Women as Regents

 As I have noted previously, medieval aristocratic women had far more authority and ability to make major decisions than is often assumed.  One of the clearest examples of this is the role of powerful women as regents.

A regent is someone who rules, specifically in the name of someone else, awaiting the time when that person becomes an adult or comes back from far away.  If the lord of a castle headed off on Crusade, for example, his wife would normally act as regent until his return.  If the lord died and his children, his heirs or heiresses, were not yet old enough to rule in their own right, their mother would rule until they came of age.

The same was true of counts and dukes, even kings.  Marie de France, a French princess who married the count of Champagne, probably ruled longer than he did.  Adela of Blois, a member of the English royal family, similarly brought up her children and ran the county of Blois during her husband's repeated absences.  Sometimes powerful women ran the county for several generations, arranging the marriages of children and grandchildren.  Mathilda, countess of Nevers in the thirteenth century, guided her daughters. granddaughters, and great-granddaughters into advantageous marriages.

Eleanor of Aquitaine, duchess of Aquitaine, then queen of France, then queen of England during the final two-thirds of the twelfth century, did not keep having retired to a nunnery prevent her from emerging to make major decisions for her children or grandchildren or for that matter for England as a whole.

One of the most powerful regents was Blanche of Castile, queen of France (she was originally from Spain, hence called "of Castile").  Whe her husband Louis VIII died in 1226 after a short reign (you never hear much about Louis VIII, do you), she took over running the kingdom.  She proposed her oldest son as king of England (the English refused the offer), and kept busy for ten years as regent.  During this time, her oldest son, Louis IX, grew to adulthood and married.  Blanche was not at all happy about this, especially since it seemed to be a very happy marriage -- his wife was Marguerite, of the family of counts of Provence.  The story at the time was that Louis and Marguerite had to sneak around behind Blanche's back.  Finally after ten years she allowed him to start acting fully as king and husband.

Most of the women I mention above may barely have met their husbands before their wedding day, and often came from a different part of Europe, even speaking a different language.  But when they became regents they took a deep breath and did what needed to be done.

© C. Dale Brittain 2024

For more on medieval women, see my ebook, Positively Medieval:  Life and Society in the Middle Ages.  Also available in paperback.