Gone Medieval - Margaret of Anjou

Episode Date: September 25, 2023

Dr. Eleanor Janega continues Gone Medieval’s special series exploring Medieval Queens with a look at Margaret of Anjou, who rose to become a figurehead, and even a military leader, when her husband King Henry VI suffered bouts of mental illness. She became one of the principal figures in the Wars of the Roses and at times personally led the Lancastrian faction, being praised for “her valiant courage and undaunted spirit.” Eleanor explores Margaret’s remarkable life and influence with medieval scholar Dr. Joanna LaynesmithThis episode was produced by Rob Weinberg.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code MEDIEVAL - 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 Janaga and in today's episode we'll be talking about Margaret of Anjou, when queens take the reins of power and the idea of difficult women in the Middle Ages. Today I'm absolutely over the moon to be joined by Dr. Joanna Lane Smith. Joanna is a visiting research fellow at the University of Reading where she works on queens, queenship, and royal adultery in medieval Britain. Her latest book, Later Protagenets and the War of the Roses consorts,

Power, Influence, and Dynasty, co-edded with Ellie Woodacre, is out now with Paul Grave Macmillan. Joanna, thank you so much for being here. Oh, it's a pleasure. Thanks for inviting me. So let me give you a very general question, which is going to be incredibly hard to sum up, which is who was Margaret of Anjou? And why, I guess, do we consider her such an essential figure in medieval history? You know, when you want to talk about medieval queenship, she's one of the first names that kind of springs to mind, at least for me. I suppose because Margaret was one of the key players in the Wars of the Roses, which is that great dynastic bonfire at the end of the Middle Ages, because there are so many competing narratives about her because there was the political propaganda from both sides and also from the Tudors as they construct.

their identity or shaping this idea. She was the wife of the last Lancasterian king, Henry the 6th. She was a French-born princess, daughter of the Duchess of Lorraine and the Count of Anjou, and her French connections mattered a lot in her identity as well, actually. She's the last foreign-born queen for half a century, which also colours how she's pictured. I think it's also actually important that she was one of Shakespeare's great tragic heroines, and that really coloured our picture of her. That's forgotten a lot because Shakespeare's Henry VIth isn't studied totally much at school and what have you,

but it really coloured earlier generations of historians' perceptions. For Shakespeare, she's England's Helen of Troy, literally. That's what she gets called. There's this wonderful scene where Joan of Arc has just cursed to the English that all the hell's going to break loose on them. She leaves the stage and Margaret comes on and Margaret is going to be the way that the curse works out. And so there's this image we have of her, of the typical Eve, Pandora, causing chaos sort of woman,

which has really shaped how she's been seen for generations as well. On top of that, she's the founder of Queen's College, Cambridge, and a patient of books, all sorts of interesting, more ordinary normal queenship things that she did as well. Yeah, she's this really great mix of a kind of medieval femme fatal in a way, but also, you know, just the regular, ordinary, really interesting kind of bits of soft power that we would expect to see around the shop as well, which I think is so great about her. Can you touch very briefly on the political landscape that she comes into? I mean, it's very, very normal for Kings of England to have French princesses, really, at the time. And suddenly things change so much that this becomes, you know, almost a mark against her, I would suppose, when we talk about her in a historiographical.

standpoint. Yes, because she's coming in at the very end of the 100 years war. In a way, you can't understand the political landscape that Margaret steps into without looking right back at Edward III in the 14th century. He started the 100 years war because he claimed to be King of France through his mother. Really, it was a way of getting a bit more control over the lands that he already had in France. It wasn't really a serious claim at that point. But then, of course, Henry V later on picks up and makes into a serious claim. So you've got the the background of the Hundred Years' War, which England is losing badly by the time Margaret arrives. So there's that element of it. But there's also the fact that Edward III had a lot of sons

who have complicated descent, and that really shapes the landscape that Margaret's walking into. When Edward III died, he was followed by his grandson, Richard II. Turned out to be a bit of a tyrant and a disaster. He was overthrown, but not by the most obvious next in line because the most obvious next in line was just a baby. Edward III's second son, landlord Duke of Clowns, had only had a daughter and her descendants at that point were really young. They weren't in any position to get rid of the second. So it's the line after that, the Lancasterian line, John Duke of Lancaster's son, Henry becomes Henry the fourth, the first Lancasterian king.

And at the time, that's absolutely fine. But it becomes complicated later on. when the child whose Mortimer grows up, especially because eventually his sister marries the descendant of another event of the third children into the house of York. And so then we have this really messy, complicated situation. And by the time Margaret marries Henry VI, there's an anxiety about who should follow Henry the Sixth as King. Obviously, they're very much hoping she's going to produce lots of children and to look very secure. Because at this point, Henry has one uncle, Humphrodhututut. who is a bit of a wild card and hasn't got any legitimate children.

But all Henry's other uncles have died without children. It's very unclear who should inherit. There's a mess because John Duke Lancaster had legitimate children, the Beaufort family, who were then legitimised, and his daughter Elizabeth married rather scandalously into the Holland family. So you've got this real mess of who should actually inherit afterwards. And so they desperately want Margaret to bring security, produce some children, and then we'll know, should it be the Duke of York, it doesn't need to be the Duke of York,

it doesn't need to be the Netherlands, it doesn't need to be the Beauforts, it doesn't need to be any these people and his children can inherit. Yeah, and I suppose that really getting in a French princess too, that's kind of a way of showing this is the real line, this is who we're going for, we have the kind of bona fide connections between other thrones. Please believe me, I'm the real king. This is where the heirs are going to come from kind of thing, right? Yeah, she's really important as an emblem of this is what the foreign

and princes except as the Lancashire still. But to be fair, at that point, there isn't any question about Henry themselves as the legitimate king. No one's questioning it yet. The French connection is complicated because initially when Henry's looking for a wife, his ministers are thinking, we need an alliance against France. We need to get more of this territory back. But Charles, the southern France, is so powerful.

He, to prevent that from happening, kind of forces their hand really. They have to go for a French bride. and Charles won't offer one of his own daughters, who I admit a bit young anyway, Margaret's merely his niece. It doesn't feel quite as prestigious as it might do, and although I said, her parents both had titles, her father had loads of titles, but he was really not very good at holding on to any of his estates. He spent most of his career fighting for his lands or in prison, in fact. She comes with a really tiny diary, and as part of the arrangements, there actually turns out that the English have to agree to surrender some of their lives. lands, the complete opposite of what people were originally hoping. So that really brings her in at a disadvantage, to be honest, as a queen. So when she's brought in within this, what kind of

role does she play, especially socially, I guess, during the early years of her marriage? She's on the back foot politically, as you say. She hasn't quite brought in the land, even if she has brought in a little bit of prestige, a little bit of that French charm that people do like to see. But, you know, she kind of enters a situation where her husband's having a really tough time, isn't he? Yes, he is. Economically, it's a really bad time. Actually, there's been bad harvests and finances are difficult anyway. Her husband is also much too lavish. He likes to give things away and there's not enough money in the coffers to be as kingly as he should. So now people are telling him, either you have to claim back

some of the lands or you have to slim down how many you've got in your household. Margaret initially is very much your traditional queen. She does the things she should. She negotiates. She appreciates marriages. She supports people who come to her as an intercessor. She's an intermediary in business in lots of ways. She also does a lot of rebuilding in some of the palaces, makes them look more beautiful. Obviously, the downside of that is the cost. But she tries to make his image better, I think. So kind of like the soft power that we would expect. Exactly. Yes. You see her writing letters to duchesses whose husbands are receiving letters from the king, saying make sure your husband does what the king wants him. I love that, just kind of the, you know, appending there. But it's a really tricky one too, isn't it? Because Henry VI, he's in kind of a position that politically it's fairly strong. But his health is a bit on the blink.

They say that he suffers from madness is kind of the term that we see. And Margaret comes into an incredibly prestigious role, but one where her ability to kind of play those political games is kind of of the utmost importance. Yes, exactly what is wrong with Henry and how. people are aware of it when it becomes aware is one of those big debates because he only collapses into this catatonic stupor in 1453 and then there's this sort of period of time where he doesn't really seem to be ruling as he should but we don't know whether that's because he generally had some problem or whether he was just not interested in the business of rule he wanted to

build kings college and do his religious patronage and do those kinds of things that he liked doing and just wasn't terribly focused on politics so we don't know whether it's was an illness or whether it was merely temperament up until 1453, which is the big year when everything changes really. So understanding this complex sort of situation, what would you say about Margaret's queenship? How would it differ to other queens at her level at the time? For the first decade, no, not really. She's just doing what queens normally do, apart from the fact that it takes her very long time to have her first child. Not completely unusual either, but given the real tensions that I mentioned, this is a big issue that concerns people and there's gossip

and concern about it quite early on. But then when she's finally pregnant, shortly afterwards, that's the moment when suddenly we lose a hundred years' war, then the last of the French Territus has suddenly lost, and this is probably what causes Henry to fall into his catatonic stupor. And suddenly, no one's quite sure what to do. The queen has the baby just about three months later, and that's really important because suddenly she's got a son, which makes her more, secure, it also means that we've got this answer. What happens if Henry just dies of his malady or whatever, we're all focused on the sun. So there is that element of security. And initially the Lords are trying to hold it together in a council, but something more has to

happen as the months pass and he doesn't get his health back. And it seems that she or perhaps the Chancellor comes up with the idea that she should be regent. But not everybody is happy with this, far from it, because that's not really the way things have been done in England, although that's exactly what happened in France when there was a king. Charles of Sixth, who had several bouts. He thought he'd made a glass and various things like that. And his wife would be regent. But people are certainly not keen on that idea in England. And eventually, it's actually Richard Duke of York, the cousin with a really potential claim actually to have a superior royal line to Henry's own, who's the one who gets to be Lord Protector, which is really complicated because from then on,

there's always this issue. Everybody knows he is also a descendant from this oldest air. He's charismatic and has his wife who has loads of children. He has loads of children. It's always a little bit of a threat from there on it. So she rises up at some point in the 1450s to be a figurehead or perhaps more actively against the Duke of York. And so in this, she ends up taking political sides. And I suppose that's a particularly crucial thing because queens aren't supposed to do that. They should very much be the mediator, the balance and not take sides in that way. that's one way in which perhaps not for anything that she could help, but she ends up being in that very different position. And as situation unravels and actually Henry loses his throne, she is the one who's doing the rallying all across Europe trying to get people to support. She becomes something of a military leader in some people's eyes, the way she's pictured. She's the one who, first of all, even before he's lost his throne, she gets military reinforcements from Scotland and brings them down the country. And these are not normal. roles. They do happen, but certainly not normal roles for English queens.

That's a pretty incredible level of involvement in a specifically kind of military operation. It's not completely out of the question to see a woman doing something like this, but it is a bit odd seeing it happen, I would say, within the context of a kind of dynastic struggle among cousins, as it were. I mean, it's so thorny to unravel, right? Because she's really at the eye of the hurricane, as it were. Yes, usually there would be some man actually who was closely related to the king who could be taking that role to an extent as well. But because of the level of controversy, I suppose, around the Beauforts who were the king's kin, but through this illegitimate line, and there was tension about that. And there very much the conflict that was going on was between York

and Somerset. So that wasn't a sort of a neutral person who could stand in. Of course, the king had half-brothers. He had the Tudors, but there were complications with them. really in terms of resentment that they were the children of a squire, and they just couldn't muster the kind of authority that was needed. So the queen's the only person who's in that position who can step in in that way. I think it's something that we really like now. You know, historians now, when we talk about Margaret Vanchu, one of the things we really love is this kind of involvement that she has. We oftentimes look to see ourselves in the past, and, you know, we want to see this strong woman who's able to kind of step in. Is that how she's perceived by her contemporaries at the time?

It very much depends on their political loyalties, to be honest. And unfortunately, the Yorkists have left a lot more information than the Lancastrians. So that doesn't help either. There's also foreign sources, Georges Chattelin, who was working in France at the time, wrote this wonderful lament dedicated to Margaret about how she'd been really hard done by, and it's a very kind of tragic story. But on the other hand, as you say, this crossing boundaries thing, which feels very modern, that actually also isn't as condemned as you might expect.

Quite a few particularly early Tudor historians say she was manly and courageous in a positive way. But then they usually undercut it. Yes, but she didn't know how to mediate and be soft as a woman should do. And she should have done. And then things would have been okay with Richard Duke of York. It's a double-edged thing, really. They think, yes, it's good because after all, men are superior to women. If a woman wants to be like a man, that's a good thing.

But then on the other hand, there's always that, yeah, but she never gets it right. She can't be like a man because of her essential nature. That seems to be the thread that's going through these. We still suffer from that, you know, kind of wanting women to be powerful, but also very feminine. You know, there's always this kind of desire to say, well, if a woman is going to be powerful, she still has to kind of, you know, give us these little hints that she's still quite feminine. And we're still doing exactly the same thing, I think, as these tutor historians, even if we don't know it and don't necessarily have such a dog in the fight, I suppose. But when we think about Margaret and we think about her involvement in the Wars of the Roses, things really kind of start hoting up militarily, right?

Because there's just this mess. Here's Richard Duke of York. Here are all these familial problems. Here is a kind of catatonic to disinterested king. And then we have the Battle of St. Albans. And what does this mean when we start to have a real military? outbreak for Margaret? That's a massive game change, really, because this is Richard Duke of York

massively overstepping what's appropriate for a nobleman. Up until that point, he had been saying, the Duke of Somerset is a bad influence on the king. It's the Duke of Somerset's fault that we've lost Normandy. He'd already geared up to this with a showdown at Dartford, where he brought some forces with him, but nothing had happened. And that was even before Henry had his collapse. Then, of course, there's Henry's, Henry's.

collapse, Richard becomes protector, but then Henry recovers, Richard has to step down, and Somerset is pulled back out of prison, which is where the Duke of York could put him, and gets back, and he's exactly the status quo it was before, really, and that's when Richard Duke of York kind of flips and decides he's just going to wipe Somerset out, and they have the Battle of St. Albans. The main purpose, as far as York concerned, is to get rid of Somerset. As far as York's Allies are concerned, they decide to get rid of a few of their other opponents whilst they're at it because they're involved in a few land battles. But once they've got rid of the Lords, they really want to get rid of, it's over. So it's kind of overworked lynching, really, but it's a battle. It's

completely inappropriate. And this is the point, I'm sure, when Margaret is confident that the Duke of York is a threat to the stability of the kingdom, to her husband's position and to her son's future. So thereafter, she's justified in seeing York as a threat. and we begin to get this division. People are taking sides more obviously, more clearly. The immediate aftermath of St. Albans is that York, in fact, takes control of Henry the 6th, takes him down to London initially, but then he leaves him at Hartford and makes him a bit of a puppet king and sets himself up as protector all over again.

And Margaret then collects him from Hartford and brings him to London. And York's protector collapses. Possibly Margaret influences it, who knows. But from then on, she's trying to start. build an image of her and the king and the prince as the authority figure, and York is undermining that, and those who are close to York are undermining that. It's still not inevitable that it's all going to break out to violence again, but from there on it, it's always on tend to hooks and small things, push things into violence. So when we really realize that we are

committed, I suppose, to the violent road, there's no coming back. What would you say is kind of like the Rubicon for the War of the Roses here? The Rubicon actually is not until 1459, because after St. Albans, they try and rebuild a certain amount of relationship, and this leads into a peace procession called the Love Day procession that happens in 1458. And I know a lot of historians are quite dismissive of this. Oh, this was just Henry the 6th fantasizing that he can make peace between the people who are involved at St. Albans. But at the same time as that happening, Margaret of Vangu, closest friend Alice Chaucer, Duchess of Suffolk, arranges for her son, her heir, to marry

Richard Duke of York's daughter. And that's quite a big commitment. And it seems to me that these major players are still hoping at that point that it will be peaceful. But I tend to blame the Earl of Work for what happened next. He was the most ambitious figure. He was involved in piracy in the channel, which was really undermining the foreign policy and took everything personally when people tried to rein him in, whatever the reason is, it really breaks down towards the end of 1459. And that's the point when Richard Duke of York and the Earl of Warwick and also the Earl of Salisbury, who's Warwick's father, Richard Duke of York's brother-in-law, so all closely related, when they bring an army again towards the king's forces.

I think they're not expecting the king to be leading the forces, actually, but he is. and when some of the Earl of Warwick's men realize this, they balk at actually fighting the king rather than the men they've been told and misleading the king and switch sides. So this is all outside Ludlow, which is where Richard Duke of York's great castle is, and realizing this has happened in the night

that not only have some of the army fled, but they've also taken their plans with them, Richard Duke of York and the Elevoirek and the Earl of Salisbury and Richard Duke of York's sons all flee the country. And shortly after that, they are tainted in Parliament. So that means that they are denied the right to life, the right to possess their lands, the right for anyone to inherit. Again, this is a thing, oh, Margaret arranged for this to happen.

Whoever was in charge would have arranged for this to happen. But at this point, they have to choose between a life in the political wilderness in exile in France forever, or coming back and actually completely pushing the king out. So I think that's the point at which there was no going back. So you've got Margaret, you've got her possibly enathematizing people. But does this kind of result in any kind of rumors or specific controversies around Margaret from the kind of Yorkist camp? There have been rumors around Margaret for almost as soon as she has her first son. Even before that, there was gossip that the Duke of Suffolk, who'd, of course, arranged the marriage

and was the most powerful figure at court at the time, was preventing her in the King's, sleeping together and that's why they didn't have children. And that's probably the kernel of what later turns up in Hall and Shakespeare suggesting that the Duke of Suffolk was sleeping with Margaret. And almost as soon as Margaret does have a son, there's gossip that actually the child isn't really her son, it's a change thing. You get the same thing with James II's unpopular life. That's quite early on. And then once the Wall of the Rose was really broken out proper, as it were, the Yorkists themselves are clearly using these stories about her son, Edward, to suggest that either the son is not her son or he's not the king's son, that she committed adultery in order to have a child,

because of course, Henry is so weak and pathetic, he can't father a child, that sort of thing. Also, there was rumours that she was sleeping with the Duke of Somerset, because by this time, Suffolk's long dead, but the Duke of Somerset is the major player. And it's a way of attacking Somerset by suggesting he's usurping the king's place in bed, But it's also a way of undermining Margaret because a woman's virtue is without that she has no authority. She can't be trusted in any way. And really also there then becomes to be an issue when her son dies. Yes, because it's like how do you hold on to this power when you're already being portrayed as some kind of harlot?

We see this over and over again. You know, I think presented with any kind of quite powerful queen, you immediately get infidelity charges, you know, whether it's Eleanor of Aquitaine or Isabel the She-Wolf or, you know, whoever, you have these things kind of thrown and bandied about. But, you know, having the heir apparent there that one can point to does sort of make a difference, yeah. Once her son's dead at the Battle of Cheatsbury, that's it. Game over. She's no longer a political player. And imagine all this like work and trying to kind of get everything right behind the scenes.

She's this pretty constantly respectable and intelligent women. And that's it. That's it. There's nothing you can do as Queen because the only thing that, that really justifies you existing is children and more specifically sons. So it's like, this just sweeps away everything. It depends on the context, actually. Richard II's queen and Bohemia is actually quite a successful queen, despite never actually having a child.

She does all the intermediary stuff, and her peacemaking, and she's respected and her patronage. And it's only after she dies that things really go downhill with Richard the second. It's not completely a failure if you can't have children, but it is really makes you very vulnerable. So, okay, here's poor Margaret. She's lost her son. And what does this mean for her in her later years?

After Ludford and the Lord's escape, they come back, Battle of Northampton, take control of Henry again, and that's the kind of rundown towards Henry being forced to declare his own son, no longer his heir, and let Richard Jew of York be his heir. That's when Margaret's in Scotland,

trying to get reinforcements, And the Duke of York leads up an army before she's even come out of Scotland, Lord's loyal to Henry have come out and killed York at the Battle of Wakefield. So it's looking good. And she comes down to London with her forces. There's a lot of propaganda about how her forces were raiding the country and pillaging. But it was winter and they needed food. So it's really difficult to know how much that's just an exaggeration.

But anyway, they are successful again in the Second Battle of St. Albans. But the people of London won't let her come into the city. So Henry was in London. He's now with her at St Albans because of her victories in Albans. So Henry and the Queen are outside, and the people of London won't let them in because they're afraid of what the army are going to do. And there's a real demonstration of the people of London's sense of who's in control here because the embassy they send out is led by three women who know Margaret.

Two of them have been part of her household and another one. she had been married to Henry's uncle, and they have this parleying that the women are really central to. And they agree that London will send food out to Margaret's army. But then the ordinary Londoners say, no, we're not sending out the food. They turn over the carts and they won't let them. So Margaret desperately needs to feed her troops. And Richard Duke of York's son, Edward, who's been in the marches in Wales, is heading over with an army. And she's got no way of feeding her troops.

and she ends up back up north. And it's the following on from that that eventually, Richard Duke of York's son, Edward, gets himself to Claude Edward VIII, comes up north and has the Battle of Tauton. That is the great deciding battle. And then Henry and Margaret have to flee to Scotland because Edward's forces were victorious.

And so Edward is king for 10 years. But all through that, Margaret has been trying to get her husband back on the throne. Initially, she's trying to rally forces in France to invade on Henry's behalf. And there's quite a few raids through the first four years of Edward's reign. He is insecure because of repeated Lancasterian invasions and various castles keep changing hands and what have you. But eventually he manages to capture Henry and put him in the tower. So he thinks he's secure. But that's only four years after that. So in 1469, the Earl of Warwick

betrays him and goes into rebellion. And the outflowing of that is eventually the Earl of Warwick ends up himself exiled in France. And a French king, Louis Xil 11th, is delighted with the chance to make mischief and persuades the Earl of Warwick and Margaret to make common cause. She has him kneeling for 15 minutes in front of her before she will allow him to stand up and say we'll make common cause. But he promises he's going to put Henry the back on the throne and he's going to lead an army into England and put Henry to sick back on the throne. In return for her, letting her son marry his daughter. She won't let the wedding happen

until he's actually done that. So she stays in France with her son and Warwick's daughter, Anne. Warwick does, as he promised, it gets back to England, and Edward IV is completely wrong-footed, not ready at all, and he flees. Warwick walks in, puts Henry back on the throne,

tries to rally other Lancasterians. Trouble is a lot of the old Lancasterians are still deeply suspicious of Warwick because he was so much their enemy for so long. But when news comes that Henry's back on the throne, Margaret allows the wedding to happen, but she's still quite anxious about coming over delays and delays, by which time Edward has managed to get support in Burgundy, and he has reinvaded back in the north of England. So by the time Margaret finally comes across the channel, lands at Weymouth, it's to learn that

very day, the Earl of Woy has been killed at the Battle of Barnet with various Lancasterian forces and that Henry has been put back in the tower. And Chukesbury is what follows that. She's there at Weymouth and she has to decide, do I go back to the safety of France? Or do I trust that there were certain Lancashrians who would never have alive with Warwick, but will ally with the Queen. Duke of Sama at the Earl of Devon are saying, now we can do this. Just for Tudors, I think, Wales with forces who are going to come and join her as well. So what she tries to do is join up the forces that these various Lancastrians have rallied, but she doesn't manage to get them all together before Edward meets her at Chupesbury.

There seems to be perhaps infighting among the Lancastrian ranks that sort of erstwhile Yorkists in with her and so forth. That possibly undermines it as well. But yes, it's a disaster at Chisbby, and that's where her son dies. Of course, she's not on the battlefield. She discreetly stays in a nunnery nearby while that's happening. But nevertheless, she's taken place. prisoner, no afterwards? Yeah, she's quickly afterwards found, taking prisoner almost a bit like a trophy in the triumphal procession to London, deeply humiliating. And the next day, it's announced

that Henry has died of pure melancholy in the town of London, which, of course, it probably wasn't at all. Everyone suspects that it was really murder. What becomes of Margaret, she's eventually ransomed back to France, no? She is, yes. So she spends several years in England. Edward gives her a pension, not a reasonable amount, I think it's £3, six shillings a week or something, which adds up over here. It's really tricky to know exactly where she is because there's mentions of her in different places. She certainly seems to spend some of her time with her old friend Alice Chaucer, Duchess of Suffolk in Oxfordshire. But she also has some connections, in fact with the Queen's household. And she's certainly in London at certain times.

She even joins actually the London Skinners Guild, which is a religious guild and they say prayers for their members. and their most illustrious members get a painting. And so there's a little painting of Margaret in her widow's weeds with her most loyal servant kneeling behind her, celebrating her having joined, and at the same time as some of the Queen's household. She's not incarcerated. She's actually got a certain amount of freedom and respectability,

but it's a bit sad. But then Edward leads his great attempt to restart the Hundred Years' War and Fight France. That fizzles out really quickly, and he makes a big deal with the French king. and as part of that he agrees to ransom Margaret back. So on the one hand, he's getting rid of this financial problem of his. And on the other hand, the French king can then make her sign over all her, not very great many, but her French possessions to him.

So the men are just tiding things up. And she ends up living in relative poverty in one of her father's castles. Hey, you know, it's one of these things where, you know, really you see her kind of not to the same extent as her husband, but subjected to sort of the same thing. There's these powerful people who are going to come in and move you about. It always makes me think a little bit of actual chess pieces, you know, and the way they're just kind of like moved about the board. And to be treated like you're just a kind of financial problem to be dealt with at the end,

you know, when she was so involved in court, and she was so involved in kind of trying to make industry happen for the country and establishing colleges, all these really important social things, then just go home to her father's castles. We're done here. You know, it's a bit anticlimactic, isn't it? Rather melancholy, I would say. Absolutely, very sad, which I think is partly why she's been picked up by so many authors

as a literary figure that embodies the wheel of fortune, the unpredictableness of life. She's such a case for that. So just thinking about that then, when we think of other quite powerful queens, I suppose, and I've already mentioned her in comparison, when you see Eleanor, Aquitaine written about. She's really disliked, you know, had the time like throughout her queenship and afterwards, you know, for quite some time, there's a lot of, you know, scandal written about her. Everyone keeps talking very seriously about how she was definitely shagging her uncle or Saladin or someone like this. But Margaret, it does seem that people

feel a bit more softly towards her, even though she is a similarly like quite powerful woman. And do you think that this is probably kind of connected to her end? I think her end does have a big impact on it. Yes. So at the time of when she's getting Henry the 6th back on the throne, that kind of period, there's some really nasty stuff being written about her and how her French men are going to destroy the very English people

and English tongue and all this kind of thing. But that's very much, Edward of the Force propaganda, he leads at that moment. And as soon as she's not a threat and they're not needing to do that, I suppose the thing with Eleanor is she's, naturally a great success because she ensures Richard the Lionheart is king. She then ensures John is king. Her line succeeds and goes on. Whereas of course Margaret is a failure in that respect. Her son doesn't succeed. But for the Tudor regime, they've got this complicated balancing act

they're playing in terms of yes, the Lancasterians were good, but the whole Wars of the Roses was a mess that we've saved you from. So in doing that, yes, they're happy to paint her as a more tragic figure. So what do you think that Margaret's life and her experience and wielding of queenship can teach us about the role of women in medieval politics? It's important, I think, to think about Margaret in relationship with all the other women that she worked with as well, actually, because I mentioned the duchesses that she was writing to and saying, make sure if your Duke does what you should, there's a great letter that

Richard Duke of York's wife, Sessley, writes to Margaret. In fact, this is the first evidence really of Margaret getting involved in national politics is this letter from Sessaly saying, could you persuade the king to let Richard Duke of York come back on the World Council? So we've got all these little hints and touches of the fact that there are lots of powerful, capable, able women. Most of them standing behind their husbands, so you barely see them. Because Margaret having a much weaker husband, getting to overshadow him, it's more obvious. But she's a gateway into seeing a lot of other powerful women, too.

And I think one of the key things is that although we have all this literature in the middle ages about how women are supposed to behave, silence and staying where you're meant to be and confined and indoors and not military and all that kind of thing, the reality is different. And that's true at all levels of society. So Margaret shows us that just as at any period in history, really, women don't necessarily fall into the stereotypes. And it's all about personality. Thank you so much for listening. you very, very much to Joanna for joining me.

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