The Duty of the English Medieval Princess

24. Alienor_Pembroke Leicester — (public domain)

Guest post by Sharon Bennett Connolly

From dutiful daughters to runaway nuns, from empresses to rebels. The life of a medieval princess was, perhaps, not as predictable as we have been led to believe. At times, it is true, they were married off to a foreign prince, never to see England or their family again. But we can count the number of girls who that happened to be on one hand. Which is quite remarkable, given the distances and pace of travel in medieval times, when a horse could cover around 20 miles a day and a horse litter, the popular form of travel for noble women, would cover far less than that.

Some princesses even visited home after they married or were visited by members of their family; some never even left England.

Marrying your daughter to a prince in a distant land and never hearing from her again was not the purpose of royal marriages. It was never in the king’s interest to abandon his daughter or sister once she was married abroad. Royal daughters were raised to be a personal and diplomatic link to their homeland. They were the means of keeping communications open when all other options failed; private letters were used to warn against treachery or prevent a breakdown in diplomatic relations.

Some did escape this destiny. For instance, a number of William the Conqueror’s daughters became nuns. Cecilia had that life decided for her from a young age, but Adelida appears to have chosen this course after a number of failed marriage proposals. Perhaps she had had enough of the royal marriage market? King Stephen’s daughter, Mary, was also destined for the Church, with her parents even founding a religious house for her. Kidnapped for her royal blood and forced into marriage, she would return to the convent after becoming a mother. The scandal was not of her making, unlike Gunhild, the daughter of King Harold, who seems to have had a rather lax attitude to marriage and relationships; a woman before her time – by about 1,000 years!

One English princess went far from home, into Kyivan Rus. King Harold’s oldest daughter, Gytha, came from a different society and generation. The Godwin family had strong Scandinavian ties, and it would have been natural for Gytha and her brothers to look for shelter and a future within that sphere, which stretched all the way to the court of the Grand Princes of Kyiv, as far away from the conquering Normans as possible.

Following the Norman Conquest, England’s foreign policy shifted. Royal daughters were married into European countries that would benefit England, those with close geographic and cultural links.

While English kings married French princesses, and Scottish kings married English princesses, the reverse happened rarely, if ever. Only one Scottish princess, Matilda of Scotland, married an English king, Henry I. And no early medieval English princess married a French king or an heir to the French throne. The closest we came to it was Blanche of Castile, granddaughter of Henry II and niece of King John, who married the future Louis VIII. With John having no legitimate daughter at the time, he had to be creative and reach out to his wider family for a suitable princess to cement the fragile peace between him and Philip II of France.

Although no early medieval English princess became a queen of France, that is not to say English princesses did not marry Frenchmen. It is, perhaps, a clear indication of the animosity of Anglo-French relations in medieval times that kings of England were far happier to marry their daughters to the counts and dukes of the many semi-autonomous regions of France, such as Brittany, Toulouse and Blois; regions that challenged and stalled the expansion of the kingdom of France itself. The marriages of daughters into Germany, the Low Countries and Spain also served the policy of containing England’s biggest rival within its borders and preventing expansion into territories that could challenge England’s trading routes and sphere of influence.

Royal women journeyed great distances to marry. Empress Matilda is, perhaps, the most famous, but also Joanna Plantagenet, Henry II’s daughter and Richard I’s sister, and Isabella, Henry III’s sister, travelled further than most of the English princesses. While Empress Matilda remained close to her family through letters, there may also have been a meeting with her father on the borders of their respective domains in the late 1110s. Joanna and Isabella each received visits from their brothers. Though in Isabella’s case, it was her brother Richard, rather than Henry himself, she would also have met up with her younger sister, Eleanor, who stayed in Italy while her husband, Simon de Montfort, joined Richard on the crusade. And in Joanna’s case, it was a little more than a visit. But it seems apparent that both brothers, on their way to the Crusades, planned their routes to facilitate a meeting with their respective sisters.

And then there were the scandals, King Henry I’s illegitimate daughter, Juliane, who tried to kill her own father with a crossbow. And Joan, Lady of Wales, the illegitimate daughter of King John, the wife of Llywelyn the Great, was found in her husband’s bedroom with another man. Such stories serve to demonstrate that life did not always give royal women a ‘happily ever after’.

Writing a book on just the medieval English princesses has been a mammoth task; indeed, it was so big that it turned into two books. I take my hat off to Mary Anne Everett Green, the 19th-century historian who inspired this project. Her epic six-volume work, Lives of the Princesses of England from the Norman Conquest, was original and comprehensive. And so respected that there has been no similar work since. Until now. I can only hope that my own efforts, Princesses of the Early Middle Ages: Royal Daughters of the Conquest and its sister volume, Princesses of the Later Middle Ages: Royal Daughters of the Plantagenets, provide a similar, updated insight into the lives of these incredible women, England’s original ambassadors.

I hope I have demonstrated that these women were not mere pawns, or ornaments on the arm of a king, prince, duke or lord. They were not simply baby-making machines. Yes, in the masculine world they inhabited, a boy was always a prime requirement. A son was needed to continue the family line, to rule and command armies. But daughters were also necessary. They had a purpose – to seal alliances and to act as diplomats to protect English interests in the countries into which they married.

I hope that I have also shone a light on their stories and given these incredible women another day in the spotlight.

Author bio:

Sharon Bennett Connolly is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and best-selling author of 8 historical non-fiction books. As well as writing the popular history blog, www.historytheinterestingbits.com, Sharon co-hosts the podcast A Slice of Medieval, alongside historical novelist Derek Birks. Sharon regularly gives talks on women’s history for historical groups, festivals and in schools; her book Silk and the Sword: The Women of the Norman Conquest is a recommended text for teaching the Norman Conquest in the National Curriculum. Sharon is a feature writer for All About History, Tudor Places and Living Medieval magazines and her radio and TV work includes the BBC and Australian Television’s Who Do You Think You Are?