Queenship in Britain 1660-1837 looks at the lives of successive Queens, Princesses of Wales and royal daughters, and considers how they used their powers of patronage and operated within the confines of royal family politics. With contributions from an international group of scholars this book brings together new approaches in gender history and court studies to present a re-evaluation of this previously neglected area in the study of the British monarchy. An explanation of these new approaches is contained in a substantial introduction. While the essays perform detailed discussions on a variety of more specific subjects, from how the foreign and Catholic wives of the restored Stuarts coped with a libertine court and a Protestant nation, to the travails of Princesses of Wales, the marriage options of royal daughters, and the question of whether Queen Adelaide (wife of William IV) was a harmless philanthropist re-establishing royal respectability or a real political influence behind the throne.

Offering a fascinating survey of European queenship from 1500-1800, with each chapter beginning with a discussion of the archetypal queens of Western, Central, Northern, and Eastern Europe, Charles Beem explores the particular nature of the regional forms and functions of queenship – including consorts, queens regnant, dowagers and female regents – while interrogating our understanding of the dynamic operations of queenship as a transnational phenomenon in European history. Incorporating detailed discussions of gender and material culture, this book encourages both instructors and student readers to engage in meaningful further research on queenship. This is an excellent overview of an exciting area of historical research and is the perfect companion for undergraduate and postgraduate students of History with an interest in queens and queenship.

This book gathers contributions on the later Stuart queens and queen consorts. It seeks to re-insert Henrietta Maria, Catherine of Braganza, Mary of Modena, Mary II, Anne, and Maria Clementina Sobieska into the mainstream of Stuart and early Georgian studies, concentrating on the later Stuart queens from the restoration of King Charles II (who married Catherine of Braganza in 1662) until the death of Maria Clementina Sobieska in 1735, who was married to James Francis Edward Stuart, the titular King James III, otherwise known as the Old Pretender. It showcases these women’s roles as queen consorts and as ruling queens in Britain and Europe, and reveals how their positions allowed them to act as power-brokers, diplomats, patrons, and religious trendsetters during their lifetimes. It also explores their impact in early modern Britain and Europe by assessing their influence in religion, political culture, and the promotion of patronage.

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The road to Queen Elizabeth II’s implementation of African reforms was rough, especially in the first two decades following her ascension to the throne. In this book, Raphael Chijioke Njoku examines Queen Elizabeth II’s role in the African decolonization trajectories and the postcolonial state’s quest for genuine political and economic liberation since 1947. By locating Elizabeth at the center of Anglophone Africa’s independence agitations, the account harnesses the African interests to tease out the monarch’s dilemma of complying with Whitehall’s decolonization schemes while building an inclusive and unified Commonwealth in which Africans could play a vital role. Njoku argues that to gratify British lawmakers in her complex and marginal place within the British parliamentary system of conservative versus reformist, Elizabeth’s contribution fell short of African nationalists’ expectations on account of her silence and inaction during the African decolonization raptures. Yet ultimately, the author concludes, she helped build an inclusive and unified organization in which Africans could assert and appropriate political and economic autarky.

This richly illustrated and interdisciplinary study examines the commercial mediation of royalism through print and visual culture from the second half of the seventeenth century. The rapidly growing marketplace of books, periodicals, pictures, and material objects brought the spectacle of monarchy to a wide audience, saturating spaces of daily life in later Stuart and early Hanoverian England. Images of the royal family, including portrait engravings, graphic satires, illustrations, medals and miniatures, urban signs, playing cards, and coronation ceramics were fundamental components of the political landscape and the emergent public sphere. Koscak considers the affective subjectivities made possible by loyalist commodities; how texts and images responded to anxieties about representation at moments of political uncertainty; and how individuals decorated, displayed, and interacted with pictures of rulers. Despite the fractious nature of party politics and the appropriation of royal representations for partisan and commercial ends, print media, images, and objects materialized emotional bonds between sovereigns and subjects as the basis of allegiance and obedience. They were read and re-read, collected and exchanged, kept in pockets and pasted to walls, and looked upon as repositories of personal memory, national history, and political reverence.

The five queens of Navarre were the largest group of female sovereigns in one European realm during the Middle Ages, but they are largely unknown beyond a regional audience. This survey fills this scholarly lacuna, focusing particularly on issues of female succession, agency, and power-sharing dynamic between the queens and their male consorts.