She was never going to have an easy ride, and those supposedly loyal to her constantly shifted allegiances. On the death of King Henry I, her cousin Stephen claimed the crown of England, despite her father having made the court, gentry and church swear allegiance to her. He died, she returned to England at 23 and was next married off to Geoffrey of Anjou. She’d been married off at age eight to Henry V, King of Germany and the Holy Roman Empire. As the daughter of Henry I and granddaughter of William the Conqueror, the chance to rule came after her brother William drowned. Her coronation banquet was prepared in 1141, but she was driven out of London by crowds opposing her.
Matilda was the first woman to claim the English throne (pictured right in the centre). Each was thwarted, but they came damn close. Matilda and Eleanor had designs on being more than that. In the early middle ages, there was no such thing as a queen in the modern sense – a female king. The only broad comparison was with Queen Elizabeth II, for contrast. The generally measured approach extended to eschewing the ghastly analogies that can clog history docs: neither Matilda and Eleanor were the Madonna of the Middle Ages or the Margaret Thatcher of their era. Unlike other history programmes, She Wolves made it clear that contemporary and subsequent records of events were intrinsically flawed due to who wrote them, even though those shortcomings were clunkily ascribed to medieval “ spin doctors”. Formulaic phrases rang out louder than they should have when ranged against her otherwise authoritative delivery, which had no place for loose generalisations. Matilda had “lost the battle, but won the war”. “How far we’ve come, how little we’ve changed,” she said. That she carried the programme was both a boon and a drawback. With Henry II absent much of the time crusading, Eleanor ended up de facto ruler of England
In a refreshingly unfussy, old-fashioned touch, Dr Castor directly addressed the camera or provided the voiceover. Snatches from historic documents were read out by other voices but there were no talking heads, another plus. Equally thankfully, purposeful striding was at a minimum – although close-ups of pounding horse’s hooves to suggest urgency were overused. But with only one contemporary image apiece for Matilda and Eleanor, visual material was lacking.įortunately, the gap wasn’t filled by clichéd set-ups of Dr Castor poring over medieval manuscripts. With an audience beyond the niches of either a history readership or gender studies, the book is a natural for television with clearly told, linear stories that resonate despite dating back at least 600 years. The programme’s sensational title was a given. She Wolves brought Castor’s book She-Wolves: The Women Who Ruled England Before Elizabeth to television.
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