She Wolves: The Notorious Queens of Medieval England

A history of the "bad girls" of England’s medieval royal dynasties, this book covers the queens who earned themselves the reputation of being somehow notorious. Some of them are well known and have been the subject of biographies—Eleanor of Aquitaine, Emma of Normandy, Isabella of France, and Anne Boleyn, for example—while others have not been written about outside academic journals. The appeal of these notorious queens, apart from their shared taste for witchcraft, murder, adultery, and incest, is that, because they were notorious, they attracted a great deal of attention during their lifetimes. She Wolves reveals much about the role of the medieval queen and the evolution of the role that led, ultimately, to the reign of Elizabeth I, and a new concept of queenship.