Charles Beem - Queenship in Early Modern Europe

Acknowledgements

This volume was inspired in part by Theresa Earenfights Queenship in Medieval Europe(2013), which synthesized older scholarship with more recent feminist-inspired works to both identify and explain how royal women created the many forms of queenship that appeared across Europe over the course of the medieval millennium. As a survey, rather than a work of original scholarship, I have read countless books and articles in the research for this project. Accordingly, I wish to thank the staff of the Livermore Library at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke (UNC Pembroke) for all their assistance in the research of this book. I also wish to thank the staffs of the various libraries of North Carolina State University, who have also been so helpful in obtaining the resources needed for the researching of this volume. I am also much beholden to UNC Pembrokes Teaching and Learning Center for grants and academic leaves which made the writing of this book possible. I also wish to thank Charles Harrington and Kenneth Kitts, former UNC Pembroke provosts, for their support to this project. I am grateful to Carole Levin, Elaine Kruse, Elena Woodacre, Bruce Dehart, Anthony Johnson, and anonymous readers for Red Globe Press for reading and offering commentary on various drafts of my manuscript. Finally, I am much beholden to the many authors and contributors to the Queenship and Power book series, whose scholarship has provided me with so much insight in the writing of this book. As this work is a survey, the specialist must necessarily venture beyond their disciplinary comfort zone. In this context, I wish to acknowledge all errors, both factual and interpretive, that may exist in this volume.

NOTE ON NAMES

I have taken a common sense approach to the use of names in this book. The guiding rule is to assign the name most readily identified with a particular individual, i.e. Isabella and Ferdinand of Spain, rather than Isabel and Fernando, and Anne of Austria, rather than Anne dAutriche. But by the same rule I use the name Juana, rather than Joanna, for Isabella and Ferdinands eldest surviving daughter. Because of a plethora of Iberian queens named Isabella, I have termed Charles Vs consort as Isabel of Portugal simply to avoid confusion. I have also used Elisabeth, rather than Elizabeth, for various Spanish queens of French and Italian origin.