Erin Lawless - Forgotten Royal Women: The King and I

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FORGOTTEN

ROYAL WOMEN

THE KING AND I

ERIN LAWLESS

First published in Great Britain in 2019 by

PEN AND SWORD HISTORY

An imprint of

Pen & Sword Books Ltd

Yorkshire Philadelphia

Copyright Erin Lawless, 2019

ISBN 978 1 47389 817 2

eISBN 978 1 47389 846 2

Mobi ISBN 978 1 47389 845 5

The right of Erin Lawless to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the Publisher in writing.

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Introduction

Catherine, the heroine of Jane Austens Northanger Abbey , bemoans studying history as boring, not least because the men [are] all so good for nothing, and [there are] hardly any women at all. And shes not wrong, is she? British history, if you stand back, can seem just a chain of Edwards and Henrys and Georges, from royalty right down to the commoners. They enter stage left, and exit stage right, and there arent really many ladies standing with them come the curtain call.

There are some women, of course. I asked people who came to mind when they thought of royal women and some big-ticket names appeared again and again. These are the ones we all learn about in school, the key-stage Queens, unusually memorable probably because they did something terribly public and unfeminine, like rule in their own stead, or die tragically:

Eleanor of Aquitaine, imperious in her starchy wimple, striding across the Alps in her old age. Ever enigmatic, the dark-eyed Anne Boleyn, who Henry VIII tumbled monasteries to have, before tumbling her head from the block. Victoria, clad in black, dour and dumpy, the Widow of Windsor, acerbically announcing herself to be not amused. The Lady Diana Spencer, the Peoples Princess, the Queen of Hearts, a bride barely out of her teens at the wedding of the century, who you could barely see for all the puff and pearls, along with Kate and Meghan, her modern-day daughter in laws.

Interestingly, not one person named any women from before the Conquest. In the UK we have rather fallen into the habit of taking our history as starting from 1066. A rhyme taught to me in school in the nineties began, rather dismissively, William the First was the first of our kings/Not counting the Ethelreds, Egberts and things. Of course, the world didnt begin once William the Bastard set one Norman toe on Pevensey soil.

Nor, of course, have we just had kings. The British Isles have had (arguably, as is everything) ten women considered (by at least some) to be Queen Regnant (and thats about fifteen per cent of the total, since the Conquest). A woman sits on the metaphorical and literal throne of the United Kingdom today, and has done so for over 65 years. Back in 2013, pleasingly aligned with but not a result of the birth of Prince Williams baby daughter, changes to the laws of succession were ratified, meaning that future British princesses will not get bumped down the order when baby brothers are born. History books of the future will probably have much more fodder when it comes to the topic of British royal women (a Republican coup notwithstanding, naturally).

But this book isnt about Queen Regnants. Its not even just about Queen Consorts. Because yes, most kings had a wife (sometimes multiple wives), but they also had sisters, aunts, daughters and cousins, women we only hear about when their lives intersect with those of their menfolk. Huge swathes of their lives are unknown to us even now, and probably always will be. They worked their politics quietly in the bedroom, not the state room; they died privately in childbirth, not in battle. But that doesnt mean that there arent stories there left to tell

Scota

Scota is a pseudohistorical character in Irish and Scottish mythology, the daughter of an Egyptian Pharoah to whom the Gaels liked to trace their ancestry; she allegedly explains the name Scoti applied by the Romans to Irish raiders, and later to the Irish invaders of what would later be known as Scotland.

If Scota lived at all, she lived sometime in the centuries around 1400 BC. Tradition holds her as a daughter of either the Pharaoh Nectanebo or of Pharoah Akhenaten and his consort Nefertiti. According to the historian Eusebius, she was married to a Scythian prince. Scota was probably an archetypal name bestowed upon her at this time; originally it was probably Sacathach or Scythian, a title given to the foreign princess as a gesture of acceptance by her new husbands people. This Scythian prince is known by various names in the various sources but most commonly as Nel (later Latinised into Miles), an individual who apparently assisted in the building of the Tower of Babel and was famed for being proficient in many languages. Nel was a younger twin, and since his brother was the accepted Scythian heir he was forced to travel to seek his fortune in Europe.

Eventually Nel and Scota stopped in Spain, where they there seemingly wasnt a terrible amount to do, as they soon had eight sons. Nels beloved uncle was sent out as the head of an exploratory expedition to find somewhere that the ex-pat Scythians could settle permanently. When this uncle was captured, tortured and killed by the indigenous tribesmen of what would become Ireland, it became personal for Nel. He settled his people in Kerry on the south-western coast and took up arms against the tribesmen. They fought their way to Tara the ancient capital city of the indigenous Irish and later the spot where the High Kings of Ireland were crowned but Nel died the night before a decisive battle.

In true Egyptian queen style, Scota took control of her husbands men and led them in their final advance during the Battle of Tralee. Defeated, the indigenous tribesmen retreated into the hills but Scota eager to claim a decisive victory pursued them and was cut down. As seventeenth century poet Thomas Parnell immortalises:

In yon cool glen, beside the mount, close by the wave, fell Scota while pursuing the enemy across the hills. Though Scota died early in the fray, her forces went on to victory and it is she that is remembered.

Scotas grave reputedly lies in a valley, south of Tralee town, in an area known as Glenn Scoithin. A trail from the road leads along a stream to a clearing where a circle of large stones marks the grave site. No formal archaeology has ever been undertaken in this glen to establish the legends validity either way.

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