After reading Alison Weir’s biography of Katherine Swynford and one of her novels, I was pretty keen to read more and when I saw Queens of the Conquest going for about SGD8, I could not resist it. And yes, I will be letting you know if I get a book at a bargain because how can I not?

Queens of the Conquest is a biography of five medieval English queens: Matilda of Flanders, Matilda of Scotland, Adeliza of Louvain, Matilda of Boulogne, and Empress Maud. In a way, this book resembles She-Wolves by Helen Castor, which is also a biography of multiple women, just that it focuses on a different time period.

Since the British History Podcast has just covered the death of Cnut, we’re about to enter the reign of Matilda of Flanders and I actually had a pretty good idea of the background to this. It made understanding the book a bit easier, since I knew what era it was talking about, even if I didn’t know much about the people being talked about.

It was a pleasant surprise to read about how these Norman queens (queens of Normandy and England) took an active role in ruling. While they were expected to be seen as paragons of chastity, they could, and did witness charters, could rule as regent when their husbands were away, and were expected to help influence the king when necessary. Although they weren’t free to act independently (see: the reaction towards Empress Maud vs Matilda of Boulogne, wife of Maud’s rival Stephen), they could and did exercise power, sometimes in rather obvious ways.

I really liked the clear way that Weir writes. While we don’t have much information on the Queens (for example, they tend to be referred to as beautiful regardless of how they looked like), she manages to put a clear picture that links the five women together and gave me a new view of medieval England. I always had the impression that it was male-dominated, but here we see that women did play a significant role in the upper echelons of society.

Overall, I would definitely recommend this book to people who are fans of English history or who want to read more about strong female rulers. I’m glad I bought this and I’m sure I’m going to be rereading this in the future.