Queen Camila and previous Queens

I was listening to a phone-in programme, in which a caller was questioning whether Camila should be called “Queen”. She is not our sovereign, but neither were most of the previous Queens. We have had only six sovereign Queens, the last being Queen Elizabeth II. But the wife of the King has always been called “Queen….”. We have had 38 of these Queens up to the accession of our current King. Many were very colourful and powerful characters. There were many happy marriages, despite the pressures of state.
These Queens were normally from royal or noble houses-e.g. from Spain, France, Germany, Denmark, Scotland or Portugal. They were groomed to become Queens or wives of nobles. They were educated women and had the confidence going with their rank.
Their main duty was to produce heirs, especially males. It was expected that Queens should become pregnant every year.

Queen Eleanor of Castile, the wife of Edward I, produced 12 legitimate children for him. His second wife produced another 3, whereby he holds the record for the largest number of legitimate children.
Some of these Queens were powerful characters. Queen Matilda, the wife of William the Conqueror, acted as his regent, whenever he had to go to Normandy to attend to business there. The nobles had to do what Matilda told them. Like William she was an illegitimate child and must have come up the hard way.
Much has been written about Eleanor of Aquitaine, the feisty wife of Henry II. She managed to divorce the King of France, and then marry the much younger Henry, then the count of Anjou. She had lovers, including allegedly Saladin, the Saracen conqueror of Jerusalem when she was on a Crusade. She also conspired against King Henry to replace him with one of her sons, Richard and John.
The wife of Richard the Lionheart, Queen Berengaria, had the distinction of being the only of England never to have set foot there.
The marriage of Edward I and Queen Eleanor was a love match, which might explain the number of children. She died near Grantham when Edward was up North. He was so devastated by her death that he had a cross placed at every location where her body stayed on the journey to London, the last place being called Charing Cross. There was also one at Banbury, hence the song about it. The Londoners could never quite manage to say, “the Infanta of Castile”, which was Eleanor’s title before her marriage, and it became corrupted to “the Elephant and Castle”, giving yet another name to part of London as well as to many inns.
There were other Queens who acted as regents or in other cases tried to get the King removed. I may tell their stories in a future blog.
Ironically, the husbands of sovereign Queens were not called “King”, but “Prince Consort” or “Duke of Edinburgh” etc. The husband of Mary I was a King, but of Spain.

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