The riveting history of a beautiful queen, a shocking murder, a papal trial—and a reign as triumphant as any in the Middle A ges. On March 15, 1348, Joanna I , Queen of Naples, stood trial for her life before the Pope and his court in Avignon. She was twenty-two years old. Her cousin and husband, Prince Andrew of Hungary, had recently been murdered, and Joanna was the chief suspect. Determined to defend herself—Joanna won her acquittal against enormous odds. Returning to Naples, she ruled over one of Europe’s most prestigious courts for more than thirty years—until she was herself murdered. As courageous as Eleanor of Aquitaine, as astute and determined as Elizabeth I of England, Joanna was the only female monarch in her time to rule in her own name. She was notorious: The taint of her husband’s death never quite left her. But she was also widely admired: Dedicated to the welfare of her subjects and realm, she reduced crime, built hospitals and churches, and encouraged the licensing of women physicians. While a procession of the most important artists and writers of her day found patronage at her glittering court, the turmoil of her times swirled around her: war, plague, intrigue, and the treachery that would, ultimately, bring her down. As she did in her acclaimed Four Queens, Nancy Goldstone takes us back to the turbulent and colorful Middle Ages, and with skill and passion brings fully to life one of history’s most remarkable women. Her research is impeccable, her eye for detail unerring, and in The Lady Queen she paints a captivating portrait of medieval royalty in all its incandescent complexity.
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Resilient Queen Joanna of Naples (1326–1382) weathered overwhelming political challenges, financial ruin and a papal-run murder trial for the death of her Hungarian husband—all by age 22. Veteran author Goldstone (Four Queens) expertly describes bloodthirsty 14th-century politics and the complex family entanglements that encouraged siblings and cousins to clash over kingdoms like toddlers brawling over toys. Adding to the fray was Joanna's military support for anti-pope Clement VII against Pope Urban VI, ultimately helping create the Great Schism. Although primarily set in pre-Renaissance Naples, familiar contemporaries such as England's Black Prince and St. Catherine of Siena appear. Joanna repeatedly suffered violently jealous consorts, intrusive popes and envious relatives. Goldstone effectively proves Joanna's innate leadership through the queen's mastery of complex legal arguments and her formidable resilience through four husbands and relentless challenges to her royal status. Packed with action and effortless to read, Goldstone's account will satisfy scholars and entertain book clubs with a heroine who had persistence and unbounded dedication to her realm. 16 pages of color illus; 3 maps. (Nov.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
“In scholarly but accessible prose, popular historian Goldstone underscores the many significant accomplishments of this exemplary queen. A thoroughly intriguing portrait of a neglected historical figure.”—Kirkus
“Veteran author Goldstone expertly describes bloodthirsty 14th-century politics and the complex family entanglements that encouraged siblings and cousins to clash over kingdoms like toddlers brawling over toys… Packed with action and effortless to read, Goldstone’s account will satisfy scholars and entertain book clubs with a heroine who had persistence and unbounded dedication to her realm.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Court intrigue, the murder of a member of a royal house, and a sensational trial: many authors use these elements in combination to forge page-turning medieval mysteries. Goldstone, author of Four Queens (2007), proves once again that truth is often stranger and more intriguing than fiction. Choosing as her subject Joanna, the notorious queen of Naples and titular queen of Jerusalem and Sicily from 1343 to 1382, she chronicles the fascinating life of one of the few women in her time who ruled in her own name…a life well worthy of historical examination.”—Booklist
“The Lady Queen weaves the story of one of the most extraordinary (and unjustly overlooked) rulers of the Middle Ages. The incredible episodes in Joanna’s history—not only murder and plague, but also cannibalism and even a medieval-style credit crunch—sometimes seem like something out of one of Boccaccio’s more fantastical tales. In bringing it all together, Nancy Goldstone has produced the most compelling history of the “calamitous fourteenth century” since A Distant Mirror.”—Ross King, author of Brunelleschi’s Dome, Michelangelo & the Pope’s Ceiling, and The Judgment of Paris
“This is a remarkable story about a remarkable woman told with skill and verve. Nancy Goldstone re-creates the fourteenth-century world of intrigue, family feud, and skullduggery with a flourish.”
—Wendy Moore, author of Wedlock
“Living two centuries earlier than Elizabeth I of England, Joanna I was the first European woman ever to govern a realm in her own name. Written in vivid, pellucid prose, Nancy Goldstone’s terrific biography of this unique and extraordinary woman gives us a glimpse of the significant political power exercised by many women in the Middle Ages, and is nothing short of riveting.”—Francine Du Plessix Gray
“If your tastes run to medieval European politics, then there is nothing better than a good meaty biography of royal intrigue and murder…Goldstone reminds us of Queen Joanna I's shrewdness, as well as the delicious infamy of her reign and times.”—Knight Ridder, McClatchy Tribune
’The Lady Queen’ (Walker & Company) is a murder mystery, a tale of hard-earned political power and a harrowing drama of family discord guaranteed to keep readers turning pages late into the night.” – Connecticut Post
“The Lady Queen is a fascinating account of the life of Joanna I. It provides a sympathetic appraisal of the notorious queen, placing her rule within the broader historical context. This includes her navigation of the political realities of the Black Death, the Hundred Years War, economic downturns, and the papal court’s movement between Avignon and Rome. In an age dominated by men, this previously obscure historical figure fought scandal, betrayal, and personal tragedy to rule in her own name for over a quarter century.” – Historical Novels Review
“Goldstone gives a good, solid account of Queen Joanna, unlike previous works that tend to see her in an overly flowery or overly critical tone…a fascinating read and will appeal to anyone interested in the Middle Ages.” –Medievalist.net
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27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Soap Opera or History?,
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This review is from: The Lady Queen: The Notorious Reign of Joanna I, Queen of Naples, Jerusalem, and Sicily (Hardcover)
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The Lady Queen is a history of a fourteenth-century ruler of the rich and prominent Kingdom of Naples. As presented by Nancy Goldstone, Queen Joanna's long reign had all the ingredients of opera, soaped or otherwise. Indeed, the author states well into the book, after deaths, deceits, skirmishes, wars, plagues, murders, intrigues, disasters and disasters-averted, "...throughout her life, the queen of Naples was fated never to experience joy unalleviated by grief." Even one of Joanna's contemporaries wrote that the queen and her consort "had always to eat their fruits green..." A pity, but the history she made is engrossing.
The first pages of this book might have the reader wondering whether Ms. Goldstone learned storytelling from Jacqueline Susann, but the author regains her historian's dignity within the first chapter. Annoyances with Ms. Goldstone's stylistic dalliances easily are put aside to read a history that is as sweeping as it is gripping, and as grand as it is tragic. This is a fine history of the period and of the diplomacy and warfare, the alliances and intrigues, and the gallantry and deceits conducted among medieval Naples, France, the Italian city-states, the Hungarian Empire and the Holy See. All of which makes for a broader subject: in this history, in which Joanna is cast in the leading role, Ms. Goldstone is on her surest footing when she displays the internecine role of the Church in European politics of the period. She also gives an astute political analysis of the schism within the western Church that occurred late in Joanna's reign. Perhaps this is due to the greater availability of primary sources that detail the Church's history, but the reader benefits, because the Church, through its political composition and statecraft, held pivotal roles--played ruthlessly--throughout this history. In her acknowledgments and in the preface to her notes, Ms. Goldstone pointedly mentions the general lack of primary sources for the period. Nonetheless, her uses of secondary sources and accounts--some recorded as hearsay--of the events of the period are well woven into her narrative. She does not presuppose, but she is adept at conjecturing motive, usually with alternatives, and she stays reasonably within the bounds of the sources available to her. This is a good history of the period and an excellent one of a ruler of whom we know so little. We learn the factual, medieval history of Naples and of its Angevin rulers and their roles on the European stage; of Joanna's sovereignty, her lineage and how she came to be queen; of Joanna's non-flagging self-confidence, grit and determination; of her wisdom and her follies. We gain insight to the concentrations of power among the European aristocracies and, contextually, of the social norms, values, customs and conventions of the times as held and exercised by an elite few. And, happily, we realize that this history from Nancy Goldstone is not sponsored by Procter & Gamble after all.
17 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A lackluster book about a fascinating queen and her realm,
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This review is from: The Lady Queen: The Notorious Reign of Joanna I, Queen of Naples, Jerusalem, and Sicily (Hardcover)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
Joanna of Naples, as Nancy Goldstone so aptly points out, was the only female monarch of her era to wield supreme power, and one of the only women to do so before Elizabeth I of England, and that makes her a fascinating subject for a biography. Indeed, it's startling to realize that this is the first accessible biography of this woman, given the degree of attention to Eleanor of Aquitaine, who, for all that she has been presented as a powerful woman, was unable to rule independently until her second husband died and her son named her regent. While Eleanor wielded power indirectly, Joanna did so very directly, despite having run through no fewer than four husbands in her eventful life. And Joanna's marital woes make Eleanor's look downright mundane and trifling by comparison.
Alas, despite a vivid introduction that portrays the arrival of Joanna of Naples at the papal court in Avignon to defend herself against charges that she has murdered her first husband, Andrew of Hungary, the biography never really measures up to what very probably was a fascinating life. In part, the book drowns in detail -- there are endless family squabbles that affect and shape Joanna's life, limit her choices and her ability to govern her realm: there's the Hungarian branch of the Angevin dynasty, which had a claim to the crown Joanna inherited from her grandfather, Robert the Wise, and two groups of cousins, the Durazzo and Taranto brothers, as well as the Majorcan monarchs. It's hard to tell Joanna's story without delving into these family squabbles, but the to-ing and fro-ing becomes bewildering, particularly to anyone with only a rudimentary knowledge of the characters involved. (I found myself flipping to the family trees at the front of the book every dozen or so pages.) There are enough players here named Louis to keep a professional genealogist confused for weeks - Louis of Durazzo, Louis of Hungary, Louis of Taranto, Louis of Anjou, Louis of Navarre - and the number of Roberts is nearly as confusing. Every detail of the complex family dynamics is there for the reader to mull over, but what ultimately happens is that it turns the book into a series of arguments and confrontations. Goldstone never appears able to rise above this mass of detail and command her subject -- instead, the material dominates her voice. Therefore, to my dismay, I found that the drama inherent in Joanna's story never measured up to that introduction. Even when one of the suitors for the hand of her widowed sister (another Robert) kidnaps and rapes Maria, the event was described in such a pedestrian fashion that it failed to halt my reading or strike me with any more impact than a detail about some of the endless negotiations over whether or not the Pope would send a legate to rule Naples on Joanna's behalf. The events were described in an almost perfunctory fashion that may be the hallmark of a scholarly biography but not one that is trying to win a larger audience. Perhaps the most startling example of is the way that Joanna's trial is ultimately portrayed, after the initial buildup. Married as young children to satisfy one of the endless family squabbles, Joanna and Andrew had never had much of a relationship - part of the problem being that she was recognized as sole heir to the throne while he had no role in government or even in Neapolitan society. As Goldstone describes Andrew, he emerges as a medieval version of a kept man - Joanna bought his shirts, knives and roses to perfume his soap and paid for his seaside holidays. When he is murdered, his Hungarian relatives are outraged and rumors spread wildly. Yet when Joanna appears to defend herself in the papal court, the process is dealt with in three pages! At the end of the day, I found this an unexpectedly dull and tedious book about a time and place that Goldstone succeeds in portraying as one of the most fascinating in medieval history. Those parts I found most intriguing had little to do with Joanna herself - since she never emerged as a real person from this biography - and focused more on the world she inhabited. I was fascinated by the process through which Petrarch became the poet laureate of Rome (a three-day inquisition of his scholarship by Robert the Wise in Naples) and the culture and lifestyle that sprang up in Joanna's realm, by the insight into yet another group of religious dissidents (the Spiritual Franciscans) and the emergence of Hungary as a world power thanks to the discovery of gold and silver mines. She also does a great job of tying together various events that, on the surface, appear to have little impact on Joanna's life, from Edward III's efforts to conquer France (which produced mercenary armies that terrorized Europe for decades), the failure of grain oligopolies, etc. But the main story was so prosaically presented and without zest - and I'm a reader who avidly devours biographies of all kinds - that I was disappointed. Put this up against some of those that I've recently read - Duff Cooper's lively bio of a descendant of one of the characters in this book, the Napoleonic diplomat Talleyrand, most of the works of Alison Weir or Antonia Fraser, or Dancing to the Precipice: The Life of Lucie de la Tour du Pin, Eyewitness to an Era, and it falls well short. To be sure, Goldstone was hampered by a lack of documentation: many of the primary sources on which she might have relied were destroyed during World War II, meaning that she has to resort to phrases like "she seems to have" or "he likely considered", all too frequently. Still, her obvious fascination with her own subject is conveyed more adeptly in the introduction and author's note than in the many body of the book. A disappointing book after the Four Queens, which I probably would rate 4 stars. This is 3.5 stars, rounded down because I kept reading the book in spite of Joanna and the endless family squabbles, which the author failed, for the whole 317 pages to make interesting, lively or compelling. It rates as highly as it does simply because it's the first book to seriously bring to the attention of interested readers a compelling time and place in medieval history, and I hope it will spark a revival of interest in such `lost' pockets of history on the part of historians writing for general readers.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Very solid history,
By
This review is from: The Lady Queen: The Notorious Reign of Joanna I, Queen of Naples, Jerusalem, and Sicily (Hardcover)
Joanna I, queen of Sicily, Naples, and Jerusalem, is the subject of this highly interesting biography. She ruled one of the most powerful kingdoms in the late 14th century, surviving the numerous calamities that plagued (pun intended) Europe at that time. She was also implicated in the death of her first husband, Andrew of Hungary, and eventually married four times.
Joanna emerges in this highly informative book as one of the most fascinating women of medieval Europe that I've ever read about. Goldstone admits that she doesn't have much information to go on, but she puts Joanna's story together very well. She's one of those people who were much maligned in life; but in reality, Joanna did a number of wonderful things for her kingdom--even as her enemies tried to bring her down. Goldstone goes into a lot of detail about the papal politics of the time; Joanna had a close relationship with Clement and was very deeply involved in the great schism. From the schism to the plague, to 14th century scholarship, to even the Hundred Years' War (of which Joanna was more of a spectator), Goldstone covers everything in a way that makes it easy for the reader to understand. The jumping off point of the book is Joanna's trial (described somewhat dramatically as being "on trial for her life"), but really the murder and trial are only a small part of this story. By no means is this a bad thing, though. Instead, the author focuses on Joanna, a courageous woman who faced much adversity in her life.
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