#beem tag

[ednyfedfychan]

— Charles Beem, Queenship in Early Modern Europe

[marianrevisionist]

Mary’s lifelong residence in England allowed her a totally English identification. Although Mary took pride in her royal Spanish heritage, derived from her mother, her position as Henry VIII’s eldest daughter carried the same representational force in Tudor society as the Empress’s identification with her father four centuries earlier. While Mary and Elizabeth put much stock in their positions as Henry VIII’s daughters, upon their accessions this status was not clouded by any foreign elements that the xenophobic English commonly found distasteful. Indeed, Mary’s cousin and former fiancé, the emperor Charles V, sixteen years her senior, doled out fatherly advice to Mary, suggesting she create the perception that she was “a good Englishwoman, wholly bent on the kingdom’s welfare”. Mary’s position as Henry VIII’s eldest daughter carried with it an almost automatic esteem and respect from her subjects that eluded Matilda upon her father’s death. While the Empress was unable to declare herself queen in England following Henry I’s death, Mary did so in July 11, four days after Edward’s death. Unlike the Empress, restrained by a husband and three small sons, the unmarried Mary chose decisive action. The imperial ambassadors explained her success in a letter to Emperor Charles V, noting, “there is a custom here that a man or a woman who is called to the crown must immediately declare him or herself king or queen”.

Her Kingdom’s Wife: Mary I and the Gendering of Regal Power by Charles Beem, 2006. In The Lioness Roared: The Problems of Female Rule in English History

[marianrevisionist]

In the absence of constitutional precedent and political definition, Mary’s and Elizabeth’s unmarried states probably served to bolster public recognition of their status as royal heiresses, since it was unclouded by the complication of defining the status of husbands. As single women, Mary and Elizabeth were the formal wards of their underage brother’s government. But for practical purposes, both sisters existed as powerful, independent female magnates during Edward VI’s reign, endowed with considerable land and income inherited from their father. Both, in the manner of an aristocratic widow, personally ran large-scale itinerant households and developed provincial affinities of a quasi-political nature. Although, in a formal sense, Mary and Elizabeth were both denied a recognized role in the public sphere of government, their status as their brother’s heirs gave them a political luster that Edward VI’s minority government could not ignore.

Her Kingdom’s Wife: Mary I and the Gendering of Regal Power by Charles Beem, 2006. In The Lioness Roared: The Problems of Female Rule in English History

[ednyfedfychan]

Queenship in Early Modern Europe, Charles Beem

[ednyfedfychan]

Queenship in Early Modern Europe, Charles Beem

[ednyfedfychan]

Queenship in Early Modern Europe, Charles Beem