Berengaria of Navarre: Queen of England, Lord of Le Mans by Gabrielle Storey was published by Taylor & Francis on 3 June 2024.
Gabrielle kindly answered a few of my questions.
1. Tell us a little about Berengaria of Navarre: Queen of England, Lord of Le Mans.
Berengaria of Navarre: Queen of England, Lord of Le Mans is a biography of Berengaria, queen of England and wife of Richard I, who lived in the 12th and 13th centuries. She has received little attention from scholars – or the wider public – with some brief biographies or academic articles. Very recently an academic French biography was published, but I fell in love with Berengaria during my PhD and felt she needed some new attention and an updated history.
The book is chronological but also covers several major themes of her life: political relationships and partnerships, her relationships with her family, her power as a female ruler, and some of the major political events of the medieval period including the Third Crusade.
2. What inspired the book?
I completed my PhD in 2020, which was a comparative study of the queens of England from Empress Matilda through to Isabella of Angoulême. During that time I fell down an investigative rabbit hole trying to piece together aspects of Berengaria's life – greatly helped by the comparison between her life and that of other royal women at the time. We know so much about her mother-in-law, Eleanor of Aquitaine, yet Berengaria has been left in the shadows, surrounded by other figures who dominated the political scenes. I wanted to bring her story into the limelight and make it an accessible and entertaining read as well.
3. How much planning went into the book before you started to write?
Lots! Originally I had planned to write a book closer to my PhD thesis and try to write Berengaria's biography on a similar timeline. A few changes of circumstance along the way saw the biography take priority, and although I had researched much of the material during my PhD, there was still some more to examine. And although a chronological approach makes the most sense for a biography, I had to think about how to make the chapters more equal in terms of length and what I needed to do to dig into her early life in Navarre, Spain, which hadn't featured as much in my previous work.
4. Is there anything about the process of publishing a book that surprised you?
I think finding your voice as a writer was the most surprising, or complex thing that I grappled with – writing a thesis, and then for academic audiences, is something I've been trained to do. But writing non-fiction for a mixed academic and public audience required a different approach and it took a long time to pull out that voice which balanced the two.
5. What do you do when you aren't writing? What do you do to relax and get away from it all?
I love going to do anything history related – whether that's finding a little village church, going to natural history spots such as Kew Gardens, or visiting a castle or exhibition at the British Library. If there's something history related, I'm there! You should always be able to draw the line between work and pleasure, but when you're surrounded by history it's very easy to be drawn into it all day after day. I also really enjoy reading fiction and non-fiction for fun, though don't have as much time to do this as I'd like – my TBR pile is ridiculously tall!
6. If you could only read one book for the rest of your life which book would it be?
Ooh tricky! Fiction wise I'd probably have to go with Kingdom of Ash by Sarah J. Maas – the Throne of Glass series is my favourite of hers, and as the final book of that particular series it has enough humour and heart wrenching moments to read it over and over again. It's definitely a book of escapism! Not quite sure I could pick one history book though…
7. I like to end my Q&As with the same question so here we go. During all the Q&As and interviews you've done what question have you not been asked that you wish had been asked – and what's the answer?
I haven't yet been asked what piece of the story, or what evidence might I want to fill in a bit more of Berengaria's story. She's a queen of England of whom we know very little, and she never came to the country as queen consort (though she does visit in her widowhood, in 1220). So I'd love to have more documentation that would tell us more about her time as queen consort, and more details on her marriage to Richard: theirs is a seemingly unhappy, and to a point, neglectful partnership, so it would be great to have more about their relationship with one another and why it didn't work out between them.
About the Book
Berengaria of Navarre was queen of England (1191–99) and lord of Le Mans (1204–30), but has received little attention in terms of a fully encompassing biography from Navarrese, Anglophone, and French perspectives. This book explores her political career whilst utilising the surviving documentation to demonstrate her personal and familial partnerships and life as a dowager queen.
This biography follows Berengaria's journey from a Navarrese infanta, raised in the northern Iberian kingdom, to her travels across Europe to marriage and the Third Crusade, venturing through Sicily, Cyprus, and on to the Holy Land in 1191. Berengaria's reign and early years as dowager queen are examined in the context of the Anglo-French conflict and domestic disputes, before her decision to negotiate with the king of France, Philip Augustus, and become lord of Le Mans, for which she is far better known in local memory.
The volume flows chronologically discussing her roles as infanta, queen, dowager, and lord, and is an ideal resource for scholars and those interested in the history of gender, queenship, lordship, and Western Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
You can buy a copy of the book here.
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