Dan Snow's History Hit - Ruling as a Renaissance Queen

Episode Date: May 8, 2023

The 16th century in Europe was an age of great Queens. But just because they were in charge, didn't always mean they were powerful or safe; it was tough being a queen in the Renaissance and. Author and Former Professor of French at The George Washington University Leah Redmond Chang joins Dan to delve into the fascinating and complicated lives of three queens: Catherine De Medici, a noblewoman in one of the most important families of the Renaissance, who married the King of France and found herself Queen some deaths later. They discuss the fate of her daughter Elizabeth De Valois who married Phillip II King of Spain and ruler of the Spanish Empire that launched the Armada and conquest of the Americas and Mary Queen of Scots who ruled over a mighty Scotland but who endured assault, exile and finally execution at the behest of her cousin Elizabeth I. These women were at the top of European society but faced pressure, personal dangers and political threats unique to women in power during that time.Her new book is called Young Queens: Three Renaissance Women and the Price of PowerProduced by Mariana Des Forges and edited by Tom Delargy You can take part in our listener survey here.If you want to get in touch with the podcast, you can email us at [e-mail], we'd love to hear from you!

Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. Unusually, the 16th century in Western Europe was an age of powerful women. My guest today, Leah Redmond Chang, is a historian. She's a senior research associate at University College London, and she has looked at the lives of three related, intertwined women. Catherine de' Medici, the Italian noblewoman who married a younger son of the king of France and a few deaths later found herself queen of France her daughter Elizabeth de Valois who married Philip II king of Spain famous for the armada famous ruling over an empire in which the sun never sat and then her daughter-in-law, Mary, Queen of Scots, who briefly married the King of France before he died, went home and ruled Scotland in her own right before suffering

assault, exile and imprisonment by another powerful woman, her cousin Elizabeth I, who eventually had her executed. In this episode, I'm going to talk to Leah about why we get these powerful females in the 16th century, what dangers they had to endure, what price they had to pay in order to rule, in order to sit there at the very apogee of European society, and whether having lots of women in charge or near the centre of power shifted European attitudes towards female rulers. In the 16th century it was hard being a woman wielding power as you're about to hear. We talk about their personal challenges, the political threats, the hardships of childbirth, of losing your children and just a warning we do talk about sexual assault as well. And I'm really struck by the fact that these women might have been hugely powerful

and influential, but it didn't mean they were safe. Here is Leah Redmond Chang and I talking about this age of queens. Enjoy. T-minus 10. Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. God save the king.

No black-white unity till there is first and black unity. Never to go to war with one another again. And lift off, and the shuttle has cleared the tower. First of all, before we talk about the times in which they lived, just tell me, who are the three women that we're interested in here? Okay, so first of all, we're in the 16th century. Three queens, Catherine de' Medici, her daughter, Elizabeth de Valois,

and her daughter-in-law, Mary, Queen of Scots, or Mary Stuart. They're all related. They all know each other very well. And they all end up wielding actual power in their own right. They do, although the power is different because these are actually three different types of queens, building actual power in their own right? They do, although the power is different because these are actually three different types of queens, which I think is really important to clarify. So I'll try to get a little detailed here. Catherine de' Medici is a queen consort.

She's the queen consort of France, which means she's married to the king of France. And then eventually she becomes the powerful queen mother of France, which means she's the mother to the kings. Her daughter, Elizabeth de Valois, becomes the queen of Spain, which means she's the mother to the kings. Her daughter, Elizabeth de Valois, becomes the Queen of Spain, but she's only the Queen Consort. She's married to the King of Spain. And then you have Mary Stuart, who actually runs through all three different roles. She's the Queen Consort of France. She's married to the French King of France, but she's also a sovereign queen in her own right, the sovereign Queen of Scotland. And then she's thrown off of the throne, and then she becomes the Queen Mother, the sovereign queen of Scotland. And then she's thrown off of the throne and then she becomes the queen mother, the mother to the king. So they all have power, but the power

looks different according to the type of queen that they are. And though they seem to have a lot of power, they all have these periods during their reigns where they're actually quite powerless because they're women. And so we should say also Mary Queen of Scots is the daughter-in-law of Catherine de Medici as well, because we can't pass the Medici name without just tipping our hat at it. Like, one of the most famous families, the Renaissance. Quickly, tell me the family into which she was born, the Medicis. So she's born into the senior line of the Medicis, and that means she's a great granddaughter of Lorenzo the Magnificent. He was the ruler of Florence during its heyday in the 15th century.

And Catherine is the heir to that family because that senior line is dying out. But she's a girl, which is a bit of a problem. Her father is the grandson of Lorenzo the Magnificent, and her mother is a French princess. You're right. They all rule and have influence in different ways. Was this unusual? And therefore, they're kind of celebrated, but they were unusual, and they're controversial at the time, and there's a lot of misogyny around, still is, and it was somehow shocking to people. Or the more that we have scholars looking into the nature of power and past societies, are we finding more and more women like these three? Well, I think that the 16th century in Europe is actually a really unusual time because

for a number of reasons, there are actually a lot of women in power. There have been a number of books about that recently. This is supposedly the age of kings and certainly it starts out that way at the beginning of the century. But by the end of the century, it seems to be mostly women, at least in Western Europe. And so a king like Philip II of Spain had to deal with a lot of these women on the throne. So it is unusual, but at the same time, that is the map of Europe at the time. And so when you think of the 16th century, I do think that you have to think about an age of women. And at the same time, women aren't exactly welcome. Even when kingdoms accept the idea of a woman on the throne, they don't love the idea of a woman

on the throne. So there definitely seems to be either a tolerance of her reign, for instance, with Elizabeth I of England, who is not one of my queens, but she's tolerated until eventually she's celebrated. Or to some degree, like Mary Queen of Scots, they're looking for a way to get her off that throne. Does this tell us anything about the 16th century? Like why was it an age of women? Or is it just luck? And it's the remarkable character of these women, the fact that their husbands were sick or died or their fathers died, like where brothers died. Is it just that's the nature of hereditary monarchy? Or was there something going on here? You know, that's a really good question. And I haven't

really considered that in depth. To some degree, I do think it's a certain amount of luck, and also some stakes, actually, on the part of some of the men involved. With the case of Catherine de' Medici, it's not exactly luck. I mean, she doesn't really wield power as a ruling queen while she's a queen consort. At the time, she's much more, you know, the wife of the king, the mother of the royal children, the mother of the heirs to the throne. But once her husband dies and her sons take over, they're quite young, then she does seem to make a little bit more of a power play. So that's not a coincidence. That is Catherine trying to become the one in charge. But the circumstances are such that she felt she had to do that. She's living in the midst of religious civil war in France.

France is really on the brink of what would eventually become several really bloody civil wars around the question of Protestantism or Catholicism. And she felt that she was really the only one who could keep the monarchy stable for her sons. Her first son, who inherited the throne, was 15. And her second one, after he died, was only 10. So there needed to be the stabilizing force. And for a number of reasons that just still remain a little bit mysterious to us, she decides that it has to be the stabilizing force. And for a number of reasons that just still remain a little bit mysterious to us, she decides that it has to be her. And she may not have been wrong about that.

When you're studying these women, what do they have in common as a result of their femininity? What are the challenges that they face that their brothers and sons and husbands and fathers don't? I think you could answer that question in a number of ways. But when you really boil it down, fathers don't? I think you could answer that question in a number of ways. But when you really boil it down, it comes down to the female body. It comes down to motherhood, the ability to get pregnant, give birth to the heir, hopefully the right heir, a boy, or the inability to do that. And the fate of these women on their thrones, their ability to wield power, but also to retain authority, to be respected by those in their circle, by the kingdom for their authority, depended on whether or not they could have children. do bear a child and that child happens to be a boy, it actually becomes a source of vulnerability because that child could replace his mother on the throne, which comes to pass for Mary Queen

of Scots. So in some ways, it's a no-win situation. And it has very much to do with the female body and with fertility and the ability to get pregnant, which was the first duty of any queen, if she was sovereign or consort. And what about the female body in terms of, we know Mary Queen of Scots had a very unhappy, I don't know how we call it, I think love life is probably the, but she had a very unhappy sort of personal life and sexual history, probably was sexually assaulted, we think, at least once. Yeah, I think so. Well, that happens after her second marriage and the run-up to her third marriage. I think it's pretty clear that Mary, Queen of Scots, was raped by

the man who would become her third husband, Bothwell. That's a very famous story. What I've always wondered about, though, is what are we looking at here? Was it rape in a kind of violent way or was it more coercion or seduction? I think those are sort of the gray areas of sexuality that we talk a lot about today and that are very hard to pin down when we study the past, but that were very real. So there's a period of a few months that is not documented very well in the historical record when Bothwell is becoming more and more powerful at Mary Queen of Scots' court. And I've always wondered if in some way he seduced her or somehow coerced her into the sexual relationship and she found herself in a position that she couldn't get out of.

So whether it was rape or assault in a kind of more violent sense or in a kind of insidious, sneaky way is a little bit unclear to me. But that must have been an added challenge that they faced as they were, I guess, vulnerable in a way that their, again, their male peers wouldn't, you know, there's the childbearing and then there's the very real sense of the danger they face from people around them. face from people around them. Right. Oh, I think so. Because, you know, everyone, you know, whether the sovereign is a man or a woman, every courtier, everyone around them is trying to get in with the sovereign or trying to garner as much power or influence as they can. You know, that's sort of the game that's played at the court. But I do think that certainly a young woman would be more vulnerable to that kind of possession. You know, the question is, how are you going to possess the sovereign? Are you going to possess

him or her through undue influence? Or are you actually going to take physical possession of the sovereign if that sovereign is a child or if that sovereign is a woman through some sort of violent means? Yeah, and it is connected with pregnancy as well. You know, there's things that these women have to do that men just don't have to do. I mean, it doesn't, didn't Catherine, in order to become pregnant, sort of take all sorts of extreme measures, you know, taking strange substances and she could have poisoned herself. Well, she could have poisoned herself, but she had to. I mean, it took 10 years for her to become pregnant. And, you know, when Catherine gets married, she actually gets

married to the second son, not the heir to the French throne. She gets married to the second son. There's still pressure for her to have a child, but maybe the pressure was a little bit less. And then the heir to the throne dies and her husband becomes the heir. And so then the pressure is truly on for her to become pregnant. And she doesn't. It takes her 10 years. She takes a lot of strange substances, a lot of potions, although I actually don't think that she took anything different than what another woman in her position would have taken. I think there's a way in which we look back at this and it seems strange to us, but I'm not sure that she wasn't taking the equivalent of fertility drugs the same way any woman who wants to get pregnant might do today.

And then she does finally get pregnant and she does bear a son. But until she did that, her place at court was not secure. There was always the danger of her being repudiated, sent back to Italy, perhaps. So this was essential. This was her ticket, not just to success, but to be able to stay where she was, to find a secure place at the French court.

You're listening to Dan Snow's History, talking about three remarkable women. More after this. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Eleanor Janaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research. From the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings. Normans.

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So it's interesting you say that, you know, that being repudiated. I mean, sometimes princes were treated very badly, of course, and they were basically trafficked. And yet there's something, it seems, about these women. Mary Queen of Scots ended her life as a prisoner. She was physically removed from places by different factions. of your women, but at the same time, very vulnerable. Catherine of Aragon, Henry VIII's first wife, she was almost kept kind of prisoner by Henry VII, the Tudors, after her husband, Arthur, died before she married the man who had become Henry VIII. Would princes have been treated like that? Or was there something particular in the way men felt they were able to trade women and move them around physically? Well, no, actually, you know, one thing that really struck me while I was researching this book that I just wrote is the way in which young boys are almost as vulnerable as young girls. The vulnerability takes a different form.

So I'm thinking Henry II as a boy, Henry II of France as a boy when he was just seven years old. He was sent to Spain as a prisoner to replace his father. His father had been captured in battle by the Spanish king at the time, Charles V. He was a prisoner in Madrid. The French were desperate to get him back, and so they made a deal. They decided to send Henry and his older brother to Spain to take the place of their father. And they were there for three years in prison. And at first, they were treated well, and then they were treated increasingly not so well. And more importantly, they were completely in the dark. They had no idea what was going to become of them. To me, that's one of the more moving stories, I think, of that little boy and that decision to send him away. In the French mind, it was definitely a necessary decision, but it comes at real human cost. but it comes at real human cost. So yeah, no, I think that children are very vulnerable,

boys and girls, but the difference is perhaps that a boy can grow up. He becomes a king. But the women never really leave behind that femaleness. And especially a young woman, a woman who can become pregnant and therefore is vulnerable to rape, or a woman who can become pregnant and therefore is vulnerable to rape, or a woman who can't become pregnant but needs to become pregnant because that's her duty as queen, I think endures a particular form of vulnerability. When they were at their apogee, obviously they all have moments

when they're in positions of power and they all in some ways have moments when that tide ebbs away from them even at their strongest how accepted are they by the largely male well totally male hierarchy in church uh in church in army and in state oh they're not i think the exception here elizabeth de valois who is the queen consort of spain and to some degree that she's sort of in the uh the plunge role she's expected to be the wife and to bear the children and for some degree that she's sort of in the plumb role. She's expected to be the wife and to bear the children. And for the most part, she succeeds in that. And then she does become beloved by her subjects. And she's never really expected to do much more than that. But for the women who take a governing role, the women who were either the designated sovereigns like Mary Queen of Scots or certainly acting like the sovereigns like Captain de de Medici. There was always an edge to it. They are always fighting a tide of popular opinion, which thinks

that in the end, the kingdom would be more stable under the rule of a man. So you see this battle, right, that they're waging. In Captain's case, it's over the course of decades. For Mary, it certainly continues on until she's kicked off the throne, and then her struggle becomes a little bit different. But this sort of effort to combat the misogyny of even their closest counsellors. And yet what's so funny is you look at countries that were ruled by men in this period, and they don't exactly feel you with confidence, right? I mean, the empirical analysis just isn't there, lads. Come on,

let's sort this out. No, but I think there is this general view that women are weaker than men, and that women are unreliable, right? That they're less stable, that they're controlled by their wounds, that they are like children. So it's just sort of an undercurrent. Again, even the women who are the most capable, I would name Catherine de' Medici or Elizabeth Tudor, for instance, there was always this idea that they might be more accepted if they weren't, in fact, a man. And everyone seems to breathe a sigh of relief when a man finally takes over. Yeah.

And yet, you know, Philip III of Spain was completely useless, or Edward VI of... He was a teenager, so that's about fair. But anyway, so yeah, it's very strange, isn't it? Yes. And is that partly because in this period, monarchs were still supposed to be military leaders, like charismatic battlefield commanders, even though that's changing?

But is there something there? Well, yes. I think there's that, that they can muster armies better or marshal them with more confidence, if they can actually be on the battlefield. But I think the other thing that I should probably bring up is the fact that any sovereign, any kingdom is always wary of its points of weakness. Anything that might give an enemy, whether that enemy is, you know, a rival claimant

to the throne or a foreign nation, any room to invade or wage war. And I think that a woman on the throne does seem to open up that possibility. I'm so struck by the fact, as we're talking, you think, who is safe in pre-modern society? Like, if you're not safe when you're the queen, regnant, the wife of the king, the daughter of a king, if you're not safe as a woman in these situations, in these courts, these rarefied environments, like who has psychological or physical safety in this world? Like it's quite scary. You know, I don't know, Dan, you know, I think about it compared to our own, right? And actually I think that to some degree we're in a really good position to be thinking about the 16th century, 16th century Europe in general, because there are a number of similar phenomena.

It's a more violent world. It's a world where propaganda is running rampant. It's very hard to distinguish fact from fiction in the news cycle where the world is quite factionalized and it's very difficult to speak to each other. And so I'm thinking about, you know, how we feel right now. Do we feel safe? Not even medically, right? I would have said maybe a few years ago that medically we're safer than we were in the 16th century, but we are in our own age of plague, right? And aristocrats, you know, they would find ways to remind themselves of this. My favorite example of this is Isabella d'Este. She commissioned a painting, or at least I think she's, they're not sure, art historians aren't sure, but they think it was her. And it's this wonderful,

vivid portrait. It's of two figures, one of whom is holding a cornucopia with fruits and wonderful things pouring out of the cornucopia. And I believe it's Lady Luck. She's holding these lottery tickets and she's sitting on this bubble and she's pressing down on the bubble and the bubble looks like it's going to pop at any second. And that's the point is that any second fortune, the wheel is going to turn, your luck is going to run out and that's it. So you kind of take advantage of it while you can. And I think that is one of the reasons why it ends up being such a dangerous time because anyone who's in a particular position of privilege at the moment is going to try to take advantage of it. Well, we're all on the wheel. I'm crunching down the wheel, but you are rising

up it because you've just written a beautiful book all about this. What's it called? It's called Young Queens, Three Renaissance Women and the Price of Power. Hey, so what is the price of power? Like, what do you think the price that they paid? I mean, they didn't ask to be in many cases, but like, what is the price you pay to be at the pinnacle of those societies? Yeah, well, particularly as a woman, the price you pay as a woman. So that's a question that I'm trying to explore in a number of different ways in my book. And let me start first by saying how I actually even got to that question. I wanted to get at sort of the inner lives of these women.

I wanted to understand them as people more than as just bodies moving across the historical landscape. And what jumped out at me for these women in particular, but also the other aristocratic and royal women who come in and out of the narrative is how much they suffered for ambition, their own ambition, but also their family's ambition. And sometimes the price is giving birth to your babies and losing almost all of them. Either they die or you have to send them away. Or sometimes it's this black legacy that we were talking about earlier, this nefarious legacy that you hold on to power for decades, but in the end you lose. Or the price is that maybe you do successfully give birth to the heir, but in the end, because of that success, you're overthrown and your child

is put on the throne in your place. I think that the price of power takes many different forms and often is sort of surprising both to us and to the women who reigned. But it's always there. You're painting a picture of a really exciting world here where you get punished for being in power and then you get absolutely brutally punished for being out of it as well. And that's sort of the question that for me is so interesting about Catherine de' Medici, because when her husband dies and her sons come to the throne, it would have been so easy for her to pull away. You know, she had plenty of money. She could have gone back to Italy. She could have retired to a convent. There were ways in which you could extract yourself from the system, certainly for a

royal widow, but she doesn't do it. I think that's sort of the biggest mystery behind Catherine de' Medici is why does she stay? Why do they stay? I mean, listen, we can talk about our political leaders today. It doesn't look like much fun and yet they cling on. They cling on. There's something, they give them something in the White House and Downing Street. I don't know what it is, but they need more of it. Leah, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. The book is Young Queens, Three Renaissance Women, The Price of Power. Thank you for having me.