From the moment Henry VI's new queen, Marguerite of Anjou, sets foot on English soil she is despised by the English as a foreigner, and blamed for the failures of the hundred years war in France. Her enemies impede her role as the king’s consort and when Henry sinks into apparent madness her bid to become regent is rejected. Marguerite must fight, not only for her own position but to maintain Henry’s possession of the crown.
Marguerite: Hell Hath No Fury is a book I have been wanting to write for a long time. I first came across Marguerite while I was at university where I was struck by the injustice of her story. I spent many years researching and writing about her contemporary, Margaret Beaufort, who also dedicated her life to fighting for her son’s rights. The similarities between the two women diverge when Margaret Beaufort triumphs at Bosworth, while Marguerite’s hopes end with her son’s death on Tewkesbury field.
Yorkist propaganda against Marguerite of Anjou begins early in her story and continues to affect our perception of her today. Polydore Vergil’s assessment of her character, taken from widespread Yorkist propaganda, echoes loudly in Shakespeare’s malevolent portrayal of the queen in his play, ‘The True Tragedy of Richard Duke of York and the Good King Henry the Sixth’
‘She wolf of France but worse than the wolves of France,
whose tongue more poisons than the adder’s tooth!
How ill be-seeming is it in thy sex
To triumph like an Amazonian trull
Upon their woes who Fortune captivates!
But that thy face is vizard like, unchanging,
Made impudent with use of evil deeds,
I would assay, proud queen, to make thee blush.
To tell thee whence thy cam’st, of whom derived,
Were shame enough to shame thee, wert not shameless.’ (Act 1.4.112)
Sounds like a nice lady but my research revealed no monster but simply a queen determined to maintain her husband’s throne and to secure the inheritance of her son. But Marguerite was a foreigner, unhampered by the political restraints placed upon English women and that fact cast the first shadow over her life in England.
Marguerite came from a line of determined women; both her paternal grandmother, Yolande of Aragon, and her mother, Isabelle of Lorraine, were deeply involved in politics. They championed the rights of their absent husbands, raised taxes and armies, administered the duchies and laid down policies. Both women impacted on Marguerite’s own experience after she became Queen of England. To Marguerite, when finding her crown at risk, there was only one thing she could do and that was fight.
During her early years as queen, Marguerite acted as a supporting, conciliatory presence behind the king, mainly confining her activities to matchmaking and obtaining positions at court for friends and servants. She used her influence to secure the surrender of Maine and Anjou and, although the pressure on her to comply is obvious to us now, the act did not endear her to her new subjects.
Her first real intercession into politics was during the Jack Cade rebellion when at her instigation Henry agreed to show leniency and issue a pardon to the rebels. The king’s preamble to the pardon illustrates Marguerite’s role in the matter.
‘Nevertheless, recalling to the reflection and consideration of our mind that among those virtues fitting and proper to the royal person and dignity, none befits him more than clemency, which is apt to bring about and put the shame of sinning in the minds of his subject people, and considering as well that it is fitting to show himself such a prince to his subjects as he wishes and desires God to be supreme and high Lord him, persuaded and moved by these and many other pious considerations, among others by the most humble and persistent supplications, prayers and requests of our most serene and beloved wife and consort the queen…we have pardoned…’
The lure of a pardon undermined Cade’s force, and the mention of Marguerite’s intercession allowed Henry to show leniency without appearing weak.
It is quite possible that had Henry not fallen ill, Marguerite’s supporting role would have continued but as his condition worsened and the threat from the Yorkist faction grew stronger, she had little option but to assume a more prominent position. The fluctuating health of the king meant that increasingly she governed beneath the cloak of Henry’s kingship, continuing to represent herself as subordinate to the king’s authority whilst, in fact, assuming increasing power.
During a lull in Henry’s illness Marguerite produced the king with an heir, Edward, securing Lancaster’s position whilst simultaneously dealing a blow to the ambitious Duke of York who was previously Henry’s heir. It is no coincidence that around this time propaganda against the queen increased, and York’s attempts to undermine Margaret’s authority picked up pace.
Since Marguerite: Hell Hath No Fury is a fictional novel I took the liberty of diverting from the record and embellishing the contemporary rumours of an affair with Somerset. After all, every woman, fictional or otherwise, deserves to be loved at least once or twice.
The historical record only takes us so far, what went on behind closed doors is ‘scope for the author’s imagination.’ The human need for physical comfort and our weakness in the face of temptation should not be overlooked but, that does not imply I personally believe anything untoward happened. Henry may very well have found the wherewithal to sire a son.
Several contemporary reports accuse the queen of sexual misconduct and her son, Edward, is described as a ‘changeling,’ a term which infers he was base born. Two days before York was removed from office on 23 February 1456 a John Helton was executed for distributing bills that alleged the prince was not the queen’s son.
The relationship between Marguerite and Exeter is also fictional, as is her presence at Tewkesbury field. I wanted to describe the battle but since so many died on the battlefield, I lacked a messenger to bring her news of it. We don’t actually know where she was at the time the fight took place but she was discovered by Edward IV at a nearby unnamed nunnery. Some historians believe that to have been Malvern.
As the struggle for power descended into military combat Marguerite was obliged to step further and further from the expected feminine role. The nobles of England and their adherents were killed in various skirmishes and battles, the reins of government passing from York to Henry (or Marguerite) but it was not until the Battle of Towton that the reign of Lancaster was all but ended and the new Yorkist dynasty arose.
With York dead and Edward IV firmly on the throne, Marguerite could have faded into genteel retirement. York’s vendetta against the deposed queen could have ceased. But poetry and pamphlets continued to be issued, denigrating both Marguerite and her claim to the throne. She was blamed for the fall of the Lancastrian dynasty and stereotyped as ‘an angry woman driven by malice, spreading sorrow, disorder and confusion in her wake.’
Marguerite, still refusing to admit defeat, spent the next ten years in exile, plotting to reinstate her son. Her determination was so strong that when Warwick fell out with Edward IV, she formed an alliance with him, one of her greatest enemies, and consented to a marriage between Edward of Lancaster and Warwick’s youngest daughter, Anne.
It was a short-lived alliance that ended in death for Warwick at Barnet, and for Marguerite at Tewkesbury where her seventeen-year-old son Edward, was killed, along with Lancastrian hopes for the English throne.
But Yorkist propaganda continued, and the wide range of devices used to defame Marguerite make it difficult, even now, to obtain a clear view of her. Early historians picked up the Yorkist banner and continued to dehumanise her, subverting her female instinct to nurture into an unnatural lust for murder.
By the time Shakespeare wrote his Wars of the Roses plays Marguerite’s name had already come to epitomise unrelieved lust for power. He described her as possessed of a ‘tigers heart wrapped in a woman’s hide,’ and lacking ‘the true qualities of royalty.’ Tainted by immorality, Marguerite becomes an adulteress, her lust and propensity for vengeance her worst flaw.
In Henry VI part III her feminine weaknesses are replaced by the most ignoble of male attributes; she is masculine but akin to only the worst of men. Shakespeare’s Marguerite is an arch-villainess whose femininity is inverted to encompass the direst human traits; her assumption of a male role and her lust for blood and revenge reverses the natural order and creates chaos in the realm.
In the hands of the bard, Marguerite is a marvellous authorial depiction of twisted humanity but as a playwright Shakespeare remains unchallenged but he was not a historian. Unfortunately, Shakespeare’s history plays came to be utilised not as examples of literary genius but as factual documents of history.
In the 1840’s Agnes Strickland published her Lives of the Queens of England and viewed Marguerite’s story ‘...of more powerful of interest than are to be found in the imaginary career of any heroine of romance; for the creations of fiction, however forcibly they may appeal to our imagination, fade into insignificance before the simple majesty of truth.’
Like other Victorian moralists, Strickland provides a highly romanticised picture of an unfortunate queen who unwisely meddled in the concerns of men. Marguerite becomes pitiful in her defeat but Strickland, by illustrating her utter personal defeat and regret, upholds the medieval opinion of a woman’s proper place.
‘While they remained in life, she would have died a thousand deaths rather than relinquish even the most shadowy of their claims; but the dear ones were no more,
‘Ambition, pride, the rival names
with all their long-contested claims
what were they then to her?’
J. J. Bagley in his biography of Marguerite written in 1948 provides a less romantic presentation. Bagley admits that Marguerite ‘did not cause the Wars of the Roses, but her intense, bitter feeling, her refusal to compromise, and her disregard of any other factor than the inheritance of her only son were reflected in the brutal, callous nature of the prolonged struggle. For the sake of its own cause and for the welfare of the English people, the house of Lancaster might have wished for a wiser and more understanding leader, but nowhere could it have found a braver and more determined champion.
Queen Margaret’s life was more than a sad story. It was a true tragedy, for the root cause of her failure lay, not in the fickle fate of battles, but in her own character and philosophy.’
In Bagley’s opinion, the Lancastrian cause could not have wished for a braver leader but perhaps one less swayed by dangerous female characteristics such as loyalty and determination.
Richard, Duke of York was equally ambitious for his sons and fought just as fiercely for what he saw as his own rights and, moreover, he fought against an anointed king. Marguerite was acting in defence of the throne of England, as was her duty.
Historical research in the twenty and twenty-first centuries has concentrated on the study of women and how women have exercised power, and this gendered analysis has allowed historians to move away from the traditional perception of queens. Modern scholars look at the restrictions placed upon them and how those limitations impinged upon their political lives. Marguerite pushed the boundaries of her engendered position and faced with the insurmountable problem of an inefficient consort, she was forced to take unpopular actions and has since been judged accordingly.
Other people have campaigned for thrones, overthrown kings and taken power from weak or incompetent rulers and (with the exception of Richard III) have not been defamed; the only difference is that they were men.
Marguerite posed a threat to male rule that the medieval world was unprepared to accept. She was a woman out of her prescribed place, deemed ‘unnatural’ and any divergence from the norm was considered suspect and therefore dangerous. Rosaldo clarifies the point in his book Women, Culture and Society,
‘Societies that define woman as lacking legitimate authority have no way of acknowledging the reality of female power. This difference between rule and reality is reflected in our own society when we speak of powerful women as ‘bitches’.’ Or ‘she-wolves’ perhaps.
Marguerite’s determination and indefatigable resolve to win back her son’s throne was only exhausted by his death. In a man, such tenacity would be heroic. She has been labelled a violent and vengeful woman but surely she was no more so than her male opponents. The unique circumstances in which she found herself made it impossible to follow prescribed gender boundaries while her opponents remained unfettered.
Hostile propaganda, perpetuated by male playwrights and Victorian moralists, remains in our consciousness even now. Every day on social media I hear derogatory comments against Marguerite and her contemporary, Margaret Beaufort, but medieval history cannot be judged from a modern perspective and it does nobody any favours to perpetuate the misogyny of the past.
As was my intention in The Beaufort Chronicle, my novel, Marguerite: Hell Hath No Fury is written in Marguerite’s voice and represents my own poor attempt to rectify the flawed perception of an admirable woman.
Judith Arnopp
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About the Author
A lifelong history enthusiast and avid reader, Judith holds a BA in English/Creative writing and a Masters in Medieval Studies. She lives on the coast of West Wales where she writes both fiction and non-fiction. She is best known for her novels set in the Medieval and Tudor period, focussing on the perspective of historical women but recently she has written a trilogy from the perspective of Henry VIII himself.
Judith is also a founder member of a re-enactment group called The Fyne Companye of Cambria which is when and why she began to experiment with sewing historical garments. She now makes clothes and accessories both for the group and others. She is not a professionally trained sewer but through trial, error and determination has learned how to make authentic looking, if not strictly historically accurate clothing. A non-fiction book about Tudor clothing, How to Dress like a Tudor, was published in 2023 by Pen and Sword. She runs a small seaside holiday let in Aberporth and when she has time for fun, likes to garden and restore antique doll’s houses. Find out more at Judith's website
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