As befits the overall objective of the Queenship and Power series within which this book is placed, Louise Tingle's Chaucer's Queens: Royal Women, Intercession, and Patronage in England, 1328–1394 focuses on the ability of queens consort and other royal women to exercise power and influence while undertaking their expected rights and responsibilities. Exploring the use of soft, or indirect, power and influence in the form of intercession and patronage, Tingle offers as case studies three royal women who lived in fourteenth century England: Philippa of Hainault, Joan of Kent, and Anne of Bohemia. The three were related: Philippa was queen consort to Edward III; Joan was married to Philippa's son, Edward the Black Prince; and Anne was the first queen consort of Richard II, Joan's son and Philippa's grandson, who became king when he was only ten years old. Joan was not herself a crowned queen consort because her husband predeceased his father, but as the mother of the king, many of her actions can be said to have fulfilled contemporary expectations for the most senior female royal at court, especially in the years before her son married and there was no queen consort.

In choosing to focus on these royal women, Tingle partially fills a historiographical gap in studies on late medieval English queens. She positions Chaucer's Queens between the work of Lisa Benz St John (Three Medieval Queens: Queenship and the Crown in Fourteenth-Century England, 2012) and that of J. L. Laynesmith (The Last Medieval Queens: English Queenship, 1445–1503, 2004), but it should be noted that Philippa of Hainault and the subject of intercession are explored in both Tingle's and St John's studies. Despite this overlap, Tingle does examine intercession in more detail than St John does, and she delves into literary representations of this queenly role and its particular application in the case of pardons. In doing so, Tingle deftly handles a variety of sources, ranging from administrative records that require understanding of archival methods of research to literary and artistic sources that necessitate the use of cultural research methodologies, including the deconstruction of images and text within frameworks of symbolism.

Tingle structures Chaucer's Queens along two main lines of investigation: the exploration of the queen's role in intercession, and queenly patronage through art, material culture, and religious and literary patronage. The first part, “The Role of the Queen,” consists of four chapters, and Tingle is thorough in examining queenly intercession. She begins with a chapter that comparatively analyses the status of each of these women in relation to the children they bore (or did not). Tingle rightly sets the tone by stating that being a “wife and mother provided routes to influence for a medieval queen” (17). The same was true for Joan of Kent despite her lack of queenly status, particularly because she can be said to have acted as a de facto queen dowager during the reign of her son, Richard II. Yet her case is not examined in this chapter, and this appears to be a lost opportunity to extend the comparative analysis of maternity as a crucial factor underpinning intercession and the abilities of royal women to exercise it. The next two chapters investigate the intercessory activities of Philippa, Joan, and Anne, and the last chapter in this part examines the link between intercession and queenly revenues, in particular the entitlement of queen's gold. Tingle's examination of queen's gold demonstrates the connections between the queen's intercessory activities and the economic and financial benefits that could and did accrue to a queen. It is less obvious from the analysis how the other sources of revenue for the queens are related to the central focus of intercession, and it is not until the end of the chapter that Tingle stresses more directly that revenues were a very important basis for and can be regarded as key to the exercise of patronage in its myriad forms.

In the second part, “Patronage,” Tingle is more straightforward in her approach as she investigates how Philippa, Joan, and Anne exercised patronage in many different forms, including gift-giving, the material objects commissioned (including seals and effigies), and religious and literary patronage. In the process, the reader gains both insight into the personal preferences of these royal women and how they used material objects to shape their images and representations, and understanding of the range and extent of their activities in this area. The last chapter in this part deals with literary patronage, and it is with her examination of literary manuscripts that Tingle makes apparent and clearer the connection between these royal women and the poet Geoffrey Chaucer. This last chapter elucidates the possibility that the title Chaucer's Queens suggests that Joan's status transcended that of a mere member of the royal family. Her prominence at the court of her son, Richard II, meant that her position approached that of a de facto queen: first as a stand-in for a queen consort while Richard remained unmarried, then as a queen dowager once he married Anne of Bohemia. Placing her within this comparative study of intercession and patronage allows us to appreciate that such activities could be bolstered by more than actual occupation of the position of queen.

In spite of the aforementioned minor shortcomings, this is a well-researched and generally well-written book that makes a significant contribution to studies of queenship and fills a historiographical gap in the field. Because Tingle makes no claim for this work as a biographical study, Chaucer's Queens will likely appeal less to a general audience unfamiliar with the study's subjects and more to scholars and students who wish to increase their understanding of royal activities in the areas of intercession, mediation, and the exercise of patronage by late medieval queens and royal women. Such readers will find plenty in this book to benefit their own research.