Lives of the Queens of England Volume 10

Two Marys. Two thrones. Two very different fates. Volume ten of the Stricklands' monumental biographical project rescues two overlooked queens from the margins of English history. Mary II, who ruled jointly with her Dutch husband William III, was a monarch in her own right who defeated her father James II's forces at the Boyne, only to die childless at thirty-two. Mary Beatrice of Modena, James II's Catholic queen, followed her husband into exile and spent her remaining years in France, watching the Stuart claim to the throne fade with each passing year. The Stricklands, working from sources other historians had ignored, sought to restore these women as subjects of their own stories rather than footnotes to their husbands' reigns. Published in the Victorian era when women's histories were rarely considered worthy of serious attention, this volume represents an early attempt to write queenship as something more than mereappendage to kingship. For readers interested in how women actually wielded power, or were denied it, in the machinery of early modern monarchy.