Long Live the Queens. Emma Marriott

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СКАЧАТЬ children. It also proved to be an effective ruling partnership: Matilda witnessed countless charters and presided with William in court when he heard lawsuits, and they both founded and sponsored churches and religious institutions across the duchy.

With such a capable ally at his side, William was able to turn his attention to further horizons, namely that of the Crown of England which, he maintained, Edward the Confessor had promised him. As he built his immense fleet in preparation for invasion, Matilda secretly outfitted a ship, the Mora, and stood at its prow as it sailed into harbour. So astonished and thrilled was William that he used it as his flagship (as shown in the Bayeux Tapestry – an embroidered cloth depicting events leading up to the Norman Conquest of England). Before leaving for England, William solemnly invested Matilda with the regency of Normandy, safeguarding to her the protection of the duchy in the name of their fifteen-year-old eldest son, Robert.

      These were turbulent times in Normandy and William’s absence could well have prompted others to try to seize control of the French duchy. Despite this, there were no major uprisings or rebellions during William’s leave and it was said that Matilda presided over the court and government with great prudence and skill, William of Poitiers conceding the ‘government was carried on smoothly’ by a woman of ‘masculine wisdom’ (‘feminine wisdom’ being deemed pretty much non-existent back then).

      Across the Channel, William had by Christmas Day 1066 secured the crown of England, although it was over a year before Matilda would visit his new realm. At around Easter of 1068, she landed at Dover, where she was met by her king and a company of nobles. They escorted her to the palace of Westminster and on 11 May she was anointed with holy oil and adorned with a crown, ring and sceptre at an elaborate ceremony at Westminster Abbey. In England, queen consorts had been crowned with their kings since 973, but Matilda was the first to have a separate coronation, in a revised service which proclaimed that she shared royal power with the King, almost as if she were a queen regnant. It was a coronation that, unlike any service before, boosted her power and prestige as queen and secured that of her successors.

With such holy honours bestowed on Matilda, she would have been aware of her weighty responsibilities as Queen. As wife to the King, she was expected to support and love her husband, produce healthy heirs, and embody the virtues of piety and virtue by patronising religious institutions and giving to charity. As England’s queen, her gifts to religious houses are well documented – ‘while the victorious arms of her illustrious spouse subdued all things before him, she was indefatigable at alleviating distress in every shape, and redoubled her alms’. Matilda was also a great patron of painters, architects and poets in England, bringing Flemish artisans to the country and employing English seamstresses who were famed for their skills. (It was once wrongly thought she commissioned the Bayeux Tapestry, on which she makes no appearance.)

      As a medieval queen, her role was also a political one, requiring her to foster good relations at court, whilst also mediate and smooth over family and dynastic disputes. As in Normandy, Matilda gave judgements and heard pleas jointly with William in English courts and he gave her the authority to hear lawsuits over land disputes, as mentioned several times in the Domesday Book. She witnessed many royal charters, some jointly with William, her name appearing below his but above their sons (although, as neither could write, they marked their names with a symbol, she with a Jerusalem cross).

As William battled to consolidate his rule in England, particularly in the troublesome north of the country, it was said that a heavily pregnant Matilda travelled some 200 miles to be with her husband and that their fourth child Henry was born just south of York in late 1068. The subsequent year saw further resistance in the north, culminating in William ordering a violent annihilation of entire villages and the burning of crops and herds. During this tumultuous time, he sent Matilda back to Normandy, where she again ruled in William’s stead, bringing up their children, issuing charters and attending Councils of State. In England, William continued to establish his rule, bestowing land and titles to Norman barons and encouraging them to raise fortified castles across the kingdom. By 1072, the conquest was more or less complete, largely at the expense of the Saxon population, who were savagely oppressed by the new Norman aristocracy.

      In 1074, Matilda was briefly again made Queen Regent of Normandy, the same year that she and William lost their second son, Richard, in a hunting accident. In 1076, trouble flared between William and their eldest son, Robert, on whom Matilda doted but who proved a disappointment to his father, his short stature, ‘pot belly’ and fat legs earning him the unflattering moniker of Robert ‘Curthose’. Officially, Robert was Duke of Normandy, but he was frustrated by his father not granting him full autonomy, a resentment that broke out into open hostilities in 1078 as the King fought a three-week siege against Robert, during which father and son actually fought, with the King’s horse killed and his hand wounded. Not unsurprisingly, the feud greatly distressed Matilda, and it was soon discovered that she had been secretly sending Robert large sums of money, much to the fury of William. When he confronted Matilda, she stood her ground, pleading maternal devotion, for which William eventually forgave her: father and son were formally reconciled in 1080.

      By the early 1080s, Matilda’s health was beginning to suffer and she died in November 1083, around the age of fifty-two. After thirty-three years of marriage, William was apparently inconsolable, some saying from thereon ‘he abandoned pleasure of every kind.’ Matilda was buried at the convent of the Holy Trinity at Caen. Her passing was mourned throughout France, and it was claimed she was ‘wept for by the English and the Normans for many years’. She had proved herself a most able ruler, one who wielded great power and influence in Normandy and England, who was by turns an ambitious consort, a wise counsel, a capable leader and doting mother – a queen who deserves much greater acclaim, for being both a powerful ally to William the Conqueror and ruler in her own right.

Wu Zetian

      Born: 624 CE

      Died: 705 CE

Some fifty miles northwest of the modern Chinese city of Xi’an, deep within Mount Liang, is the tomb of Empress Wu Zetian. There lies the remains of an Empress of China who ruled for more than fifty years during the Tang dynasty (610–907 CE), the only woman in 3,000 years of Chinese history to have sat on the Chinese throne as ruler in her own right.

      And yet the great memorial tablet that stands at the entrance to her tomb, erected during her lifetime so that her successors could compose the usual epitaph proclaiming her worthiness as empress, remains starkly blank. By contrast, the tablet that immortalises her husband, Emperor Gaozong, buried in the same mausoleum, carries the usual inscription recording his deeds as emperor, as composed by Wu Zetian to a husband whose death preceded hers by some twenty years.

      The lack of inscription on Wu’s memorial, the only one of its kind, was clearly an attempt to obscure any record of Wu Zetian’s rule; she died and lies near to her husband but any other details are best forgotten. The omission also reflects how she was perceived by people around her and successors – in particular the Confucian hierarchy who deeply disapproved of her and the idea of any women having genuine power, deemed as unnatural as having a ‘hen crow like a rooster at daybreak’.

Despite attempts to remove her from record, Wu Zetian is now an immensely famous figure in China – the subject of books, films and TV shows – although she is still largely unknown in the West. Much of her fame, however, rests on her startling propensity for ruthlessness: murdering female rivals, elder statesmen who opposed her, and even members of her own family so that she could wield supreme power. Her image is that of a murderous megalomaniac, almost as if СКАЧАТЬ