She-Wolves

Product Description

The boy in the bed was just fifteen years old. He had been handsome perhaps even recently; but now his face was swollen & disfigured by disease & by the treatments his doctors had prescribed in the attempt to ward off its ravages. Their failure could no longer be mistaken. When Edward VI
- Henry VIIIs longed-for son
- died in 1553 extraordinarily there was no one left to claim the title King of Engl&. For the first time all the contenders for the crown were female. In 1553 England was about to experience the monstrous regiment
- the unnatural rule
- of a woman. But female rule in England also had a past. Four hundred years before Edwards death Matilda daughter of Henry I & granddaughter of William the Conquerer came tantalisingly close to securing her hold on the power of the crown. & between the 12th & the 15th centuries three more exceptional women
- Eleanor of Aquitaine Isabella of France & Margaret of Anjou
- discovered as queens consort & dowager how much was possible if the presumptions of male rule were not confronted so explicitly. The stories of these women
- told here in all their vivid humanity
- illustrate the paradox which the female heirs to the Tudor throne had no choice but to negotiate. Man was the head of woman; & the king was the head of all. How then could a woman be king how could royal power lie in female hands?