Kris Waldherr - Doomed Queens: Royal Women Who Met Bad Ends, From Cleopatra to Princess Di

A Queen of the past is not an Ex-Queen.

~JOHN RUSKIN

Women have been called queens for a long time, but the kingdom given them isnt worth ruling.

~LOUISA MAY ALCOTT

INTRODUCTION

[The executioner] shall not have much trouble, for I have a little neck. I shall be known as la reine sans tte.

~ANNE BOLEYN

elcome to your favorite dreamand worst nightmare. You are cosseted in silk, crowned with gold, and bowed to. Courtiers laugh at your jokes and compliment your beauty, even when you know youre having a bad hair day. All envy you, but things change. Just years later, even those who admired you steer clear of your path. Your influence is on the wane for any number of reasons. The fault could be yoursmaybe you werent as clever as you thought in the scheming department. Or it could be that others are scheming against you.

When the end finally comes, it arrives with the stroke of an ax at noona topsy-turvy Cinderella taleor with a drumrolled march to the scaffold. The battlefield may provide you with a convenient grave. Or you might lose your crown as you labor to bring forth an heir to the kingdom. Biology becomes destiny. Best case scenario: You will survive a coup and be allowed to live out your days in awkward exile, where opportunistic stragglers will still suck up to your royal majesty, just in case.

No matter how your end finally arrives, one truth remains: Your fall from grace is not your call, though your actions may encourage it. It is your fate. After all, you are a doomed queenand, if one is to go by the lessons of history, the only good queen is a dead one.

For too many royal women throughout history, the scenario Ive sketched here was their dark reality. The members of the doomed queens cluba club I suspect few would care to joinare legion, stretching from biblical times to the present day. Their names range from the infamousCleopatra, Anne Boleyn, Marie Antoinetteto those whose deaths are hidden within footnotes, such as Blanche of Bourbon and Thessalonike.

Within Doomed Queens Ive presented fifty of these lives from around the globe and throughout the ages. While each queens final destiny may differ, one fact remains consistent: Despite the perks of royalty, its usually not good to be the queen.

What was it about being royal that made so many women so vulnerable to losing their lives for power? Let me count the wayshere is an admittedly abbreviated overview of the doomed queen:

BED, BIBLICAL TIMES, AND BEYOND: It has always been obvious that the female of the species holds the keys to the kingdomthe kingdom of life, that is. Without the fruit of the womb, humanity would crash and burn. Boo-hoo, whats a power-loving man to do? To solve this problem, mating and relating is safely confined within the institution of matrimony and becomes sanctified with religious rites. The power of female fertility is harnessed, thus creating dynastic succession. Royal women who get uppity with the system get offed. Watch out, Olympias and Cleopatra!

YO, LETS GET CIVILIZED: Power isnt enoughtheres money, too. The Dark Ages roll in, disquieting queens everywhere. Men try their darnedest to hold on to property beyond the grave, despite that whole cant-take-it-with-you dilemma. Salic law, which sprang from the Frankish empire, becomes institutionalized. An excerpt: The whole inheritance of the land shall come to the male sex. But if women cant inherit property, can they inherit thrones? Over time, Salic law leads to lots of territorial fighting when a male heir isnt available.

MARRIAGE MAKES THE WORLD GO ROUND: No male heir? No problem! To avoid war, the powers that be send their daughters to sleep with their enemies and bear their children, keeping it all in the family. But are these queens royal consorts or royal hostages? The Austrian Hapsburg dynasty, whose rise to power peaks during the Renaissance, is especially adept at this clever little maneuver. Their family motto? Leave others to make war, while you, lucky Austria, marry. Like chess queens, women are moved about the game board but are sacrificed first to protect the kingespecially if their wombs prove infertile or if they become too power hungry.

POWER TO THE PEOPLE: With the start of the Age of Enlightenment, blue bloods shake in their boots. Power has shifted to the people, as embodied by the press, who no longer respects the sanctity of royalty. Vive la rvolutionor not, if your name happens to be Marie Antoinette. Later in history, the media can make or break a reign, as in the cases of Caroline of Brunswick, a nineteenth-century queen of England, and Diana Spencer, a twentieth-century queen of hearts.

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Why Ladies Only

The sad reality is that the threat level leaps from ecru to red when the head wearing the crown is missing a Y chromosome. Why are male rulers less doomed?

While kings were also vulnerable to political upheavaljust ask Louis XVI, Marie Antoinettes headless husbandfor the most part men pulled the strings at court. Therefore any woman blocking the way to power was a threat to be eliminated. Common ways to bump off an inconvenient consort included beheading, burning, drowning, poison, stabbing, strangling, starving, and forcing suicide.

The justifications for their deaths were usually based on underlying issues such as religious differences, infertility, or dynastic struggles. And when there wasnt an easy way to dump a queen, the men got creative. For example, in order to gain the right to slice off Anne Boleyns comely head, Henry VIII accused her of treason with a side of adultery.

Women were also more vulnerable to the travails of the flesh. While they usually didnt go to war, potential royal brood mares were often sent on treacherous journeys to wed. After marriage, childbirth was a dangerous rite of passage many did not survive.

And now we have reached the twenty-first century. Are there still doomed queens among us? Certainly! Though we have moved on from the guillotine (which was last used by the French government in 1977), the doomed queen still lives and dies. These days, she might not be as easily recognizable as she once was. She may not have royal blood either. Tiaras are de rigueur for red carpets, but todays doomed queen is more likely to be attired in business best or haute couture. She could be part of a political dynasty, wield the wealth of a global corporation, or bear overwhelming celebrity.