Gabrielle Storey’s study of Berengaria of Navarre (c. 1165-1230) is one of the latest royal biographies to appear in the new “Lives of Royal Women” series edited by Elena Woodacre and Louise Wilkinson, which aims to provide “academic but accessible” profiles of royal women from across the globe. Berengaria herself has been the subject of historical research since the publication of Agnes Strickland’s Lives of the Queens of England (published between 1840 and 1848), notably in Ann Trindade’s Berengaria: In Search of Richard the Lionheart’s Queen (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1999) and most recently by Ghislain Baury and Vicent Corriol, Bérengère de Navarre (v. 1160-1230). Histoire et mémoire d'une reine d'Angleterre (Rennes: University of Rennes Press, 2022). Storey aims to contribute to this historiography by returning to the known sources for Berengaria’s life with fresh eyes and a feminist perspective.
The first six chapters of the book narrate Berengaria’s life chronologically and thematically, focusing on her upbringing, marriage, queenship, her personal and political relationships, and her persistent quest for an income, both as Richard’s queen and as a dowager. Berengaria was born around 1165 to King Sancho IV of Navarre and Queen Sancha of Castile. Little is known about her childhood; she was probably in her mid-to-late twenties when she was picked as a potential bride for Richard Lionheart, the new king of England. The reasons for Richard breaking his betrothal to the French princess Alys and marrying Berengaria remain obscure, although Storey persuasively argues the need for the Angevins to secure their southern border (30-31). Escorted by Eleanor of Aquitaine to Sicily, she proceeded east with Richard’s sister Joanna, famously being shipwrecked in Cyprus and held captive by Isaac Comnenus. Berengaria and Joanna were rescued by Richard who took the opportunity to conquer the island and the couple were then married in Limassol (42-43), and Berengaria crowned Queen of England shortly after. Storey argues that this hasty and distant coronation served to alienate Berengaria from her English subjects, a relationship which was further calcified when Richard was crowned for a second time at Winchester in 1194 without his queen (53). From Cyprus, the couple proceeded to Syria and Palestine, and while Richard’s exploits are well known, Berengaria’s experience of crusade remains a cypher (47-49). Departing separately in 1193, Richard was taken captive in Austria, and Berengaria made her way along with Joanna back to the west. She and Richard were likely never reunited, and they had no heir (thus Stephen Runciman’s describing Richard as a “bad husband.”) Storey dismisses Howden’s dramatic and influential story of Richard and Berengaria’s reunion in 1195 and Richard’s penitence for his “illicit intercourse,” arguing that we don’t know with certainty Berengaria’s whereabouts at this time, and that Richard was busy fighting, mainly in Normandy (52-53.) After Richard’s death in 1199, and for the next thirty years, Berengaria struggled to receive her entitlements as a dowager queen, a situation complicated by the fact that from 1200 to 1204, England had three queens claiming support (Eleanor, Berengaria, and Isabelle of Angouleme). In 1204, Berengaria made a radical decision, agreeing with Philip Augustus to exchange her dower lands in Normandy for the lordship of the city of Le Mans. For the remainder of her life, while Berengaria still campaigned to receive her English dower revenues, the lordship of Le Mans gave her renewed purpose. In Chapter Six, “Lord of Le Mans: Rulership and Religion,” Storey continues the narrative of Berengaria’s wrangling over the remainder of her dower rights, but explores in particular Berengaria’s lordship of Le Mans and her simultaneously conflicted and cooperative relationship with Bishop Maurice (1216-1231), her patronage of the chapter of Saint Pierre-de-la-Cour, and above all her foundation of the Cistercian monastery of L’Épau, where she would be buried. Storey makes an important point about female lordship, and explains why “Lady” is an inappropriate English translation of “domina” (134).
The final chapter, “Legacy” examines Berengaria’s place in contemporary popular culture. It’s an unusual choice for a medieval biography, and an interesting problem for Storey; apart from Eleanor of Aquitaine and some of the early Saxon and Norman queens of England (e.g., Emma of Normandy), few medieval queens have received much in the way of what Storey calls “televisual” treatment. And yet Berengaria, or at least an imagined version of her, is prominent in film, television, and fiction writing, primarily as an accessory to Richard. Script writers and novelists confront, like Storey, the lack of sources for Berengaria’s life, and worse, must make her dramatically interesting, which all too often means either depicting her as a scheming harridan, or a frail flower.
Storey argues that Berengaria’s history is not well known, especially outside of Limassol, where she was married and crowned, and Le Mans, where she exercised power. She was a childless queen of England who only once, and as a widow, set foot there. She had no scandal attached to her life, which meant she was not particularly interesting to medieval chroniclers. She was overshadowed, moreover, by her powerful, experienced, and talented mother-in-law, Eleanor, who Richard clearly preferred as a co-ruler. Storey has done well to wring every bit of information out of very few sources to not only elaborate the details of Berengaria’s life but raise interesting questions about the nature of queenship and royal women’s experiences in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. In particular, three sets of charters produced in Navarre, Rome, and the Loire (at Fontevraud) remind us that Berengaria carried significant status in her own day, was sought after as an authority and witness, and moved around--a lot. She carried out an intense correspondence with the papacy, especially seeking papal advocacy as a widow. Her public appearances at crucial moments, such as Richard’s burial at Fontevraud in 1199, or the translation of Becket’s bones in 1220, are revealed to be strategic on her part, as she sought to place herself in the direct path of those most able to help her, such as Eleanor or the young king of England Henry III.
Writing a scholarly book for a general audience is undoubtedly challenging. Storey gets bogged down sometimes in minutiae of Navarrese dynastic history and Plantagenet politics. She is highly speculative (the word “plausible” appears on nearly every page, sometimes twice), which is almost unavoidable given how many questions we would like answered about Berengaria for which there are no sources. She is daring in some places, such as when speculating that the Leonese institution of the infantazgo, in which royal women controlled large monastic estates, was influential upon Berengaria. The general geographic proximity of the infantazgo does not mean it would have appeared in Navarre, nor influenced Navarrese approaches to women in power (I don’t think it did), but it is interesting to consider. Overall, Storey does not handle the Iberian context as well as she might, but she is right to consider the ways in which Berengaria’s experiences and expectations as a young woman affected her approach to her marriage and later widowhood, including her ability to rule Le Mans. Inconsistencies (“Espal,” “L’Espal,” and “L’Épau,” passim) and more egregious errors such as confusing Mozarabs with Muslims (48) or referring to Walter Scott’s The Talisman (1825) as Richard the Lionhearted (176) do not really affect Berengaria’s story but suggest that the book was not as well served by the review process as it should have been. Given the book’s organization along both chronological and thematic lines, a tendency to repetition could have been helped by stronger editorial intervention.
It is difficult to write about medieval women, and while queens are attractive and draw large audiences, they pose special problems as their experiences are often anomalous, and the slim body of sources is often generated by the men around them. In this case, long discussions of Berengaria’s political or religious contexts ironically make it difficult to focus on the queen. In fact, perhaps she was less a queen than a lord. Her title of queen must have been important and enhanced her status as Lord of Le Mans--but she never ruled England or other Plantagenet territories. What, in the end, does it mean to understand Berengaria as a queen? There are the consorts, the inheriting queens, the queens-regent, the co-rulers, the advisors, the bedfellows--was Berengaria any of these? The most interesting questions about Berengaria remain to be explicitly addressed: what does she teach us about queenship in Plantagenet England? What does her example mean for how we understand female lordship in Capetian France? Threaded throughout the later chapters is Berengaria’s relationship with her younger sister, the well-known and important Countess Blanche of Champagne--whom Storey perplexingly insists on referring to as Blanca. The political and personal intensity of the sisters’ relationship deserved further, deeper investigation; as Storey continues her study of Berengaria of Navarre, I hope she will grapple with these questions.