Childless queens and child-like kings: negotiating royal infertility in England, 1382-1471

2018-05-23This dissertation makes a timely and substantive contribution to the emerging field of the history of infertility. It focuses on two case studies of childless (or long childless) unions: Richard II (r. 1377-99) and his first queen Anne of Bohemia; and Henry VI (r. 1422-1461, 1470-71) and his wife Margaret of Anjou (d. 1482). These case studies allow me to explicate the social and cultural milieu surrounding childlessness, including how royalty coped with and compensated for their reproductive failure (including the creation of foster sons and false tales of unconsummated marriages). This work challenges the central place of maternity in queenship studies (queens could, in fact, succeed without producing children), and it examines an understudied facet of medieval kingship - the social and cultural importance of fatherhood. In addition to exploring how specific queens and kings attempted to compensate for their childlessness, this dissertation also explores attitudes towards infertility, as found in medical, devotional, and cultural texts. These reveal that infertility affected gender roles. A woman could still be womanly without children but a childless man was seen as decidedly less mature and manly