But she turned this adversity to her advantage, and by the time she was sixteen she was ruling Italy as her husband’s regent. Some of it makes quite horrendous reading these days: sent abroad for a betrothal, away from her family (she never saw her mother or her brother again) and to a foreign-speaking land, when she was just eight years old married before she was twelve.
Just how much responsibility Matilda had at such a young age. What surprised you most researching this book? Firstly, to take advantage of the great strides that have been made in medieval gender and queenship studies over the last two decades, to present a new viewpoint on Matilda and secondly, to write about her in (what I hope is) a more user-friendly way so that readers don’t feel that they need to have a whole lot of background knowledge already before they can pick the book up. Obviously there have been some fantastic academic studies of Matilda in the past – I could never hope to surpass Marjorie Chibnall’s The Empress Matilda for depth – but I was hoping to achieve two things. What does your book add to existing works about Matilda?
And on top of that, I’ve always felt that Matilda’s extraordinary life and actions have never been properly recognised or appreciated, so there was an element of being able to bring forward this great story to a new audience. My academic background is in twelfth- and thirteenth-century warfare, but I was increasingly aware that I was mainly writing about men, and that it might be nice to write something about a woman for a change! With Matilda I could do this while still having a good dollop of war and combat included, so the subject fitted quite well. As far as most people were concerned, he was England’s new monarch and Matilda was written out of the story.Why did you choose this subject for your book?Ī combination of reasons, really. Before Matilda had even heard the news of her father’s death, Stephen had crossed the Channel, secured the royal treasury, ridden to London and had himself crowned as king. Stephen saw his chance and made the most of it.
Matilda was hundreds of miles away in Anjou at the time. In December 1135, Henry died in Normandy. England's barons and nobles all took a public oath that they would support his daughter's claim to the throne, and among those who took that oath was Matilda's cousin Stephen of Blois. Nonetheless, Henry named Matilda as his heir. This presented a dilemma for Henry: he was keen that he should be succeeded on the throne by his own child, but it was unprecedented to leave the crown to a woman. But in 1120, the 17-year-old William drowned in the White Ship disaster, leaving Henry with just one legitimate child – Matilda. Henry's original expectation was that his son William Adelin would follow him on the throne.
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