ABSTRACT
Of the many ways in which the study of medieval queens and queenship differs from that of kings and kingship, among the more significant is that while the king swore a coronation oath that defined his obligations to the realm and accepted oaths of fealty in return, his wife neither gave nor received such promises. The lack of constitutive oaths for the queen put no formal restraints upon her relationships with either the king or the realm. From her standpoint this left her power usefully undefined, but it also left unlimited the grounds from which her subjects observed, praised, and criticized a woman now established in a most intimate relationship to the center of magisterial authority in the realm. A vast range of expectation, experience and expression thus informed society's definition, construction and observation of the queens office; limits on her access to, and exercise of, power were implied through a like variety of means. To fathom the processes by which this came about, the modern scholar must sift a commensurate amount of richly varied material. I have elsewhere examined the imagery of queenship in medieval England, first in the rituals that displayed the queen to the realm and at the same time steered her toward informal arenas and then examined in the record evidence illustrating popular reactions to the image created by her ritual behavior.1 This essay will examine literary sources' imagined scenarios to see whether such works support or dispute conclusions from that earlier research, especially those on the relationships between queenly maternity and intercession.
