Between Queen Regnant and Queen Consort: Berenguela of Castile, Beatrice of Swabia and the Nuances of Queenship
- Autores: Ana Echevarría Arsuaga
- Localización: A Plural Peninsula: Studies in Honour of Professor Simon Barton / coord. por Antonella Liuzzo Scorpo, 2023, ISBN 9789004425460, págs. 435-456
- Idioma: inglés
- Enlaces
- Dialnet Métricas: 1 Cita
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Resumen
Following the path of Simon Barton’s “Las mujeres nobles y el poder en los reinos de León y Castilla en el siglo XII: Un estudio preliminar,” published in Studia Historica. Historia medieval, this study will examine the ways in which two powerful Queens, Berenguela of Castile and her daughter-in-law Beatrice of Swabia, wielded power in the kingdom under Fernando III (r. 1217–1252). Obscured by Berenguela, queen on her own right, Beatrice has often been forgotten other than to justify her son Alfonso X’s claims to the Germanic Empire. An in-depth study of her role in the kingdom and her entourage helps understand how the functions of a regnant queen mother and those of a queen consort interacted in this peculiar period for Castilian queenship. Given that it was Berenguela herself who negotiated the marriage of Fernando III with Beatrice, as a continuation of a diplomatic game that started with her own engagement to Conrad, son of Emperor Frederick I, the choice of a German princess and the arrival of the Teutonic knights on her trail must have had a strong impact on the politics of the kingdom, and on the royal household.
