Drawing on innovative research in the rapidly growing field of Mediterranean studies, this groundbreaking collection explores the key roles that Mediterranean queens played as wives, as mothers, and above all as political actors. Taken together, they form a varied and comprehensive account of the ways in which these royal women negotiated their positions within the context of the court, how they responded to widowhood and other challenging circumstances, and reactions to queens who exercised political power in ways considered to be beyond their accepted roles. Ranging from Byzantine empresses to the consorts of Moroccan sultans to queens regnant and consort in both the Italian and Iberian peninsulas, these remarkable studies offer a bracing new perspective on the concepts and practice of queenship more generally in the medieval and Early Modern eras.

This groundbreaking collection explores the key roles that Mediterranean queens played as wives, as mothers, and above all as political actors. Ranging from Byzantine empresses to regnants and consorts in the Italian peninsula, they offer a bracing new perspective on queenship in the medieval and Early Modern eras.