'Game of Queens' is about the women behind 16th century Europe and huge tracts of
Europe in the 16th century were being governed by a woman either a queen
regnant or else as a regent for an absent or an
underage king and we've kind of forgotten that a bit. The extraordinary
thing is there are probably far more connections between the English powerful
women. like Katherine of Aragon like you know Anne Boleyn later Queens then then
we have now you know we really have forgotten a lot of this history. The one
that stands out for me, the one I can't believe I didn't know more about, is
Margaret of Austria; now she was the regent of the Netherlands in the early
part of the the sixteenth century but she she helped to raise the young
Anne Boley, Anne Boleyn spent some time at her court;
she was sister-in-law to Katherine of Aragon, but beyond all that and beyond
even her job as Netherlands regent, she became the kind of the 'fixer' of Europe;
Ferdinand of Aragon, who at one point had been her father-in-law, said that
"Madam Margaret is the most powerful person in Europe; she's the one on all
whom depends." because she she takes the lead in all the negotiations between the
princes, and a few years later she sat down with Louise of Savoy of whom, again,
we haven't heard but, you know, who was taking a very powerful role in France,
behind her son King Francois the First, so Louise and Margaret sat down, one
representing her nephew, one representing her son, to negotiate the 'Ladies' Peace',
so-called, of Cambrai and again it's very it seems quite strange to me,
especially with the interest in women's history now, that that's just completely
been forgotten today. It probably began in my teens when I read a famous a
classic old book called Garrett Mattingly's 'The defeat of the Spanish
Armada' and he mentions, as a throwaway line, that how strange
it was looking at Elizabeth the First and Mary Queen of Scots,
how much of in the century before, the roles, leading roles, on either side of
the religious divide, had been taken by a woman and I began, well you know, thought that's
interesting, goodness - yes that's true! Then I began looking at them and I found
first of all just how many there were, but also what strong links they had
binding them; you've got mothers and daughters, aunts
and nieces, mentors and protégées and they were really conscious of these
links themselves; you could actually see these women recognizing bonds and
forging alliances right across the, you know their.. the boundaries of the
countries where they were married, sometimes even contrary to the countries'
interests, because of course you know to be a woman then was seen as a major
disadvantage, but when that Ladies' Peace was you know was in discussion, certainly
Margaret of Austria was effectively writing to Louise of Savoy, Louise of Savoy
that "Wouldn't it be great if the young men could get out of the way?" because, as
she politely put it, they had their honour to consider, in other words they were
going to be doing a lot of posturing and then they..she said "How appropriate, on
the other hand, for ladies to come forward in the cause of peace." So they
really did see the plus-sides as well as the negatives. Well I think really the
bit I don't like to peddle too much, but it's always there, is the question of
whether this 16th century age of Queens has any kind of ramifications for the
present day; I mean I was writing it at a time when a woman was preparing to
contend the world's most powerful office of course; Hillary Clinton lost but
nonetheless we are seeing England and Scotland led by women, Angela Merkel,
Christine Lagarde; it does seem as though something is coming around again and I
like to think that maybe those earlier forebears had some lessons to teach them.