Gone Medieval - Anne of Bohemia

Episode Date: September 12, 2023

Dr. Eleanor Janega continues Gone Medieval’s special series of podcasts about Medieval Queens with a look at Queen Anne of Bohemia, the first wife of England’s King Richard II. Eleanor is joined by Kristen Gaiman, lecturer at the University of Toledo, Ohio, to find out about Anne’s influence on English culture, how queens could work to mitigate the worst excesses of kings, and what childlessness meant in a royal context.This episode was edited by Joseph Knight and produced by Rob Weinberg.Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world renowned historians including Dan Snow, Suzannah Lipscomb, Lucy Worsley, Matt Lewis, Tristan Hughes and more. Get 50% off your first 3 months with code MEDIEVAL. Download the app on your smart TV or in the app store or sign up here > You can take part in our listener survey here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries

with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world, to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello and welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit. I'm Eleanor Yonaga and in today's episode we'll be talking about Queen Anne of Bohemia, how queens could work to mitigate the worst excesses of kings, what childlessness meant in a royal context, and Anne's influence on English culture. I am just beyond excited to be joined by the brilliant Kristen Gamen. She is a historian of late medieval England and a lecturer at the University of Toledo.

Her research interests include the Islamic Caliphate, sexuality and gender in the Middle Ages in early modern Europe, and how couples coped with childlessness. Kristen, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having me. So I'm going to start you off with an annoying question, which is what I like to do. Just give you a huge thing that no one could possibly answer in even an hour.

But if we're talking about Anna of Bohemia, who is she? As a woman, here she is. we know that she becomes queen of England, but who is she before she ever comes on the English scene? Wow, yeah, that's a big one. Well, to start with the most basic kind of stuff, Anne was the daughter of Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV, who is such a big name and certainly in the Czech context,

which I know you know way more about, he is, I mean, they still love him in Prague, even right now. I mean, you go and visit, and if he has anything to do with it, it's labeled, hey, Charles the Fourth did this. Or Charles the Fourth, he's like George Washington slept here. It's like Charles the Fourth slept here. So that was obviously very powerful to have such a famous and important father. Of course, he died when she was still pretty young because her mother was his fourth wife.

And so he was kind of getting up there by the time she was born. But of course, even if he wasn't around her whole life, I feel as though minimal people, they're very conscious of, particularly the elites, they're very conscious of their background and their status. And so I think she would have been pretty comfortable with her status and known that she was an important person. Yeah. Because I think sometimes I've read some fictional versions of Anne. There was kind of a time in, I want to say the 40s maybe, where people were writing some plays and stuff about. And in one of them, she's shown as kind of very mousy almost, you know, oh, sort of thing.

And I just think that's definitely wrong. No queen in medieval Europe is going to be like that. And so sometimes I wonder if that's kind of the Victorian influence on how people see Anne because she was kind of talked about as very angel in the home a little bit. She was a good woman, so she must have been quiet and not assuming. that was not a good woman in as a medieval queen. You had to be a bit more assertive. And I think Anne certainly would.

She was an important person. Her father was an important person. And I think she would have known that. I mean, and her brothers are important people. Yeah, her brothers are really, really important. And the other thing I think that influences it is, of course, England now is more important, I guess you might say, than the Czech Republic. but that was the opposite in the period.

And so that I think is another thing is that Anne came from a more important and certainly a more cosmopolitan court than Richard did. And so I think that also would have helped make her not mousy. You know, she would have known that she was an important person. She would have been ready to be queen, which of course is one thing that always, when you stop to think about it, I mean, she became queen at 16. That's so young.

That's young. I mean, I hadn't done very much by the time I was 28, so I'm very glad that I'm still kicking because that's just such a short time. So. Yeah, it's such an interesting one, right? Because she has, you know, being a queen, right? She's got this big life. And then you forget that, you know, this begins when she's a teenager.

Of course. And then she never sees her family again, which is not uncommon. for medieval queens, but also really intense to think about that, yeah, I write them letters, but it's not the same thing. And of course, people in medieval Europe writing letters, they know that it's not just for the person who's reading it. You know, oh, I write this letter to my mom, but it's not just for your mother. So even when you're writing a letter to someone, it's within a context. It's not as though when I text my mom today, hey, mom, what up? It's very casual. really shows a lot about our relationship,

but a letter in the Middle Ages has to do a lot more work than just, hey, mom, how's it going? I think that's also hard to imagine because you leave your home and then you don't sort of get that intimate connection ever again with your mother or your siblings or whoever it is that you left behind. It's interesting because from a check context for when Anne gets sent off to England, when there are first these kind of proposal letters sent like, Hey, I heard you've got an extra princess kicking around.

May we have her. The Czech court literally sends ambassadors to England because they're like, what's this England? Anyone heard of London? And they sent out ambassadors to be like, can we send Anne here? Because they're like, I hear they have a lot of sheep. And granted, everybody knows that England's producing a lot of wool. They're very rich.

But from a continental perspective, I mean, we're talking about she's born in the capital of the Holy Roman Empire. She speaks five languages. and they kind of are like, oh, huh, yeah, London, and eventually it gets said, yeah, you can go off. But I guess what are we talking about when we're talking about kind of late 14th century England? What are the facts on the ground? What does she getting sent into? So just like in the Czech Republic, it's post-plagues, so there's been huge population decline. And of course, something I always talk about with my students is we don't know for sure how much,

because we don't know how many people were there before. We don't actually know how many people died, and we don't know how many people were left. So everything is a guess, but it seems to be trending upwards. Historians are arguing some people used to stay third. And I'm like, no, it definitely was at least half. And in some places, probably even more. So England's very hard to hit. But of course, there's still undergoing the 100 years war.

So it's fewer people, but there's still a heavy tax burden. And like many places, the elites are trying to manipulate things in their favor by putting in wage. price controls and saying, oh, it has to be based on 1347. Oh, why did they specifically pick 1347? Oh, that was right before the plague hit. And things started to change. Ah, sneaky. So there was a lot of discontent in that regard.

Then her husband, Richard, he became king as a child, which of course adds all sorts of other difficulties. He followed his grandfather, Edward III, who had a good reputation until kind of the end of his lifetime when he. He was older and his family and his mistress, they really took advantage of the king being older. And so there were certainly issues going on there politically that a lot of elites in England were casting side-eye at some of Richard's uncles thinking, you know, is this uncle particularly John of gone, is he trying to make a play for himself. So there's tension in that regard. There's never

enough money, of course. And then, of course, Richard becomes king. as a child and they pass more laws and things really come to ahead in 1381 with the peasants revolt where peasants although also kind of people that i don't want to say middle class because that's not really a thing but people who aren't just what people think of now when you're like uh peasants you know it's not just farming people it's also workers in the cities who finally revolt against these wage of price controls and this poll tax where everybody has to pay the same and i always think Of course, poll tax sounds like something that has to do with voting, but of course, in medieval England, a poll tax has to do with existing. And everybody has to pay the same amount, whether you're John of God or Joe Besant.

So there's this violent uprising, or are they even making it into the Tower of London? And Richard, kind of one of the high points for him of his reign, he manages to prevent them from totally sacking London. But of course, he does it by making a promise that, yeah, okay, I will get rid of serfdom. And of course that doesn't happen. I mean, what could you really have done otherwise? I mean, of course, you have to make that promise so that they don't kill you. They don't kill more people. But yeah, then of course, as soon as you, 14-year-old, go back to the nobles and like,

oh, hey, so I said we're going to get rid of serfdom. Oh, yeah. Like, they're all totally on board with that with this 14-year-old saying, yeah, no more surf-dum. Like, no, maybe not. And of course, you can easily say, oh, that promise was made under duress because obviously it was. And so then, you have a perfect reason not to take. do it. So, yeah, there's some tensions. And of course, Anne comes, boom, right at the end. I guess

it's kind of good. They got that marriage negotiated before the peasants rule happened, because I'm sure once the sloths her brother would have been like, oh, no, I'm not sending my little sister. But it's actually sort of perfect for the English that the queen shows up right at the end of that mess because they're able to perfectly slaughter her into her role as queen immediately because there's many people to execute as one does after the. those kinds of rebellions, but there's also many people that they don't want to execute. So they're kind of, right? How are we going to bring us all back together?

And it was good for them that day and showed up. I mean, they really put her into that role even before she got there. She's still on her way because, of course, she's a princess, so she travels so slowly. Yeah. I mean, she's traveling across Belgium, I think, and it's like it takes a week to go 90 kilometers. It was like, that's really slow, guys. It's just like her and 16 of her besties, several horses. And I suppose it word gets to you that, you know, the Savoy Palace was on fire.

And they'll be like, you know, let's slow it down, slow it down, you know. And so even before she gets there, like, oh, the queen is going to secure a pardon for some of these people. And so these pardons are said to be at her intercession, even if she isn't physically there at the moment. And so it's kind of boom. As soon as she gets there, the English are like, hey, this is something that our queens do. We need you to do it. And she takes it up with gusto. She's excellent at it.

Yeah, because that's the thing, right? I suppose that a lot of the time when people think about queens and the diplomatic work that they do, we think, oh, yeah, well, obviously you intercede with your families, especially the country that you're from, you kind of go back and forth. But there's this whole diplomatic ideal, especially in England, right, that is the queen is kind of, of a figurehead who represents an idea of mercy. Would you say, am I right about that? Yeah, she's very much cast in a sort of Virgin Mary role from about the 1100s on.

There's kind of a change in how people do their Christianity. They become a little less fire and brimstone and a little more focusing on emotions and that sort of thing. And so there's a lot more focus on Jesus as being a nice guy somewhat, that Jesus was forgiving and that Mary is part of what made Jesus forgiving because Jesus' mom and you always listen to your mom. And so there's very much this idea that Mary will put in a good word for you with Jesus. And so queens, because Mary is the queen of heaven, the queen of England will put in a good word for you with the king.

Yes, the king's her husband, not her son. Well, sometimes it's her son. So it's not perfectly, but it works. You're coming from, you know, one of the most lavish and important courts in Europe. You show up to London. Everything's burnt down. And they're like, oh, thank God you're here. And I think it's quite fun because, you know, there are these really elaborate rituals she has to do around that, right?

because there's this big thing about how Richard can't lose face. So it's kind of like her going to Westminster and kneeling in front of him and being like, oh, husband, oh, ho, my tears are flowing on behalf of these people for whom I have this depth of feeling. And it's like, this girl doesn't know. You know, she's talking to her husband in French. I imagine also that how bad did Anne really feel for these peasants? I mean, over time, when she first shows up, you know, she doesn't know Richard that was. Of course, over time, they become very close.

So maybe at the end of her, she wouldn't have been too keen on farting people who tried to kill him. But to me, it seems that England is very famous for these elaborate intercessory rituals. But I don't think that Anne would have been entirely unprepared. There are some examples of her mother doing some similar things. But I don't think there was a whole ritual around it, the way there sometimes is in England. Yeah, you get kind of similar things in the Czech context where, you know, someone needs to talk Charles down from something, a little bit less because Charles is just a little bit less of an idiot. So there is like this kind of understanding within a check context that once in a while the queen puts her hand up. But then also there are these funny things that will happen.

Like, for example, at one point in time, Charles IV oversteps the mark kind of trying to take rights off of the nobles. And then he realizes he's gone too far. And he just goes, oh, those laws I wrote down burnt up. well, I guess we can't do them anymore. Moving on. And so you can do things like that in the check context, which are a little more private, I suppose. Whereas within the English one, it's like, no, no, no, do it in front of everybody. Like, get out here. We'll call in every single person. You know, it's quite interesting because I think that Anne would have really understood, okay, well, basically, if you're told that this is how things work, then this is how things work,

right? She's not stupid. She knows what queens are for. And basically, you get told this is the customer, and you just go right, right you are. Yep, doing that. But she really hits the ground running. She shows up, she's got to start doing these intercessory things right away. So what is this kind of received as in England? When she shows up, how do people kind of feel about her? It's definitely mixed.

But of course, because of the sources that come down to us are so often, monastic sources, and particularly many of the sources don't really like her husband. So they're a little bit biased in that many of the sources. sources that have come down to us are things like this chronicler Thomas Walsingham who really doesn't like Richard. And so he is kind of like, eh, and came, and it was, you know, kind of met. A lot of the chroniclers really harp on. She came and she didn't even have a dowry. Oh, and we had to pay for her. And she's just this, you know, little teenage girl and she showed up with no money. And of course, they're always complaining about later on when things deterioration.

even more for Richard and Ann they're complaining about her bohemians which has been reasonably explored and I think scholars have done a good job of pointing out yeah this is just the way the English are like Anne's bohemians all of whom are not

bohemian but this is just a thing that the English always get mad about is a queen comes of course she has to bring some of her own people and so some bohemians are still around and they're like I'm so annoyed that these bohemians are here, it really doesn't have that much to do with the bohemians themselves.

They're always going to complain about that. So you get complaints about that for Anne, say, you know, she showed up with all these grasping bohemians. But at the same time, on the day of her coronation, the people of London give this petition to her, and they say, please keep interceding for us. Our queens have done this. And we want you to do it too.

And if you do a good job, we're going to like you a lot. And she obviously takes it to heart because she, dust that sort of stuff. And of course, later in the rain, Richard gets mad at London because they won't give him money, so he kind of goes off to York to Salk, and then London's like, okay, this is kind of turning out to be a problem for us. So multiple people, it isn't just Ann, help smooth that over, but Richard decides because the dude has a good sense of how to perform monarchy, which is, of course, a big thing in the English context, and Richard is excellent at it. It's like, this is an amazing opportunity for a performance.

So there's this whole reconciliation performance that is put on by the city of London with Richard's input. And of course, certainly in the literary depictions of it that follow and has a huge role. I mean, she has the starring role. And the people of London really appeal to her in that. And they say, please help us out. We know that you can make him not mad at us anymore. And even though, of course, the whole recent. and we're having this is because he's gotten over it

because you gave him much of money. But in the depictions, Anne's like, I got you. So I think the people of London certainly liked her. So yes, of course, there's this sort of English xenophobia that they always have towards their immigrant queens that makes them say some bad things towards Anne.

But I feel overall that people really liked her. And when I first started studying Anne and Richard, it was because I was interested in the childlessness aspect. And I was prepared to find more bad things because for childlessness, what's so famous is Henry the 8th, even though it was a childless, but he was even more hardcore and was like, basically, I'm

childless if it's not a boy. So I was expecting people to say really nasty things and this kind of stuff. And I didn't see that, certainly not really with, and the things that they said that weren't nice were more typical English things. You know, she's not English. And people weren't really saying, oh, she sucks because she never had a kid. And I think it's because she compensated well for that in other aspects of her life, that there are more things that queens need to do that just have children. Obviously, that's important. But she did an excellent job with the intercession and that sort of stuff. And I think that maybe that kind of helped compensate for it. Let's dig right into that, right? Because, you know, there's all these sorts of

things that queens do, you know, intercession and securing loans and high-level diplomacy, all kinds of things like that. But kind of the primary thing you're expected to do when you're a queen is have kids and Anne doesn't make that happen. What do we kind of tend to see with that? Because I know that one of your big research areas is couples who can't have children. That's the primary expectation of women in the middle age, just like writ large, let alone queens. And then queens is like, oh, would you like that pressure turned up seven times? Have a baby. Have a baby. Have a baby. You know, while you're doing this really difficult diplomacy, please. One thing that I found interesting, because of course, there's so much we can do nowadays

with trying to fight fertility problems that obviously they could not do in the middle ages. But at the same time, they were doing a lot of things. And in researching Anne, she was definitely trying. She was taking medicines. Certainly she and Richard were going on pilgrimages. They were together a lot because there's definitely some queens in other contexts, particularly the Spanish context. And it's kind of like, oh, why didn't they have kids? And then it's like, oh, because the entire time they were married,

they lived in Spain and their husband was in Sicily. But Richard and Anne were together most of the time, it seems. So they were definitely trying, I would say. yeah, it just didn't seem to happen, but people that wasn't a major criticism in what has come down to us anyway. And I think maybe because she did the intercession, she was certainly religious. I mean, you know, everybody pretty much is. And so she certainly did things like donate money and, of course, going on the pilgrimages and that kind of thing. So she definitely did the proper pious queen aspect. She did the proper intercessory.

aspects. I feel as though she really hit all of the buttons, checked all the boxes, perhaps I should say, aside from the kid one, and you would think that's like the biggest failure, but there were other issues going on. And of course, with Richard ultimately being deposed, that of course started a different set of problems, but not immediately. And so that was something that people had to worry about a couple generations later, not right. So there can sometimes be this tension where if people like the king, then they'll criticize the queen more because that's a safe thing. So if they don't like Richard, then Anne looks better in comparison. So on the one hand, you've got that, well, Richard's a bit of a jerk and no one

particularly cares for him. And at least Anne is doing the things that people actually want, right? But I think that there's also kind of a certain level of sympathy, right? You know, in this box-ticking exercise, as you say, and they're going around and, well, you know, she's gone on pilgrimage. She's giving money to things. She is pious. You know, she's doing all the things that she's supposed to be doing and it still doesn't happen. It almost seems like there's a kind of a sense of sympathy for her where you're like, oh, yeah, that's got to be hard, right? Yeah. And the other thing I found, which again surprised me a little bit when doing the research about infertility is, of course, medical things and, you know, general medieval misogy. Yes, there was plenty of blame for women.

but they still had that idea that kind of the opposite of Henry the Eighth. Henry the Eighth totally blamed everyone by himself. And there was this idea in various medieval cultural kind of things, but even in medicine, that men could be at fault. Obviously, they didn't know all of the science, but considering they didn't, they had this idea that there are two seeds and, you know, you need, which is technically true. They had a lot of it wrong, but they did know that.

it could not be the woman's fault and that it was complicated. And so that might have helped as well. And of course, she died so young, nobody knew that was coming. I mean, yes, they had been married for 12 years at that point. But 28, that's not too old. I mean, it's actually probably kind of good for her own physical health that she didn't get pregnant right away. Because 16 is very young. And, you know, in the 13th century, there is some stuff with Eleanor of Provance and Eleanor

of Castile saying, like, we don't want our daughter, granddaughter getting married and going someplace quite yet. Like, we need her to wait. So they did have that idea. So I think there's always the possibility that it could happen. And maybe one other thing that maybe helped Richard psychologically or helped people psychologically that, of course, turned out to be a problem a couple of generations later. But the royal family at that time was pretty big.

I mean, Richard's bit from his father was tiny because Richard's older brother died and then it was just him. But he had lots of uncles. And all those uncles, they had kids. Three of the uncles were still around and very powerful. So there were certainly plenty of other options that helped people from not freaking out. I suppose we're guilty of being really reductive about this, saying, oh, that's the thing about Queens. is fecundity and fertility and becoming a mother and providing an air. So it's funny because we will sort of lay that at the doorstep of medieval people at times

and say, oh, well, that's what you want, right? The thing that you want in a queen is this. But maybe that's what we're trying to see. Yeah, and I think it also maybe helps mitigate because Anne came from such an amazing court and she had a lot of prestige as a person. and that could also help that she brought a lot of prestige to England. And I think some of the sources that have come down to us from the monks and stuff, they don't totally understand that.

But Richard is the kind of person that understood that. And he would have cared and he would have liked that. And so that helps. And of course, one thing that I also found interesting, granted, it comes from the Chronicle of Friesar, who is not always telling you. exactly like it is. But I think it has potential to be true.

Of course, after Anne dies, Richard eventually gets remarried. And the thing that really blows modern people's minds is he gets married to a child. And not like, oh, she's 16, but a child, child. Like, I just turned seven years old. And that is, whoa. To us, that really blows our minds. And there's someone that kind of says to Richard, like, dude, shouldn't you? maybe pick this Spanish princess because she's not a child.

And Richard's like, no, it's fine. She'll come to England and she'll know how things are done in our court. And when she's old enough, she'll be perfect. And of course, even when he was negotiating with the French, Charles VI, all his daughters were quite young because he's like basically the same age as Richard. So if Richard had kids, they would also be quite young. And he's like, I have these cousins and there's tons of people running around. What about her? What about her?

You know, there's all these women who are of age. But Richard says, no, that's okay. I want your daughter. I want a French princess. I don't want an almost princess. I want an actual princess. And he's like, okay, well, the oldest one is 70. He's like, it's fine.

So I think that shows somewhat the importance of who you are that's negotiating, this prestige factor. And, of course, obviously we know nowadays, oh, that was a bad move, Richard, because she's 10 years old when you get kicked off the throne. He doesn't know that's happening. He thinks he's going to have tons of time and that, you know, in 10 years, they'll have a kid and it'll be great. Maybe that could have happened. I mean, his wife in 10 years does have a kid, although it ends up not being great because

she dies. So it's like it could have worked out fine, but we know it didn't. And I mean, I guess it's really important to someone like that, right? You cannot go from like bohemian princess slash empress down to like, you know, some noble, especially if what you're trying to say is that your court has all this cachet, you know, the pedigree of your wife is something that's actually on the table. And so talking of this, and you know, the cachet that a queen can bring, the kind of soft cultural influence, right? That's one of the things that Anne manages to do really well, right? Like, she kind of gets off the boat

a million years later, and, you know, yeah, she interscenes. But she's also like this fashion plate. And all the English are like, oh. And so she's got this. incredible cultural impact, right? Yes, yeah. And unfortunately, that is one of the things that is so hard to trace in the records that we have left because did they not write it down? Did it get destroyed? Art historians have done so much good work, if this blows my mind, in tracing the probable

bohemian influence because for me, as a historian, I look at art and I like, that's pretty. I like it. But they can look at art and be like, yes. The way that eyebrow is drawn here is just the same style as that eyebrow is drawn over here in this very famous Czech sultan.

And I'm like, okay, I don't see it, but I trust you. So, yeah, there is a lot of that Czech boimi and artistic influence. It's hard as a historian. They're like, here's all the people that did it because they didn't write it down, so it very much has to be a

stylistic thing. But I I think art historians have done a good job in pointing out all of those similarities. And I also think that scholars in literature have done a great job moving forward because there, again, that sort of very narrow idea of patronage that you paid for it. And that's patronage. And again, the receipts are not there to show what books really and might have paid for. But the big one is straws. There's certainly influence. Well, there's definitely influence.

I mean, he writes in, what is it, the legend of goes. women like, take my book to the queen. So obviously he wants her to know about him and he wants her to read his stuff. And for a long time, scholars were kind of trying to find the smoking gun that she paid him to do it. And if it's there, it's not there anymore. But you don't have to be quite so narrow with patronage that, oh, it doesn't count if she didn't pass him the money. He was definitely inspired by Anne. And so that's cool. I was writing something about her. And, you know, obviously I'm just used to reading about her in check at like the Czech stuff. And so I was like, oh, I better go figure out what English people are saying about her.

And I read this hilarious Victorian piece about her. And this Victorian woman was just absolutely scathing about her and specifically about how she had all these fashionable influences. And she was probably taking on board what the Chronicle said. It's like, oh, and it's terrible that she's foreign. And I think there's also this kind of like Victorian snobbery about like English things being the best and like, who even knows what a Czech person is anymore. And she's like, well, she introduced all sorts of horrid things, like riding side saddle and those ugly pointed hats. And she had a very stupid crest, which was an ostrich with a bar in its mouth.

And she's just so mad and had a behemia for being like, but I think it's very funny because, you know, when you ask people to draw medieval princess, you'll go off and get the two horned hats in there and things. And it's like, well, that's a check thing. And Anne was like, oh, hey, everybody liked my hat. And everyone was like, you know, I do. That's very cool. And again, that's just English people being xenophobic.

So Anne probably came with the pointed shoes, which they often call Krakowls in there, which of course makes it sound like they came from Poland, which maybe they did. But, you know, of course, that would make sense because her mother's from that area. But there are chronicles from before Ann is even born that also complain about pointed shoes. So these pointed shoes are happening and they're just blaming it on a convenient foreigner. And kind of like people nowadays will sometimes, exaggerate for rhetorical effect. Definitely there seems to be some exaggeration for rhetorical effect going on when talking about those shoes and stuff.

They're like, oh, they were so pointy. Oh, pointy were they? They were so poignant you had to attach it to a chain to your knee, so it didn't flop around. Okay, that would be kind of ridiculous. And like we have not found any shoes that, you know, have archaeologically made it. So unless they just burned all of the shoes or those really long shoes, disintegrate extra fast. It was probably monks being monks.

Just sitting around all day, writing books about how everyone's shoes are two-pointy, and it's probably the princess's fault. You know, it's just, there's this one big influence. So, you know, we've been talking about the Czech influence in England, but there also then ends up being, as a result of Anne showing up here, this one big English influence back with the Czechs, right? Do you want to lead us in? I was just thinking about this yesterday in preparation.

And I was thinking, I wonder how Anne would feel about this. I feel like she would be sad. She would be really sad. Yeah. Particularly because once the Protestant Reformation happened in England, some writers say like, oh, yeah, she didn't have children, but she gave birth to this new movement in Bohemia. And they're like, big smiles because, you know, they're Protestant

and they see the hot sides as kind of their buds. But I was like, oh, man, Am would be so sad. They were like, ah, but she gave birth to this. She'd be like, no, no. No, talk to her, don't do it, don't do it. Because, of course, she's just like, Richard, very orthodox. So, yes, of course. What we're talking about is the influence of Wycliffe and Lollards into Bohemia,

where then becomes known as the Haussites. So by the time Anne gets there, John Weislef is dead, which, of course, was another thing that Scalows had to kind of unpacked, because earlier in the Victorian era, they were like, oh, yeah, Anne interceded for John Wycliffe, but it's like, wow. No, she was dead. and she was still in the Czech Republic, so that's going to be hard. But because of the trade and just people going back and forth,

we seem to see more of an intellectual influence kind of flowing into bohemia. But, you know, as Lollardy becomes more not just an intellectual exercise, that, of course, is what heads over into bohemia, and they really take it and run with it. Jan Hus is like, this is awesome. And he starts preaching it and gets all kinds of people on his side, and it becomes a big deal. Yeah.

Like a way bigger deal than it became in England. And then they have their own peasant uprisings that really kind of put the peasants' revolt of 1381 to shame. That looks tiny and pathetic. And then, of course, you know, Richard's crackdown. That looks very sweet and old-fashioned in comparison to Sigismund's crackdown, which was much more intense. It's funny, right?

Because just, you know, how history has shaken out. And because, you know, well, here, you and I are speaking English to each other. There tends to be this real premium put on England in the Middle Ages to the detriment of other places like, you know, Bohemia, which is incredibly important. But this is this one case where England does actually really change the course of a culture, which had never happened up to this point. In the Middle Ages, you know, the English had absolutely nothing to do with Bohemia and it just sort of was what it was. And I think that's really interesting to kind of keep in mind, is that.

that it's not just that queens come over and they bring whatever it is to the place that they're going. You are saying that you're opening up these two kingdoms to travel and trade and cultural shifts and expectations. So a royal marriage, it's not just between two people. It really is these two kingdoms. And I don't know, sometimes you get the first very successful Christian rebellion as a result of it. And maybe it's because Czech scholars have been more interested in it and have been studying it more. But the way the scholarship is right now, you certainly have a better sense that a lot of Czech people came and went back and forth than we do English people going the other way. You know, maybe Czech were better travelers at the time because there's a lot of back and forth

going that you don't see as much. And maybe it's just we haven't looked for it as much on the English way. But yeah, lots of Czech people are coming and going back and they're taking stuff with them. And some of that stuff is Lollardy. You know, hundreds of years later, some of that stuff me. Hey, you know, look at that. Look at that. It's a legacy, baby. But I could literally talk about Anne all day long, but we are going to have to let. She's so cool. She's so cool. But we are going to have to let, I think, our listeners off the hook. So, Kristen, thank you so much for being here. Thank you. And I guess I just want to plug in. I'm very happy that we're getting to talk about Anne. And because, again, in the English context, I feel like she's been kind of

forgotten because there are some really outstanding queens of England who appeal to our modern sensibilities like Eleanor of Aquitaine, like Isabella France, Edward II's wife, like Margaret of Anjou, that are literally kicking butt and taking names and we're like, yeah. And Anne's not doing that. She doesn't need to do that. But of course, by medieval standards, she's way more successful than those queens. And so I think studying the queens that are doing what they're supposed to is maybe not as sexy appealing when you want someone that you can, I don't know, make a cross-stitch up or something. But it gives us a better sense of what medieval queens needed to do and certainly helps us see that medieval queens were powerful and important, even if they

weren't doing something outside the box like leading an army or overthrowing their own husband. I mean, that's a really good point. You know, why for a queen to be good, do we want her to behave like a man? You know, that's on us. That's about our own kind of gendered expectations, right? So, hmm, more fool me. Thank you for listening, and thank you once again to Kristen for joining me.

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