Matilda II: The Forgotten Queen

Joanna Arman

ago 2023 · Pen and Sword History

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The wife of King Henry I and the mother of the Empress Maud is a woman and a Queen forgotten to history. She is frequently conflated with her daughter or her mother-in-law. She was born the daughter of the King of Scotland and an Anglo-Saxon princess. Her name was Edith, but her name was changed to Matilda at the time of her marriage.

The Queen who united the line of William the Conqueror with the House of Wessex lived during an age marked by transition and turbulence. She married Henry in the first year of the 12th century and for the eighteen years of her rule aided him in reforming the administrative and legal system due to her knowledge of languages and legal tradition. Together she and her husband founded a series of churches and arranged a marriage for their daughter to the Holy Roman Emperor. Matilda was a woman of letters to corresponded with Kings, Popes, and prelates, and was respected by them all.

Matilda’s greatest legacy was continuity: she united two dynasties and gave the Angevin Kings the legitimacy they needed so much. It was through her that the Empress Matilda and Henry II were able to claim the throne. She was the progenitor of the Plantagenet Kings, but the war and conflict which followed the death of her son William led to a negative stereotyping by Medieval Chroniclers. Although they saw her as pious, they said she was a runaway nun and her marriage to Henry was cursed.

This book provides a much-needed re-evaluation of Edith/Matilda’s role and place in the history of the Queens of England.

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Joanna Arman gained her love of Medieval History from childhood trips to castles, cathedrals, and Joust Weeks at Arundel Castles, before reading the Venerable Bede and watching Shakespeare’s history play as a graduate of the University of Winchester where she obtained a BA Degree in Medieval History quickly followed by a Masters.She has a special interest in Medieval Women: not just Queens and noblewomen but also those lower down the social order, such as female landholders, businesswomen and female plaintiffs in marriage cases. Her first book was a biography of Aethelflaed, Lady of the Mercians which was published by Amberley in 2017.She lives in Sussex, the county where she grew up, a stone’s throw away from the South Downs.