Building on considerable research, Michelle Beer offers convincing conclusions about the queenly image and authority of two sixteenth-century consorts. She considers how Catherine of Aragon and Margaret Tudor constructed this queenship, and argues that each developed a mutually supportive partnership with her husband. She emphasizes this relationship between king and queen, noting that both Catherine and Margaret maintained good relations with, and access to, their husbands, Henry VIII of England and James IV of Scotland, respectively. Beer claims that this allowed them to exercise power as queens. The women strengthened their husbands’ monarchies by supporting displays of power, increasing patronage, providing connections with foreign nations, and increasing links to the nobility and people. Much of this was done through display and performance. An important theme in Queenship at the Renaissance Courts of Britain is that queenship was constructed and needed to be “continually reasserted” (155). Beer argues that this was achieved through material display, sociability, patronage, and public acts of piety.

Beer situates her work in the scholarship on medieval queenship by viewing Catherine and Margaret as part of a wider group of queen consorts who shared common roles. She also draws on literature on Anglo-Scottish relations, and on audience and performance in court ceremonial. Beer notes that most of the previous works on Catherine and Margaret have been biographies, and she challenges the chronological approach by choosing a thematic structure for her own book. She also brings the focus squarely onto Catherine and Margaret alone, while incorporating the scholarship on wider themes, such as late medieval queenship, in contrast to earlier works that usually grouped Catherine with Henry VIII's subsequent wives and Margaret with her sister, Mary Tudor. Beer also supports the recent move away from relegating Margaret's regency to failure, and challenges judgements of Catherine's marriage based on its later breakdown and divorce.

The thematic approach allows for a consideration of the elements of Catherine's and Margaret's queenly self-presentations and claims to authority. While acknowledging the differences between their individual circumstances, Beer focuses more on the similarities by considering the women in the wider context of European queenship. This approach also reflects the sparsity of primary material on Catherine and Margaret. Beer compares them to fill in gaps in the sources when necessary, such as negotiating the lack of household accounts for Margaret by considering how Catherine's household was managed. Her discussion of primary sources is well thought out, although Beer uses calendars of state papers instead of the original documents. Overall, relying on familiar sources, Beer mitigates their weaknesses and uses them carefully without resorting to generalization.

In chapter 1, Beer argues for the importance of Elizabeth of York, Margaret's mother and Catherine's mother-in-law and predecessor, as a role model of queenly involvement in ceremonies and diplomacy. She shows the continuity of service from Elizabeth's household to those of Margaret and Catherine. In chapter 2, Beer claims that material culture was used to emphasize the queens’ status and authority, showing how Catherine and Margaret relied on clothing during times of potential crisis in their authority. She interestingly suggests that Catherine also used her appearance to oppose, however indirectly, Henry's pro-French policies at the Field of the Cloth of Gold. A larger focus of this book is on Catherine's and Margaret's supporting of their husbands. In chapter 3, Beer argues that although neither woman actively participated in court masques and tournaments, they were significant as the audience for these acts of chivalry. Beer then moves onto stronger ground by showing how Catherine and Margaret acted as court hostesses.

She next claims that patronage was a significant element of the women's partnerships with their husbands. Beer outlines how Catherine and Margaret relied on Henry and James for access to further patronage than their own resources would allow. At the same time, they rewarded members of their husbands’ courts to tighten the connections between the king's household and the foreign queen. In chapter 5, Beer argues that Catherine and Margaret used public acts of piety to affirm their quasi-sacred status as queens. She focuses on pilgrimages and almsgiving to show how these women performed before and interacted with their subjects through pious practices. Especially interesting is Beer's use of wardrobe records to uncover their involvement in almsgiving activities. In the conclusion, Beer considers Catherine's and Margaret's regencies, arguing that these need to be viewed in the context of their earlier identities as queen consorts. Emphasizing the importance of a partnership between king and queen, she claims that Margaret was less successful as regent than was Catherine because she had not yet fully developed into an experienced partner to James IV.

The focus of Queenship at the Renaissance Courts of Britain is very much on Margaret's and Catherine's own constructions of their queenship. Beer walks a fine line between studying the women in their own right and situating them in their relationships with their husbands. Perhaps less useful is her heavy emphasis at the beginning on their relationships with Elizabeth of York. The book offers more on Catherine than it does on Margaret, reflecting the better availability of sources, although Beer's use of comparison between the two women helps to mitigate this imbalance. There is also perhaps scope for considering portraits as useful sources of queenly images. Going beyond studying women's direct political involvement, Beer's main point instead, and it is a strong one, is that Catherine and Margaret were vital contributors to their husbands’ courts and displays of authority. They produced power through performances. Ultimately, Beer rises to the challenge of using limited and piecemeal primary material. What stands out the most in this book is her engagement with the wider scholarship, and her ability to weave this into her detailed research on Catherine and Margaret as individual queens.