Group items tagged

historical biography England in the Viking Age The first full biography of Queen Emma In 1002, a beautiful eighteen-year-old named Emma, the half-Danish sister of the Duke of Normandy and the descendant of the Vikings, sailed to England to be the queen of Ethelred the Unready, who needed a Norman alliance against Viking raiders. The political and marital career on which Emma embarked was to be unique for an English queen. Before it was over she would have married two kings, Ethelred and the Danish Canute, and would have given birth to two more, Edward the Confessor and Hardecanute.

Helen Castor and The Women Who Ruled England Before Elizabeth. This segment of the BBC 4's Women's Hour radio program was broadcast on 4 October 2010. In Chapter 4 of the program, Jane Garvey interviews Dr. Helen Castor, Fellow in History at Sidney Sussex College, University of Cambridge, about her new book, She-Wolves. From the synopsis by the publisher, Faber 6 Faber: "In 1553, England was about to experience the 'monstrous regiment' - the unnatural rule - of a woman. But female rule in England also had a past. Four hundred years before Edward's death, Matilda, daughter of Henry I and granddaughter of William the Conquerer, came tantalisingly close to securing her hold on the power of the crown. And between the 12th and the 15th centuries three more exceptional women - Eleanor of Aquitaine, Isabella of France, and Margaret of Anjou - discovered, as queens consort and dowager, how much was possible if the presumptions of male rule were not confronted so explicitly."

In 1176 a delegation from Sicily came to the English court, asking for Joan's hand in marriage on behalf of William II of Sicily. Joan's parents agreed to the proposal, and the betrothal was confirmed. On the 27th of August, Joan, together with a large group of people consisting of ladies-in-waiting, knights, clergy and various retainers, laid out to sail for Sicily. The trip began with the short stretch from Winchester to Southampton, escorted by the archbishops of Canterbury and Rouen, the bishop of Evreux and her father's brother Hamelane. Then Prince Henry, her oldest brother, accompanied her across the Channel and into France to Poitiers. There she was met by another brother, Richard, who escorted her through the Duchy of Aquitaine, across the allied County of Toulouse to Saint Gilles Port, where Bishop Richard Palmer welcomed her in the name of the King of Sicily. Twenty-five Sicilian ships awaited the young princess to sail her to her husband-to-be. The last part of the journey left Joan seasick, but she finally arrived at the end of January and married William at Palermo Cathedral on the 13th of February 1177 at the tender age of eleven while her husband was twenty-three! She was crowned, and was now queen consort.

Dr David Starkey's complete history of the British Monarchy, which reveals the epic and bloody stories of our Kings and Queens and charts the course of the oldest surviving political institution in Europe

Dr David Starkey's complete history of the British Monarchy, which reveals the epic and bloody stories of our Kings and Queens and charts the course of the oldest surviving political institution in Europe

Though Queen Melisende's Psalter is probably not the earliest manuscript preserved from the Crusader Kingdom, it represents Crusading illumination of the early period at its best. From details within the psalter we know its place of origin to be the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, and we can also date it fairly accurately between 1131 and 1143.

"Edward II was born on 25 April 1284 as the youngest child of Edward I and his first wife Eleanor of Castile, and succeeded his father as king of England at the age of twenty-three on 7 July 1307.  On 25 January 1308 at Boulogne in northern France, Edward married Isabella, only surviving daughter of the reigning king of France, Philip IV, and the late Joan I, queen of Navarre in her own right.  Isabella was only twelve at the time of her wedding, born probably in the second half of 1295.  The couple's betrothal had been arranged all the way back in June 1299, when Edward was fifteen and Isabella probably only three."

timeline and family tree of British Monarchy from Alfred the Great

"Tests on descendants of last Plantagenet king point to 'false paternity event' and reveal he may have been blue-eyed blond"