scrutiny as the marriage of Isabella II of Spain.
In the European Middle Ages, power and patrimony went hand in hand and
political society had a manifest horror of any possibility that the wife of
a male powerholder might give birth to a son not fathered by her husband.
Medieval literature abounds in images of adulterous queens who betray not
only their marriage vows, but also symbolically challenge the integrity of
their husbands' rule. Significantly, however, very few of these fictional
adulterous medieval queens gave birth to sons. See the magnificent study by
Peggy McCracken, *The Romance of Adultery: Queenship and Sexual
Transgression in Old French Literature* (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1998).
I cite a few known historical adulterous medieval consorts in "Damned If She
Didn't and Damned When She Did: Bodies, Babies and Bastards in the Lives of
Two Queens of France," in *Eleanor of Aquitaine: Lord and Lady,* ed. Bonnie
Wheeler and John C. Parsons (New York: Palgrave World Publishing, 2002),
esp. note 27 (on pp. 290-91). Only one of these queens actually gave birth
to a son of disputed paternity--the Kievan-born wife of an early
12th-century king of Hungary. She was caught in adultery & at once sent
back to her father; her husband denied paternity of the son, Boris, to whom
she subsequently gave birth. Boris later claimed the Hungarian throne, but
was refused by the Hungarian magnates and the late king's cousin assumed the
crown.
For political reasons, medieval queens were often accused of adultery
without foundation. This was the case particularly with Eleanor of
Aquitaine herself, whose many alleged love affairs were created to justify
her divorce from Louis VII of France, to undermine the moral and political
authority of Henry II of England, or to challenge the legitimacy of her
sons by Henry and thereby undermine their claims to the throne of England.
Adultery charges against Queen Isabeau of France in the early 15th century
originated with the English in an attempt to bastardize her son, Charles
VII, & eliminate him as a counter-claimant to the French throne against
Henry VI of England.
In 1314, as is well known, 2 daughters-in-law of King Philip IV committed
adultery with Norman knights who were brothers. The daughters were
summarily imprisoned; the eldest son's wife died in prison shortly
afterward, in mysterious circumstances, and the wife of the third son agreed
to be divorced before taking the veil. This affair had a direct impact on
the histories of both France and England because one of the culprits was the
wife of Philip's eldest son, later Louis X. She had given birth to a
daughter before the scandal became known, but the paternity of that child
always remained in doubt and it was partly for this reason that that
daughter's claims to the French throne were denied in 1316 after Louis X's
posthumous son John I died less than a week after birth. This was the real
origin of the custom of barring women from the French throne and hence of
the Hundred Years' War--the so-called "Salic Law" was invented by French
legalists only in the 14th century to legitimize the Valois claim to the
French throne. (The wife of Philip's second son, also Philip, was
temporarily imprisoned because she had known of the adultery but had not
reported it; she was eventually permitted to rejoin her husband and became
queen of France when Philip V ascended the throne in 1316.)
The point here is that adulterous consorts in the Middle Ages, and the swift
punishment of those who were guilty of such transgressions, may have warned
many aristocratic women away from such dangers as these. Probably fewer
male blood lines were tainted in those centuries than has been the case in
later centuries (see, for example, Antony Wagner's remarks on the widely
adulterous practices of the English upper classes in the 18th and 19th
centuries. Among the consequences was the little-remarked likelihood that
Clementine Hozier, wife of Sir Winston Churchill, was [along with all her
siblings] fathered not by her mother's husband but by the head of the
Mitfords, thus nearly relating Sir Winston by marriage to Sir Oswald
Moseley, Bt., head of the British Nazi party and husband of the Hon. Diana
Mitford. Small world.)
Regards
John P.
From: jdallen2000@yahoo.com (James Dow Allen)
To: GEN-MEDIEVAL-L@rootsweb.com
Subject: Re: OT: Alphonso XII's inbreeding
Date: 5 Nov 2004 22:34:54 -0800
carmi47@msn.com ("John Parsons") wrote in message
news:<BAY11-F15N59C4Vifda0000fc22@hotmail.com>...
.... Queen
Isabella... having divested herself of the odious husband nevertheless
became officially *enceinte* at the end of 1849. Queen Victoria wrote:
'It is a very good thing & no one will be inclined to cavil as to who
was
the *real father* considering her very peculiar & distressing
marriage--for which *she* poor young creature is in no wise to
blame....'"
Thanks for the education! How common are such wrong but "official"
pedigrees among nobility/royalty?
James