AoH Book Club: Sarah Gristwood on the Women Who Made Sixteenth-Century Europe

Sarah, what are your thoughts on Game of Queens today, nearly ten years after it was published?

It’s one of the books of which I am most proud – because I really did feel that for the general reader (even one with a special interest in the sixteenth century) I was opening up a new ‘aspect of history’. The history presented to English-speaking students and readers has tended, traditionally, to be very Anglo-centric, and that obscures the degree to which the Tudors themselves were aware of playing on a European stage. We may be aware of colourful continental figures like Catherine de Medici, or a few of the Italian Renaissance heroines, but the dots still needed joining up.

The book follows a rich period of history for female rulers in the sixteenth century: Isabella of Castile, Elizabeth I, Anne of France, Catherine de Medici and Marie of Guise, to name but a few. What does this reveal about women throughout the 1500s?

It shows both the possibilities and the problems for women in the sixteenth century (or what you might call the long sixteenth century, since we start with Isabella’s accession in 1474 and end with Elizabeth’s death in 1603). On the one hand, a striking number of women successfully exercised power. On the other, resistance was even greater than one might think – especially to a woman, like Elizabeth I, actually becoming sovereign (a role with a quasi-religious element) rather than just stepping in temporarily to hold things together for a husband, brother or son.

In France Salic Law was in place, but not necessarily an impediment to women dominating a kingdom, as power could be exercised through regency. Which figure exhibited the most ruthlessness in this regard?

I’d go with Anne of France, Anne de Beaujeu – one of those figures we really ought to know better (especially since she provided the French troops who helped Henry Tudor to victory at Bosworth!). She governed France on behalf of her underage brother and won herself far more power than their father’s will actually allowed. (She also wrote a book for her daughter on how women should handle power!) But I’d tip my hat, as well, to Louise of Savoy, the mother of Francois I. She didn’t have any formal power, since Francois was 18 when he acceded to the throne – but while he was off hunting and womanising, she took care of the actual business of running the country.

You write that England was the least female-friendly European power. Why was it that when we saw Mary I and Elizabeth I as monarchs during the century?

It’s about the history of the years before. England. Unlike France, unlike the territories that would become the Habsburg empire, or even Scotland, England had no great history of women acting as regents. (The attempt of Matilda back in the twelfth century to become a reigning queen had triggered civil war; women like Isabella of France and Margaret of Anjou were seen as ‘shewolves’.) It’s as if the fact that France, for example, had that so-called Salic ‘Law’, meaning women could never gain ultimate power, meant it was safer to grant them a limited measure of it …

Come the mid-1500s in England, of course, that changed. But it’s notable that when Mary won the throne, and Elizabeth held it for so long in the teeth of many challengers, all of the competitors were also women, from Lady Jane Grey to Mary Queen of Scots. In 1553, and again in 1558, England had to accept a woman’s rule, because there simply weren’t any men of royal blood available! But even so, they did it only reluctantly and with difficulty.

The title seems to be a play on Game of Thrones – if there is one figure that played and lost, it was Anne Boleyn. Is there a character from the TV show she most resembles?

Let me confess a dreadful secret – I wasn’t a regular watcher of Game of Thrones! Yes, I was still shameless enough to ride its coattails for the title … I know Anne is thought to be a possible inspiration for Margaery Tyrell – a charismatic power player, a woman who refused to be a mistress and held out for being a wife. And, of course, another for who, like Anne, things ended badly!

But I’d say all the forceful, not to say terrifying, women in the series in some sense reflect Anne … or at least, the person we take Anne to be. Because I’ve often felt the real point about Anne Boleyn – part of the reason she exercises such a hold on the imagination – is that we really know so little about her. We know the huge effect she had on Henry and his court, on England’s religious future. But we have singularly little evidence, in terms of her own writing or even portraiture, as to what was really going on in her head. In a sense, it’s that blank slate itself that triggers such fascination.

You wrote about the match between Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn recently in Tudors in Love. Is there a difference in how you wrote about it in GoQ?

In GoQ, she figures as a piece in the chess game of power, a pawn who made it to the far side of the board and, briefly, became a queen. The Tudors in Love is more about exploring the mechanisms, the cultural climate that allowed her to hold Henry in thrall. It’s about the other great ‘game’ of courtly love, which captured the imagination of aristocratic Europe for centuries.

Your latest book, Secret Voices, featured diary entries of women for every day of the year. Is there one woman from GoQ who, if she wrote a diary, you would like to read an entry on a particular date?

Oh dear – this is going to get monotonous! But I’d have to say Anne Boleyn, for all the reasons above. And I’d settle for any day on which she had direct dealings with Henry.

Was there one female figure from the book you most admire?

Yes – to me, the great unsung heroine (or undersung in English-speaking countries, anyway) is Margaret of Austria, Habsburg regent of the Netherlands and a major player in European diplomacy. One of her contemporaries declared that it was Madame Margaret on whom the future of the continent depended. And yet she also managed to be a great patron and performer of the arts, a wonderful friend and guardian, and a passionate woman. The one of all the protagonists in this book, with whom you’d want to be stuck on a desert island.

If your publisher were to release a new edition, would you change anything?

The sad thing is that I wouldn’t – sad, because I’d really, really love to have been adding a postscript on women’s return to the centre stage of power. I wrote this book at a time when it looked as though Hillary Clinton might become the leader of the Western world, to say nothing of figures like Angela Merkel on the scene. I had huge hopes for Kamala Harris. Now it looks as though Fortune’s Wheel has turned downwards again. Still, the women in Game of Queens knew all about that. And yet they managed to come through!

Sarah Gristwood is the author of Game of Queens: The Women Who Made Sixteenth-Century Europe and editor of Secret Voices: A Year of Women’s Diaries. You can listen to Sarah on the Aspects of History Podcast.