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.

Zita Rohr, University of Sydney, Australia Ana Rodrigues Oliviera, University of Lisbon-Nova, Portugal Manuela Santos Silva, University of Lisbon, Portugal Alexandra Karagianni, University Western Macedonia, Republic of Macedonia Isabel de Pina Baleiras, Lisbon University, Portugal Federica Contu, University of Cagliari, Italy Cinzia Recca, Catania, Italy Diana Pelaz Flores, University of Valladolid, Spain Melissa R. Katz, University of Exeter, UK Mariah Proctor-Tiffany, Rhode Island School of Design, UK Colette Bowie, University of Glasgow, UK Fatima Rhorchi, University Moulay Ismail-Meknes, Morocco

1. Introduction; Elena Woodacre 2. Women Monarchs in the Medieval Byzantine Court: Prejudice, Disbelief and Calumnies; Alexandra Karagianni 3. To Have and Have Not: The Dower of Joanna Plantagenet, Queen of Sicily (1177-1189); Colette Bowie 4. The Many Wills of Violante de Aragón as Testament to Uncertainty in Thirteenth-Century Castilla-León; Melissa R. Katz 5. Lost and Found: Visualizing a Medieval Queen's Destroyed Objects and Collection; Mariah Proctor-Tiffany 6. The Political Role of a Portuguese Queen in Late Fourteenth Century; Isabel de Pina Baleiras 7. Philippa of Lancaster: The Memory of a Model Queen; Ana Rodrigues Oliveira 8. Not Lost in Translation: Aragonese Court Culture 'on tour' (1400-1480); Zita Rohr 9. Queenly Time in the Reign of Juan II of Castile (1406-1454); Diana Pelaz Flores 10. Princess Isabel of Portugal : 'First Lady' in a Kingdom without a Queen (1415-1428); Manuela Santos Silva 11. Blanca, Queen of Sicily and Queen of Navarre-Connecting the Pyrenees and the Mediterranean via an Aragonese Alliance; Elena Woodacre 12. Consorts of Moroccan Sultans: Lalla Khnata Bint Bakkar, 'A woman with Three Kings'; Fatima Rhorchi 13. The Sovereign and His Wife "Minister": Charles Emmanuel IV and Marie Clotilde Adelaide Xaviere of France: Interpersonal and political relations between the sovereigns of Sardinia; Federica Contu 14. Queenship and Family Dynamics through the Correspondence of the Queen Maria Carolina of Naples; Cinzia Recca