself, for good or ill, one could assume that the Mongolian khan knew something of magic since she was of royal origin. In The Golden Bough, an encyclopedic treatise on the origins of magic and religion, Sir James Frazer writes that in many early societies “the king is frequently a magician as well as a priest; indeed he appears to have often attained to power by virtue of his supposed proficiency in the black or white art.”
Oghul’s primary opposition came from another grandson of Genghis Khan, Möngke, who called for a general election. To gain the throne, Möngke called in all his political favors. Oghul lost by a single vote.
But this not so decisive victory wasn’t enough for Möngke and his band of supporters. To completely disempower Oghul, they played the witch card: They accused her of employing black magic against the newly elected ruler.
The former regent was dragged to court and, after a sham trial, she was condemned to death. Perhaps to avoid the appearance of excessive force, the court allowed Oghul to commit suicide. It is unknown what method she chose.
CAUTIONARY MORAL
Look before you leap onto the throne.
Theodora of Trebizond
1285
f you ruled an empire for just one year, what would you do? This was the situation presented to Empress Theodora, who reigned over Trebizond for one brief, giddy trip around the sun.
Trebizond was a Hellenistic state that emerged from the Byzantine Empire after the Fourth Crusade’s sacking of Constantinople in 1204. Because Trebizond was on the coast of the Black Sea, it became an important stop on the Silk Road trade route to Asia. Beyond this, the empire was at the mercy of forces beyond its control—by 1461, it had been obliterated by the Ottomans. Though Trebizond is now part of modern-day Turkey, back in Theodora’s time it was considered the last hurrah of the glorious Greek empire.
During the sunset of the thirteenth century, Theodora was born the daughter of Emperor Manuel I and his second wife, a Georgian princess. After her father’s death in 1263, Theodora’s two older brothers, Andronikos and George, ruled Trebizond. By 1282, they were history: Andronikos was dead, George deposed by Mongol forces unrelated to Oghul Ghaimish.
Next up on the throne was Theodora’s younger half brother, John. This time, the princess did not wait around twiddling her thumbs. When John took off for Constantinople in 1284 to get married, she used her mother’s Georgian connections to seize the throne. Alas, their help was not enough—brother John deposed her one year later, putting the empress out of commission.
Theodora’s main accomplishment during her truncated reign was to have minted her own coins. Given the importance of Trebizond as a trade center, presumably these coins reached a wide circulation and outlasted her time on the throne. Like her precursor Irene, who ruled the Byzantine Empire a half century earlier, Theodora understood the importance of symbols. It is difficult to imagine what else she might have done had she ruled longer.
The once and past empress was fortunate that her brother did not execute her after he returned to Trebizond to regain his crown. Instead, Theodora experienced the imprisonment of religious orders. Since history tells us little more of her, it is assumed she spent the remainder of her life as a bride of Christ.
* * *
Religious Orders
In Theodora’s time and beyond, noblewomen faced two possible life plans (if they were allowed to choose at all): marry a man or marry Jesus. Some independent of mind and wealth picked the son of God over producing sons, finding a convent’s conscribed freedoms and intellectually vigorous environment more attractive than some old guy with land. After all, nuns could read, write, and even practice an art or two.
Most brides of Christ came from money, since a dowry was de rigueur to woo the church. While some girls were promised from childhood, others took religious orders when widowed. A few even sought sanctuary from toxic political environments. Hidden away from the world under a wimple, a deposed queen couldn’t plot her return to power—or could she?
The reality wasn’t so romantic.
* * *
CAUTIONARY MORAL
To save your life,
get thee to a nunnery.
Blanche of Bourbon
1361
he princess trapped in the tower is a theme that’s launched a thousand fairy tales. In most of these contes des fées, the princess winds up rescued by a prince or a king, who eagerly claims her as his bride. But what happens when the princess is imprisoned by the king himself? Can there still be a happy ending?
In the case of Blanche of Bourbon, the answer was a resounding non. Though the French princess was renowned for her piety and comeliness, any happiness her future might have held was destroyed when her father, the Duke of Bourbon, decided to marry her to King Pedro of Castile.
On paper, the match must have looked fabulous; in real life, it was a mess. Yes, Blanche would become a queen—definitely an upgrade from princess. Yes, the couple was age appropriate—Blanche was a virginal fourteen and Pedro a studly eighteen. But Castile was a serpent’s nest of war because Pedro’s father had spawned seven bastards and accorded them too much power. To hold his throne, Pedro spent most of his free time killing off unsupportive relatives. These not so nice actions earned him the nom de royale of Pedro the Cruel.
Pedro the not so nice.
The other portents for the match were equally bleak. The king’s previous fiancée, Princess Joan of England, had succumbed to the Black Death en route to marry him. Rumor held that she lucked out, since Pedro was already married—either an inconvenient impediment or a damnable sin, depending on how you looked at it.
Were their aims true?
Blanche’s parents ignored the negative advertising and hoped for the best. In 1353, the princess dutifully traveled from France to Castile to wed the king. On her arrival, Pedro let Blanche cool her heels for several months; he was too busy canoodling with his mistress, Maria de Padilla, to welcome her. When the king finally did deign to make an appearance, he was less than cordial to Blanche—but he married her anyway.
Pedro’s strong aversion to Blanche puzzled his contemporaries, for the princess was no slouch in the charm department. The only explanation they could devise was that Maria had bewitched Pedro with evil spells. Yet Voltaire writes that the teenage princess “had fallen in love with the grand master of St. Jago, one of those very bastards who had waged war against him.” If this was true—frankly it seems out of character for Blanche—it reveals that she was more romantic than she was savvy. Fooling around with her fiancé’s half brother wasn’t the best way to encourage nuptial bliss.
In either case, Pedro overreacted by imprisoning his new wife in the famously fortified castle of Arevalo. Though Queen Blanche won much sympathy for her cruel plight, no one was able to rescue her. Eight years later, Pedro arranged for her death.
How was Blanche murdered? One story relates that Blanche was poisoned; another claims that Pedro sent a crossbowman to assassinate her. In either case, the queen’s reign was over. At the time of her demise, Blanche was twenty-two years old and had been trapped in that tower for more than a third of her life.
As for Pedro the Cruel, his end reflected the violence of his life. After reigning acrimoniously for twenty years, he was beheaded by one of his illegitimate half brothers.
CAUTIONARY MORAL
Truth and advertising aren’t always strangers.
Joan I of Naples
1382
pousal murder, aka mariticide, wasn’t just for morally corrupt kings. By the time Blanche had been sentenced to death by wedlock, her distant cousin Joan had already bumped off her starter husband to better claim the throne of Naples. It was an ignominious start to a reign that would ultimately include exile, plague, and even a brothel.
The rule of Queen Joan initially held great promise—both Boccaccio and Petrarch praised her beauty, intelligence, and politesse. Joan was born in Anjou in 1328 bearing an illustrious pedigree: She was the niece of Phillip VI, the king of France, and the granddaughter of the king of Naples, better known as Robert the Wise. Robert made the girl his sole heir when her father died soon after her birth. To keep it in the family, Joan was betrothed at seven to her second cousin Andrew, a six-year-old Hungarian prince.
Nine years later on his deathbed, Robert the Wise bequeathed the throne of Naples to Andrew, a move that turned out not to be so wise. In doing so, he seriously misread the desires of the populace, who rioted to make Joan their monarch. Voltaire wrote that Andrew “disgusted the Neapolitans by his gross manners, intemperance, and drunkenness.” Within two years’ time, the king was garroted with a silk cord in the palace.
Joan was accused of her husband’s murder. One account claimed that Joan overheard the murder but did not call for help or exhibit distress, which was considered damning evidence of her culpability. In his recounting of her trial, Alexandre Dumas wrote, “An angel soiled by crime, she lied like Satan himself….” The queen got off scot-free. Nevertheless, the damage was done—Andrew’s death aroused the ire of his older brother, Louis I of Hungary, which would have fatal repercussions.
As queen, Joan was known for such accomplishments as establishing a large brothel in Avignon for use by the nobility; she was also the countess of Provence by birth. Despite the stench of hellfire lingering about her skirts, Joan tempted fate by marrying another cousin. To gain the pope’s approval for the consanguineous union, Joan sold Avignon to the church, plunging area prostitutes into unemployment.
Papal favor or no, Joan and her new hubby were forced to flee Naples after King Louis sent his army marching in. The couple lived as expats in Provence until the Black Death arrived in Naples, persuading the Hungarians to leave town. Joan’s triumphant return and coronation were celebrated within L’Incoronata, a cathedral built for the occasion and decorated with frescoes by a student of Giotto. Nonetheless, the queen’s crown was unstable—King Louis continued threatening Naples for another three decades.
In 1381, Hungarian forces finally deposed Joan. A year later, karma paid a visit to Joan in prison. She was strangled, suffering the same fate as her first husband.
CAUTIONARY MORAL
If you tarry with crime, you may become a victim.
* * *
LIFE AFTER DEATH
Alexandre Dumas, the nineteenth-century author of such swashbucklers as The Three Musketeers, purloined the life of Joan for an entry in his Celebrated Crimes series. Dumas romanticized the murderous monarch as a beautiful but tortured victim of others’ Machiavellian machinations. Other historical figures presented in Celebrated Crimes included Lucretia Borgia—Joan was in good company.
Joan, from a period manuscript.
* * *
Maria of Hungary
1395
y kicking Joan off her throne, King Louis of Hungary enlarged his considerable holdings to include Naples. This made a tidy inheritance for his eldest daughter, Maria. Alas, it also encouraged her premature demise.
To be fair, Louis had only the best intentions for Maria. He was an older father—the king was forty-five, a veritable medieval-era geriatric when Maria was born—so he did not dally to settle her future, especially since he had no male heir. Louis betrothed Maria as a child to the teenaged Sigismund of Luxemburg. Sigismund was in line to become the Holy Roman Emperor; the union would settle the long-term tension that sizzled between the two families, hopefully granting Maria a peaceful reign. Louis intended that Maria would rule Hungary with Sigismund’s help. However, the young’un had ambitions of his own. By age thirteen, Sigismund had already been called on the carpet for scheming in foreign lands.
Maria of Hungary. A damsel in distress.
In 1382, six months after his henchmen had killed Joan, Louis died of natural causes. Queen Maria was only ten, so her mother, Elisabeth of Bosnia, served as her regent. Nonetheless, Maria’s marriage to Sigismund was solemnized in 1385. Elisabeth’s reign was unnaturally truncated—she was strangled in front of her daughter in 1387. Though the murder occurred during a kidnapping by a cartel of rebellious nobles, word on the street was that the assassination was ordered by Sigismund, who didn’t want a mother-in-law to interfere with his quest for power.
Maria was appropriately freaked. Afterward, the unhappy couple led separate lives with separate courts. Maria allowed Sigismund to rule as he wished.
A decade later, Maria died after a suspicious riding accident while heavily pregnant—take a guess whom most people believed ordered the hit. Since the queen was estranged from her husband, one wonders if Sigismund was the father. Because Maria conveniently died before giving birth, there was no surviving issue to complicate Sigismund’s one-man rule.
The crown Sigismund won at Maria’s expense brought him more trouble as the decades passed. The king by coup ruled Hungary for fifty very long years, most of which were filled with cheerless fighting, dynastic conspiracies, and copious bloodshed. By dint of survival, Sigismund expanded his powers to become king of Romans and Bohemia and, finally, Holy Roman Emperor in 1433. Four years later, Sigismund met his judgment day at the advanced age of sixty-nine.
* * *
or
Becoming the Not So Holy Emperor
Unlike a king, the Holy Roman Emperor was elected. Nor was he holy, though he did have to vow to protect the faith. Before being crowned by the pope, each emperor first served as king of Romans.
* * *
CAUTIONARY MORAL
Be wary of others’ plans
and the role you may play in them.
End-of-Chapter Quiz
or
What We Have Learned So Far
Just your basic Black Death.
1. Which of the following were a danger to medieval queens?
a. The bubonic plague, aka the Black Death.
b. Scary husbands, like that guy in Sleeping with the Enemy.
c. Getting knocked up.
d. God, Country, and the Crusades.
2. Theodora of Trebizond ended her reign:
a. Dangling from the gallows.
b. Tying the knot with Christ.
c. Light of heart but heavy with memories.
d. With more regrets than there are stars in the night sky.
3. What was Oghul Ghaimish’s claim to the Mongol Empire throne?
a. She was regent for her unborn child.
b. She completed the Mongolian leadership training course.
c. She was succeeding her hubby, who was the previous Great Khan.
d. She had chutzpah, baby.
4. Why was Blanche of Bourbon’s husband, Pedro, so cruel?
a. He was overcompensating for his insecurities.
b. He found Blanche less than enchanting.
c. He was anticipating the marquis de Sade.
d. His parents sent him to military school instead of pottery camp.
5. What did Joan of Naples achieve during her reign?
a. She invented Neapolitan ice cream.
b. She got away with royal perjury.
c. She founded a state-supported brothel in Avignon.
d. She lobbied for the public acceptance of mariticide.
ANSWER KEY
1, all of the above. 2, b: We don’t know what regrets or memories she took with her to the convent. 3, c. 4, b: Based on how he treated Blanche. 5, c: Trick question. We don’t know for sure if Joan lied. To the best of our knowledge, mariticide isn’t accepted anywhere.
CHAPTER FOUR
Renaissance Revels
OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF BABES
Commend me to his Majesty, and tell him that he has ever been constant in his career of advancing me. From a private gentlewoman he made me a marchioness, from a marchioness a Queen; and now that he has no higher degree of honour left, he gives my innocence the crown of martyrdom as a saint in heaven.
Anne Boleyn
The humanist glories of the Renaissance did not extend to the royal women of this era. During this dangerous period, there were two primary forces threatening to push queens off their thrones: infertility and religion.
England was an especially treacherous place for queens, four of whom lost their lives after embracing King Henry VIII as husband. Henry married a total of six times in hopes of scoring a male heir. The king, in his infinite wisdom, judged his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, infertile when she proved incapable of giving birth to a son who could live past infancy.
Ironically, it may have been Catherine of Aragon’s surplus of piety that contributed to her woes. A devout Catholic, Catherine fasted to win God’s favor—lack of male issue was believed to be punishment for one’s sins—which most likely affected her menstrual cycles, making conception problematic at best.
