Berengaria: In Search of Richard the Lionheart's Queen (review)

Reviews 281 Estelle Stubbs notes, it is possible that parts ofHengwrt predate Chaucer's death and that he may have had some involvement in its compilation. While this edition cannot give a definitive answer to the many questions raised by this crucial manuscript, it provides the fullest available corpus of materials about Hengwrt, in a remarkably powerful and usable form. Toby Burrows Scholars' Centre The University of Western Australia Trindade, Ann, Berengaria: In Search of Richard the Lionheart's Queen, Dublin Four Courts Press, 1999, cloth; pp. 240; R R P US$29.50; ISBN 1851824340. This attractive and interesting book attempts a full-length biography of one the Middle Ages' least-known women. Berengaria of Navarre, daughter of king Sancho TV El Sabio (the Wise), married Richard the Lionheart, king of England, on 12 May 1191 at Limassol on Cyprus. During their marriage they were often apart, Richard famously being engaged with crusading, and the marriage was childless. He died on 6 April 1199 in Normandy, and she lived out her widowhood in Le Mans, dying in December 1230. Few contemporary sources mention her, and it would seem that the task of writing her biography would require considerable inventiveness. Trindade's approach is interesting, in that she gives attention to the attitudes ofhistorians over the centuries and also to the novelists w h o have been attracted to the glittering hero Richard and have been forced to depict his shadowy wife in theirfictions.Thus, the book covers the contemporary sources, the development of scholarly arguments regarding Richard and his circle, and the way in which these people appeared in the popular imagination. This enables Trindade to flesh out the bare bones of Berengaria's life story, and to draw on broader works of scholarship for illumination about subjects such as the upbringing of royal daughters, the kingdom of Navarre in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and the religious duties of queens and royal widows. Although palatable to a popular readership, the book is well-referenced, with extensive notes and bibliography. Its structure is based on the stages of Berengaria's life, first as the daughter of the Navarrese monarch, then as bride, wife and widow ofRichard the Lionheart. The dependence ofmedieval women's lives and identities on those ofthe m e n w h o surrounded them - fathers, brothers, 282 Reviews husbands, sons if they had them, and the male chroniclers who wrote of their lives - is everywhere apparent in Trindade's narrative. She makes good use of the insights of Georges Duby, the scholar of medieval marriage in the 'male' Middle Ages, and also of various feminist scholars w h o have transformed our knowledge of the medieval landscape in the last 30 years. It is not possible to know very much of Berengaria, as she is much less prominent in sources than other w o m e n who were associated with Richard, chief of w h o m is his mother, the redoubtable Eleanor ofAquitaine. Trindade's method largely consists in stating the 'facts' as they are known, then interrogating the various possible interpretations of these facts. Her discussion of the problem of Richard's sexual preference is a good example of this method: she cites the relevant passages from chroniclers, discusses the ways in which historians have interpreted them (including the general negativity among French historians and the heroicization and defence of Richard by English historians), and indicates her own views. The argument is sophisticated, but always attractively written and readable, and authorities are cited from a wide range of medieval disciplines, with a clear awareness of the difference between modern categories such as 'homosexuality', and the realities of medieval life. The discussion of Berengaria's widowhood acknowledges that until recently widows were not of much interest to historians. The vulnerability of many royal widows is emphasized, with contested dowers often not returned, and childlessness an especial sign of 'failure'. Berengaria was loyally supported in the long years of her widowhood by her sister Blanca (Blanche), the widow of Count Thibaut III ofChampagne, and regent for her son Thibaut IV. Berengaria's residence in Le Mans was brought about by her vulnerable position, as she...