Liz Oakley-Brown and Louise J. Wilkinson have put together an impressive collection of essays on medieval and early modern queenship, examining the constraints to female power and the mechanics some queens used to overcome these barriers. The essays also explore the many ways medieval and early modern queens were depicted both in word and image. The rituals and ceremonies of court life strongly influenced the perceptions of royal women, most of whom in the Middle Ages achieved their position through marriage, and there are a number of essays on queen consorts. Yet in the sixteenth century Mary and Elizabeth ruled as queen regnants in England, as did Mary Stuart in Scotland. The queen regnants are the ones most discussed in this collection.

Some of the essays are on less well-known medieval queens. Louise Wilkinson discusses the value of the pageantry in the marriage of Isabella and Frederick II and how Isabella helped to solidify the Anglo-imperial alliance. Manuela Santos Silva’s essay is a fascinating discussion of Philippa of Lancaster, daughter of John of Gaunt and his first wife Blanche, and the wife of the Portuguese King João. Philippa was the mother of six surviving children, all of whom were impressive intellectually, the most famous being Prince Henry the Navigator; but others were astute politically—one was a noted traveler, and another an author.

Kavita Mudan carefully analyzes how Elizabeth Woodville is presented in two texts that are so different that they come close to contradicting each other: Polydore Vergil’s Anglica historia and Thomas More’s History of Richard III. For Vergil, Woodville is Richard III’s helpless dupe; in More she has far more agency and is at the center of the resistance against Richard. Jacqueline Johnson discusses how Henry VII made it clear that Elizabeth of York’s value was as a mother, and one who helped to combine the York and Lancaster branches, but that she herself was not a claimant to the throne. Over fifty years later, her granddaughter Elizabeth heightened her significance in her coronation pageantry. The connection between generations of queens is also highlighted in Anna Whitelock’s essay about Mary, where she demonstrates how much she was both her mother’s and her maternal grandmother’s heir in her courage and her Spanish alliance. In her essay on Mary Tudor’s body, Sabine Lucia Muller examines how Catholics attempted to use Mary’s supposed pregnancies, even if they did not result in a child, to demonstrate her attempts to restore Catholicism to England.

Elizabeth I’s mother Anne Boleyn is also the focus of two essays. Nadia Bishai’s work on the rituals and rhetoric of her execution is one of the strongest in the collection; she demonstrates the possible political subversion in Boleyn’s scaffold speech. Paula de Pando examines not English responses to Anne Boleyn, but the negative Spanish ones, especially in Calderon’s play, “The Schism in England.” In another essay on a queen’s execution, Leticia Alvarez-Recio examines both Catholic and Protestant texts published in reaction to Mary Stuart’s execution. Sandra Bell continues this theme through her analysis of George Buchanan’s portrayal of Mary Stuart.

In the essays on Elizabeth, Kristin Bundesen challenges the idea of Queen Elizabeth as a woman without any family, by examining her relations with her cousins on her mother’s side, the descendents of Mary Boleyn. Unlike the complex, difficult relationships Elizabeth had with her relatives on her father’s side, such as Mary Stuart and Katherine Grey, Elizabeth had personal and political intimacy with her Carey cousins. Jessica Malay’s essay examines how Lady Anne Clifford appropriated queenly rhetoric to solidify her position as a great landholder in the north of England.

Alison Findlay explores the “rhetoric of majesty” that played out in letters between Mary and Elizabeth following the 1584–85 Throckmorton plot. Despite their unequal power, each attempted to outdo the other in the rhetoric of their letters. Along similar lines, Rayne Allinson examines Elizabeth’s letters to Mary’s son, James VI. Allinson makes a strong case that letters should be considered political tracts just like printed political works.

There are also several essays on depictions of queens in drama. Lisa Hopkins examines how Elizabeth was depicted on stage, specifically as a character in Renaissance drama, as well as representations of strong female characters. Shehzana Mamujee connects the representations of queenship and sexuality to Elizabeth in the drama of John Lyly, while Oakley-Brown provides a careful reading of Tamora and queenship in Titus Andronicus. In the book’s final essay, Elisabeth Bronfen and Barbara Straumann examine the evolving celebrity cult of Elizabeth. They show that famous portraits of the queen, including the Rainbow and Ditchley portraits, made her body image significant during the sixteenth century. They deem her the world’s first diva, showing that her image continues to change in the twenty-first century.

This collection has many thoughtful and innovative essays and will be of value to a wide range of readers. It introduces some less well-known queens and provides new insights on ones more widely written about.