Book Review: “The Lady Queen” by Nancy Goldstone
I have been a fan of Nancy Goldstone’s work for a while, her histories are always as fun as they are informative, in part because of the subjects she chooses, and Joanna I is no exception.
Born in 1325, she ruled Naples from 1343 till her death in 1382, surviving and thriving through a dizzying array of catastrophes, betrayals, and intrigues that make Game of Thrones look calm.
She was brought up by her grandparents in Naples, and engaged at an early age to Andrew, Duke of Calabria, the second son of Charles I of Hungary in an effort to resolve various claims to the crown of Sicily, but the marriage ended shortly after her reign began when he was assassinated, and Joanna’s reign did not get much calmer from there.
Joanna had to work constantly to hold onto her throne for her entire reign, and at times the relentless wave of challenges coming one after another seems almost unfeasibly ridiculous.
To start with, the kingdom of Hungary, at the time one of the premier military powers in Europe had designs on Naples, and managed to arrange the marriage of Joanna and Andrew while both were still children. Andrew and the Hungarian contingent in Naples appear to have made little effort to endear themselves to the rest of the populace, and despite Joanna’s attempts to placate them, they seem to have been more interested in replacing her and irritating anyone with sense than in forming a capable government.
Naples was not an easy place to rule regardless, for two reasons in particular. First, the noble rivalries, vendettas, and family feuds were a cause of conflict and bloodshed in the best of times, and second, just as Joanna was taking the throne, the Super Companies collapsed.
The Super Companies were some of the original corporations, and got their start by buying up the massive grain surpluses of Naples and selling them around the world before adding to their profitability by making loans and operating almost like large banks. They were fabulously wealthy, and their trade filled the coffers of Naples for many years, including while Joanna’s grandfather sat on the throne.
However, a variety of factors decreased the profitability of the grain trade, so the super companies became involved in the wool trade in England to keep their accounts balanced. In order to get into the wool trade however, they had to get approval of the English crown, which involved lots of loans to the English crown, and when those loans started to go bad, the companies began to fall apart.
That this happened as Joanna was beginning her reign was a mere coincidence, but she got the blame nevertheless, and it all added to the conflict and disorder that plagued her reign while cutting deeply into the funds she had at her disposal to deal with these and other challenges.
The challenges she faced are too numerous to cover all here in a short review, but suffice to say they were numerous, considerable, and in many cases, devastating, yet Joanna met them all head on. She faced internal turmoil, plotting, and intrigue. She dealt with foreign invasions, with meddling sovereigns from other countries, and with the dictates of the church.
One of the things that makes Goldstone such a great author, in my opinion, is the way she lays out the evidence we have, explains the prevailing conclusions, and then explains why she arrives at the conclusion she does. One of the best examples of this is how she handles the death of her husband, Andrew.
This was the primary event that shaped the beginning of Joanna’s reign along with the accusations that she was to blame. Goldstone lays out how, though Joanna and Andrew’s relationship was rocky, it was Andrew who created many of the difficulties and it was Joanna who went out of her way to make things easier.
Goldstone additionally lays out the way in which Andrew went around making enemies for himself, threatening to execute people for the slightest offenses once he was crowned. She lays out how the accusations against Joanna arose not after Andrew’s death, but when they were politically expedient, and then were not raised later when they might have been very useful had there been a hint of doubt regarding her innocence.
In this way, the reader is allowed to make their own decision on Joanna’s innocence, informed by the knowledge and expertise of Goldstone, rather than being told Goldstone’s belief and left at that.
I find Joanna fascinating for many reasons, but the primary one is simply that she’s interesting! In storytelling, one of the most important things you’ll be told over and over is that ‘conflict is interesting’, but you can’t have conflict if every challenge is easily met.
Joanna faced conflict before she ever took the throne, and played an active role in meeting those challenges from a very, very young age. However, and this is why I am often fascinated by women leaders in the Middle Ages, she had to find different ways to handle these challenges than the usual violence other monarchs were able to resort to. When Henry VIII’s wife angered him, he could have her head cut off. When Joanna’s husband tried to usurp her authority, she had to find creative ways to solve the problem, and ‘creative ways to solve the problem’ is what makes for good stories.
Unlike, say, Henry V, she could not simply raise an army, knock out some military victories, and declare her authority established. Like any other monarch, the need to produce heirs was vital, but unlike male monarchs, marriage always threatened to undermine her rule rather than strengthen it. Even when her husbands promised to not usurp her authority, they often did, and there were often many who felt they were right to do so.
Joanna also had to deal with pregnancy, and more than once she found herself hampered by the physical limitations of that process while her kingdom faced threatening challenges which she could not meet head on. She could not lead armies, depending on her husbands or prospective husbands to do so, and that of course raised the danger of them wielding more power and popularity that she did.
Yet as Joanna grew older, her hold on her throne grew stronger through each passing trial as she navigated her challenges with skill. She knew how to manage allies, build coalitions, and win over powerful friends. She was willing to accept temporary setbacks and humiliations, knowing that to play the long game meant managing her positioning more than her pride.
And it paid off, for her and for her kingdom. She was an energetic ruler, handling the economic struggles caused by the collapse of the super companies by supporting local industry, personally managing every law and edict issued under her seal, and reducing crime and general disorder.
On the whole, Joanna is a fascinating character I look forward to learning more about. She seems to have been a talented and capable ruler, who handled the many waves of turmoil with as much dexterity as could be asked of anyone. She did much to improve her kingdom through a time of turmoil and transition, and was a positive influence on the lives of the regular people in her kingdom.
Her story has a sad ending though, as she met her end with the beginning of the Western Schism after being declared a heretic by Pope Urban VI for supporting Pope Clement VII. Goldstone asserts, and I agree, that the evidence appears to indicate that Joanna was sincere in her belief that Urban had been Illegitimately elected pope, but Urban deciding to take away her kingdom and give a portion of it to his nephew on the legal basis of “because I say so”, cannot have helped matters.
Joanna was capture and ultimately assassinated by Charles of Durazzo (also called Charles the Small), her cousin, brother-in-law, and supporter of Urban. Because she was excommunicated, she could not be consecrated, and was thrown in a well on the grounds of Santa Chiara Church.
An infuriating end, made only slightly better by the knowledge that Charles was himself assassinated a short time later after a falling out with Urban.
So, while the ending is less than satisfying, the book as a history was spectacular. I learned a lot, and as always, thoroughly enjoy Goldstone’s style of telling it. This is an easily read book that leads you through the complicated, tangled webs of royal politics and feuds to show how people in the past lived and worked, ruled and struggled.
I highly, highly recommend it for anyone who is a lover of history, and wants to learn more about how medieval queens ruled and the challenges they faced.
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