EVERYTHING YOU WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT... MEDIEVAL QUEENS AND IMAGE
Q: What behaviours were expected of medieval queens?
A: I always summarise them as the four goods and the three Ps. Essentially, queens were expected to be the ultimate ‘good woman’ – a model of virtuous behaviour. They were expected to be good wives and mothers as well as good rulers, but they were also meant to be pious peacemakers and to look pretty.
That may seem like a rather trite description, but it really does sum up what was expected of medieval queens. Beauty was obviously a huge part of a queen’s role, and they were expected to represent contemporary ideals. But queens were often described in idealistic terms and referred to as being beautiful or fair even if they weren’t necessarily all that attractive. After all, no one wants to be the one to say that their queen isn’t a looker, so it’s hard to know how beautiful the woman was in absolute terms.
William Caxton, in his 15th-century book states that a queen “ought to be a fair lady sittynge in a chayer and crowned wyth a corone on
