Queens of the Age of Chivalry

The book by writer and historian Alison Weir "Queens of the Age of Chivalry" is dedicated to one of the most romantic and tumultuous eras in European history. Its heroines are five queens of the Plantagenet dynasty, queens of England from 1299 to 1399, whose real lives bore little resemblance to a courtly romance, yet were no less full of dramatic stories.

During this period of medieval history, when notions of chivalry glorified nobility, military glory, and courtly love in aristocratic circles, England was shaken one after another, and sometimes all at once, by events of truly catastrophic scale: the overthrow of two kings, the Hundred Years' War, the epidemic of the "black death", peasant uprisings, and the increasingly evident doom of the feudal system… All this inevitably led to social and political upheavals.

What was the place of women in this "great" history? Alison Weir tells the story of five queen consorts from that legendary yet brutal era - five women of the highest social status that was possible at the time.

Margarita of France was twenty years old when she became the second wife of the sixty-year-old King Edward I. Isabella of France, known in history by the nickname the French She-Wolf, overthrew her husband Edward II and ruled England with her lover. In contrast to her, Philippa of Hainaut, the wife of the deposed King Edward III, was beloved by the people. Anne of Bohemia was the wife of Richard II but died young and childless. Isabella of Valois became Richard's second wife when she was only six years old and was caught up in events that led to her husband's violent overthrow. How did these queens live and die, how did they wield their power, and how did they cope with war, betrayal, and tragedies?..