Lobas

Henry VIII's obsession with conceiving a boy is one of the most pivotal episodes in medieval history. To achieve this, he divorced Catalina de Aragón, killed Ana Boleyn and broke all relations with the Catholic Church. In 1553, while Edward VI, Henry's only male heir, was dying, England was about to experience the "unnatural" reign of a woman, that of her sister: Maria Tudor, granddaughter of the Catholic Monarchs. But the government of women in that country had a past. Four hundred years before Edward's death, Matilda, daughter of Henry I and granddaughter of William the Conqueror, came very close to securing the crown. Between the 12th and 15th centuries, she and three other women -Eleanor of Aquitaine, Isabella of France (daughter of Philip IV of France and Joanna I of Navarre) and Margaret of Anjou- challenged the social structure of the Middle Ages and openly fought for the power. In this book, celebrated British historian and Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, Helen Castor guides us through the lives of these extraordinary women, showing in graceful, dynamic prose how they paved the way for other women to rule the world. a world dominated by men.