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I Royal Succession and the Queen's Two Bodies IN ONE OF THE EARLIEST versions of the story of Queen Guenevere , the Anglo-Norman poet Wace notes that "she had many graces and she had a noble bearing, she was very generous and spoke well. Arthur loved and cherished her greatly, but they had no heir and were unable to have any child" (Le roman de Brut, w. 9653-58).1 Wace's reference to Queen Guenevere's inability to produce children is the only explanation of the queen's barrenness in medieval literature. It is not found in Wace's source, Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae, and the twelfth- and thirteenth-century romances that make Guenevere into a celebrated lover and adulteress do not attempt to explain why the queen has no children. In around 1155 Wace's Brut was presented to the new queen of England, Eleanor of Aquitaine, a few years after her marriage to Henry II, according to Layamon, who translated the Brut into English .2 In a recent biographical study of Eleanor, D. D. R. Owen has suggested that Wace may have been aware of the possible similarities between the lives of Guenevere and Eleanor. Owen further suggests that Wace's explanation of the queen's lack of children with Arthur may have been intended to justify her subsequent adultery with Mordred. With reference to the text's association with Eleanor ofAquitaine he speculates that Guenevere's relationship with Arthur may remind readers of Eleanor's relationship with her first husband, Louis VII, with whom she had no sons.3 While Henry might have had some interest in seeing himself represented as a once and future 26 Chapter I king, it is hard to imagine that Eleanor would have welcomed the association with an adulteress, particularly since only a few years earlier Eleanor herself was rumored to have had an adulterous liaison with her uncle, Raymond of Antioch. The speculative equation of Guenevere and Eleanor of Aquitaine may demonstrate the difficulty and, ultimately, the futility of the search for nonfictional models behind fictional representations of adulterous queens. This is not to say that there is no relationship between medieval queens and romance representations of queenship; this book attempts to identify just such a relationship. But I will suggest that the relationship between fictional and nonfictional queens is to be discovered not in biographical imitation, but in the representation ofthe queen's changing and contested position in the royal court. One important factor in the definition of the status and influence of medieval queens is maternity. Wace's explanation of Guenevere's barrenness leads Owen to suggest that the queen's lack of children may have provided a partial justification for her adultery.4 Lancelot does not appear in this early narrative about King Arthur's court, but Guenevere has an adulterous liaision with Mordred, who is not identified as Arthur's illegitimate son in this text.5 In the French romance tradition the treasonous adultery with Mordred is displaced by the courtly adultery with Lancelot. Although Guenevere is still barren in later retellings and elaborations of her story, her inability to have children is not explained and it is not cited as a reason or a justification for adultery by romance authors. Owen's suggestion of a causal link between the queen's lack of children and her adultery in the Brut cannot be applied to later romance narratives about Queen Guenevere, but Owen identifies a link between barrenness and adultery that finds a persistent representation in French romances. In almost all twelfth- and thirteenth-century medieval French romances, adulterous queens are barren.6 Iseut has no children and Guenevere is usually childless. In one thirteenth-century grail romance Guenevere has a son with Arthur called Loholt, but he appears only briefly and his primary role in the story seems to be to die young? Moreover, Loholt's paternity is never disputed within Royal Succession and the Queen's Two Bodies 27 the romance, even though the adulterous relationship of Lancelot and Guenevere is recounted in the story.8 Le livre de Caradoc provides the one example in twelfth- and thirteenth-century romance of an adulterous queen who conceives an illegitimate son with her lover. The representation of the relationship between succession and sexual transgression in Caradoc is rather different from the barren courtly adultery that characterizes the liaisons of Queen Guenevere and Queen Iseut, and I will discuss it in detail in...

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