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Telling Tales of Adulterous Queens in Medieval England: From Olympias of Macedonia to

Joanna Laynesmith

In celebration of her controversial marriage to VI of England, in 1445, Queen Margaret of received a sumptuous codex of chivalric treatises and romances.1 It was both a guide to expectations of English queenship and a tool for her anticipated role in raising an heir to Eng- land’s throne. It was also an ironically apt gift for a queen who would later be the subject of a variety of tales of sexual misconduct. The first text, and the most lavishly illustrated, is the Roman d’Alexandre. Strikingly its frontispiece is a full page illustration focussed on Alexander’s legendary father, Nectanebus. According to the romance, this Egyptian prince and magician had enchanted and seduced Alexander’s mother, the previ- ously sterile Queen Olympias of Macedonia. As Michel-André Bossy has commented “this conniving seducer of a queen is an odd figure to thrust before royal newlyweds”.2 The image must soon have become embarrassing as Margaret failed to produce a child until eight years into their marriage, provoking criticism that she was not fit to be a queen and subsequently rumours about the parentage of her son.3 Tales of Margaret’s adultery were to become more elaborate and more common as her husband’s hold on power collapsed. Henry VI was the third of six English kings to lose their thrones in the last two centuries of the Middle Ages (he, of course, lost it twice). Edward II and Richard II preceded him while Edward IV, Edward V and Richard III were to follow. Every one of these occasions is associated with tales of queenly adultery. This article will examine why this connection between adultery and deposition was so persistent and what it might tell us about the late medieval ideologies of kingship and queenship. It begins with the earliest deposition and the only certain adulteress: Isabella of . In her case

1 BL MS Royal 15.E.VI. 2 Bossy, “Arms and the Bride”, 246. It is possible that the manuscript was initially com- missioned by John Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, for himself but adapted part way through its construction so that he could present it to the new queen. This might explain the unfortu- nate choice of frontispiece for the first romance. 3 Laynesmith, Last Medieval Queens, 131–39. 196 joanna laynesmith it is the striking lack of contemporary tales of her adultery that is puzzling. This provokes questions about the meaning of tales of queenly adultery. These will be considered in the light of stories of some of Isabella’s pre- decessors who had been accused of adultery and of the subsequent use of adultery slanders during the Wars of the Roses.

Isabella of France: Tales Not Told

In June 1326 King Edward II was entertained at Rochester by the city’s bishop, Hamo de Hethe.4 The bishop and the king were discussing the absent Queen Isabella who was living in . She refused to return to her husband on the grounds that she feared the power of Hugh de Spencer the younger (her husband’s and perhaps his lover). According to the contemporary Vita Edwardi Secundi Isabella dressed in “robes of widow- hood and mourning”, vowing to this up until she was “avenged on” de Spencer.5 The widow’s weeds were not the only indication that she considered her marriage over. Isabella had also begun a liaison with a rebel English , Roger Mortimer of Wigmore, who had fled to France after escaping from the . Back in Rochester Bishop Hamo and the king were exchanging tales of queens whose stories shed light on the current royal crisis. Edward referred to a story in which “a certain queen who did not wish to obey the com- mand of her lord king had been deposed from her royal rank”.6 Clearly Edward was now considering drastic responses to his wife’s voluntary exile. The identification of the queen in Edward’s story is crucial to under- standing the king’s perception of his situation. Historians have habitually assumed that he meant the West Saxon queen Eadburh whose (probably apocryphal) tale first appears in Asser’s Life of Alfred.7 By the later Middle Ages the popular story of Eadburh was that she was consumed with jeal- ousy over her husband’s affection for a young man at his court. She tried to poison this favourite but accidentally killed the king instead, prompting the West Saxons not to accord her successors the title of queen lest they too become overmighty consorts. She fled to France where Charlemagne made

4 Wharton, Anglia Sacra, I, 365. 5 Childs, Vita Edwardi Secundi, 243. 6 The source is the Historia Roffensis, the chronicle of the cathedral priory at Rochester, which may have been written by a witness to the conversation. Wharton, Anglia Sacra, I, 365. 7 Haines, Edward II, 170; Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred the Great, 71, 235–36.