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What queens would England have had if firstborn daughters, not firstborn sons, had inherited the throne? We may think of princesses as dutiful, marital conveniences to build alliances, wearing long flowing dresses, but the eldest daughters of our kings have been very different. Political intriguers. Abducted nuns who demanded divorces. Murderers. Our princesses have been mothers willing to risk anything for their children, wives who followed their husbands to the very ends of earth, and spinsters who demanded their intellectual and societal freedom. This book explores what it meant to be royal, how sons came to be valued higher than daughters, and just how England might have looked under a royal matriarchy. The politicians we lost, the masterminds we see negotiating nunneries not armies, the personalities shining brilliantly even hundreds of years later: the Queens who should have been. Let's meet them.
What queens would England have had if firstborn daughters, not firstborn sons, had inherited the throne?
We may think of princesses as dutiful, marital conveniences to build alliances, wearing long flowing dresses, but the eldest daughters of our kings have been very different.
Political intriguers. Abducted nuns who demanded divorces. Murderers.
Our princesses have been mothers willing to risk anything for their children, wives who followed their husbands to the very ends of earth, and spinsters who demanded their intellectual and societal freedom.
This book explores what it meant to be royal, how sons came to be valued higher than daughters, and just how England might have looked under a royal matriarchy. The politicians we lost, the masterminds we see negotiating nunneries not armies, the personalities shining brilliantly even hundreds of years later: the Queens who should have been.
Let's meet them.