Ruling Queens of the Twelfth Century: Sex

Posted by Paula Stiles Aug 31, 2006

Sex. Traditional historians frequently portray female rulers as brought low by this basic instinct. Even revisionist and feminist historians see sex as a stumbling block to power for women. In the first instance, the fault lies in the women themselves--the "weaker vessel". In the second instance, a patriarchal society refuses to accept female power except in very limited and traditional ways.

But the queens that we review this month not only overcame this (at least, to a certain extent), they also used it. Sibylla of Jerusalem insisted on keeping her own choice of husband, Guy, against the objections of her nobility. Eleanor was accused of numerous liaisons, some of them preposterous (Saladin), some incestuous (her uncle Raymond) and all of them adulterous. We'll never know the truth of these rumors, but an interesting thing is that Eleanor was too powerful as a ruler in her own right to be shut away by her husbands. Oh, they tried--but it rebounded badly on them both and Eleanor outlived them both.

Matilda was faithful to her husband, but like Sibylla, faced considerable hostility because of him. She didn't choose him, but she didn't reject him for the sake of her throne, either. In the end, she decided to go for both.

Finally, Urraca, the subject of this week's article, survived one husband, divorced and fought another one and moved on to a series of lovers, even bearing a child with one of them. Unkind gossip attributed her death in 1126 to childbirth. But gossip did not prevent her from ruling in her own right until then, even though her behavior, like Eleanor's, was scandalous in the extreme by medieval standards. Like Eleanor, she carried herself like a ruling king, not a subservient queen. And she got away with it.