Game of Queens (2 page)

 

Margaret ‘of Parma' (1522–1586)

The illegitimate daughter of Charles V, Margaret was also raised by Mary of Hungary, whom she in turn succeeded in 1555 as Regent of the Netherlands, ruling on behalf of her half-brother Philip of Spain. Her son Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma, was Philip's great general.

 

Philip II (1527–1598)

Philip ‘of Spain' was also hereditary ruler of the Netherlands, as well as the increasingly important New World territories. Early in his life, his marriage to Mary Tudor made him King Consort of England; late in it, he inherited Portugal, through his mother. He is of course famous, or infamous, for the Armada he sent against Elizabeth of England in 1588.

 

France

Anne de Beaujeu (Anne of France) (1461–1522)

The oldest daughter of the French king Louis XI (1423–1483), Anne acted as regent of France in all but name during the minority of her younger brother Charles VIII (1470–1498). A powerful and influential figure, author of a manual of advice for noblewomen that has been compared to Machiavelli's
The Prince
, she helped bring up both Margaret of Austria and Louise of Savoy.

 

Anne of Brittany (1477–1515)

Inheriting the independent duchy of Brittany from her father in 1488, Anne's hope was to preserve the independence of Brittany in the face of pressure from France. After some months of armed conflict, in 1492 she found herself forced to marry the young French king Charles VIII who, with the help of his sister Anne de Beaujeu, kept her largely powerless. By the terms of the marriage, she was forced on Charles's death to marry his successor, the next King of France, Louis XII (1462–1515).

 

Louise of Savoy (1476–1531)

Initially a poor relation of Anne de Beaujeu, Louise's status rose steadily as several French kings in succession died without heir until the closest in line to the throne was François, her son by the Count d'Angoulême. After François I (1494–1547) became king in 1515, Louise was widely regarded as the power behind his throne.

 

Marguerite of Navarre (Marguerite d'Angoulême, 1492–1549)

As well as François, Louise also bore a daughter, Marguerite. The three were so close they were known as ‘the Trinity'. Neither of Marguerite's two marriages (to the Duc d'Alençon and to Henri II of Navarre) impeded her devotion to her brother or her sway over his court. An author, an intellectual, and a reformer of the Catholic church, Marguerite may have been a role model for the young Anne Boleyn.

 

Bonnivet (Guillaume Gouffier, Seigneur de Bonnivet 1488?–1525)

A soldier and nobleman, Bonnivet was raised in company with the future François I, whose tutor was Bonnivet's older brother, Artus Gouffier. Made Admiral of France in 1515, François's favour placed him in charge of a number of important military and diplomatic campaigns. He has been identified as the predatory hero of sections of Marguerite of Navarre's
Heptaméron
.

 

Catherine de Medici (1519–1589)

Daughter of the great Florentine banking family, with all too bitter a personal experience of the wars of the early sixteenth century, Catherine's marriage to the future Henri II (1519–1559) made her Queen Consort of France. But only after Henri's death in 1559 did she became the powerful figure behind the three of her sons who successively occupied the French throne: François II (1544–1560), Charles IX (1550–1574) and Henri III (1551–1589).

 

Guise (Francis, Duc de Guise, 1519–1563, Henri, Duc de Guise, 1550–1558, and the Guise family)

Catherine de Medici's chief rivals for power in France were the members of the powerful Guise family. As uncles of the young Mary, Queen of Scots, the soldier duke Francis and his brother the Cardinal of Lorraine exercised particular influence over Mary and her husband, the French king François II. After Francis was assassinated in 1563 his son Henri became the leader of the Catholic faction in the French Wars of Religion.

 

Jeanne d'Albret (1528–1572)

The daughter of Marguerite ‘of Navarre', in 1555 she inherited her father's Navarrese kingdom. Reared in her mother's reforming tradition, in 1560 she publicly converted to the Protestant faith and became the first great heroine of the Reformation. Her marriage to Antoine de Bourbon (1518–1562) produced a son, Henri of Navarre (1553–1610) who eventually became Henri IV of France.

 

Scotland

Margaret Tudor (1489–1541)

The older sister of Henry VIII, Margaret was married to James IV (1473–1513), the King of Scots, only to see him killed by her brother's army at Flodden, leaving her regent for her baby son, James V (1512–1542). Determined to hold on to power, Margaret was, nevertheless, insecure about her ability to wield it alone and made two futher disastrous marriages.

 

Angus (Archibald Douglas, sixth Earl of Angus, 1489?–1557)

Margaret Tudor married Angus as her second husband in 1514, perhaps to claim the support of his powerful Douglas clan. The marriage soon turned sour and Angus became one of Margaret's chief rivals for control of her son, the young king. The marriage also produced a daughter, Lady Margaret Douglas (Countess of Lennox, 1515–1578), whose bloodline produced the future monarchs of a united British Isles.

 

Albany (John Stuart, second Duke of Albany, 1481?–1536)

Reared in France, and married to a French heiress, Albany was, nonetheless, a grandson of the fifteenth-century King of Scotland, James II. He was thus an obvious choice to replace Margaret Tudor as regent for her infant son James V. He acted with considerable ability as Regent of Scotland from 1515 but never altogether came to terms with the country.

 

Marie de Guise (1515–1560)

A French noblewoman from the powerful Guise family, in 1538 Marie married James V of Scotland. He died in 1542, days after the birth of their only child, the future Mary, Queen of Scots. From that time Marie's life was dedicated to trying to preserve the Scottish throne for her daughter.

 

Arran (James Hamilton, second Earl of Arran and Duke of Châtelherault, 1519?–1575)

Arran's descent from an earlier Scottish king, James II, left him convinced he had the right to take a leading part in Scottish affairs. Vacillating (or perhaps pragmatic) after James V's death he nevertheless contended for power with Marie de Guise and was a thorn in the side of her daughter Mary Stuart.

 

James Stewart (first Earl of Moray, 1531/2–1570)

The illegitimate son of James V, Lord James had, before the return of his young half-sister Queen Mary, established himself in a position of power in Scotland; a position he had no desire to relinquish. A committed Protestant, he moved from being Mary's advisor to one of the agents of her downfall and regent for the son who replaced her.

 

Mary Stuart (Mary, Queen of Scots 1542–1587)

Queen of Scotland from her earliest infancy, Mary spent most of her youth in France, awaiting marriage to Catherine de Medici's eldest son, François. After his early death, she returned to Scotland in 1561 and set about trying to rule that turbulent country. Her mistakes are notorious and all male: Rizzio, Darnley and Bothwell. But just as significant in her final downfall and execution at Fotheringhay was the fact that her bloodline made her a Catholic rival for Elizabeth Tudor's English throne.

 

Darnley (Henry Stuart, or Stewart, Lord Darnley, 1545–1567)

The son of Lady Margaret Douglas, Margaret Tudor's daughter, Darnley thus had a claim to the English throne. This may be the rationale behind his marriage in 1565 to Mary, Queen of Scots. His personality soon showed Mary, however, that the marriage had been misguided, while his murder at Kirk o'Field besmirched her reputation and led indirectly to her overthrow.

 

Bothwell (James Hepburn, fourth Earl of Bothwell, 1534?–1578

The direct cause of Mary's downfall was her third marriage, to the Earl of Bothwell, made in May 1567 while Bothwell was still widely suspected of Darnley's murder. Mary's hand may have been forced by Bothwell's abduction and rape of her. Fleeing abroad after her defeat and deposition, he died a prisoner in Denmark, reputedly insane.

 

James VI (1566–1625)

The son of Mary, Queen of Scots and Lord Darnley, James (like several of his predecessors on the Scottish throne) was crowned while still in his cradle, his mother having been forced to abdicate. Reared in the harsh traditions of the Scottish reformed church, he was taught to see Mary as an example of bad management and perhaps womanly weakness. He was on good terms with Elizabeth I, upon whose death in 1603 he became James I, King of England.

 

England

Henry VII (1457–1509)

The first Tudor monarch won the crown of England at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485. His marriage to the Yorkist heiress Elizabeth united the Yorkist and Lancastrian claims, ending the Wars of the Roses but there seems, even on the Yorkist side, to have been no thought that Elizabeth of York could herself assume the crown. Marrying his heir Prince Arthur to Ferdinand and Isabella's daughter Katherine was a coup for his fragile new dynasty.

 

Katherine of Aragon (1485–1536)

The youngest daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, she was first married to Henry VII's oldest son Arthur. After Arthur's early death, Katherine famously and controversially married Arthur's younger brother, Henry VIII. It was a love match that endured for over a decade into Henry's reign but foundered on her failure to give him a son.

 

Henry VIII (1491–1547)

Most widely known for his six wives and for the break with Rome to which his desire for a male heir led him, Henry was a Renaissance monarch. The rival of François I and Charles V, he was anxious to play a role on the wider European stage. His older sister Margaret was already married to the King of Scots when he came to the throne in 1509 but he arranged the marriage of his younger sister Mary (1496–1533) to Louis XII of France and tolerated her second marriage to his favourite Charles Brandon (Lord Lisle, Duke of Suffolk, 1484–1545).

 

Wolsey (Thomas, Cardinal 1473?–1530)

A meteoric rise through the ranks of the church brought Wolsey, a butcher's son, from humble origins to a pre-eminent position in the government of Henry VIII. Lord chancellor of England, and a cardinal after 1515, he exercised a controlling hand over the diplomacy of much of Henry's early reign, but fell as dramatically as he had risen over his failure to win Henry his divorce from Katherine of Aragon.

 

Cromwell (Thomas, 1485?–1540)

A protégé of Wolsey, Cromwell survived his master's fall and, from even more humble origins, rose to have his finger in even more of the nation's pies. A layman committed to religious reform, he was given unique powers over the nascent Church of England, which he used to mastermind the dissolution of the monasteries. Cromwell first supported and then broke with Anne Boleyn and was instrumental in her downfall. His own downfall came through another of Henry's wives, when the king turned against his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves whose marriage Cromwell had promoted.

 

Anne Boleyn (1501?–1536)

Anne was born in comparative obscurity. She was brought up, however, first under the tutelage of Margaret of Austria and then at the French court. Despite her disgrace and death on the scaffold, English Protestantism, and the reign of her daughter Elizabeth, are her enduring legacies.

 

Edward VI (1537–1553)

Henry VIII's third wife Jane Seymour at last gave him the longed-for son but Edward survived only six years after inheriting his father's throne at the age of nine. The zealous Protestantism of his reign culminated in the boy-king's attempt to will the throne not to either of his half-sisters, Elizabeth and Mary but to his second cousin Lady Jane Grey (1537–1554), the granddaughter of Henry VIII's younger sister Mary.

 

Mary Tudor (1516–1558)

The daughter of Katherine of Aragon and Henry VIII, Mary Tudor suffered acutely from the break-up of her parents' marriage, refusing to follow her father's move towards the reformed faith. She endured years of real hardship before, in 1553, the death of her younger brother Edward brought her to the throne. Once on it, however, her efforts to restore Catholicism, and her marriage to Philip of Spain, brought her the sobriquet ‘Bloody' Mary.

 

Elizabeth Tudor (1533–1603)

Anne Boleyn's daughter had an equally difficult path to the English throne, for all that her long reign has left her remembered as our greatest monarch. History tells of her long rivalry with her kinswoman, Mary Stuart, across the Scottish border but it is less often that we think to see her in relation to other European female rulers.