PREFACEThis book, Medieval and Reformation Reigning Queens of England, is a fact-based narrative of the lives of the Norman, Plantagenet and Tudor queens regnant from the Norman Conquest of 1066 to the death of Elizabeth I in 1603. Among the thirty-two biographies summarized here concern the four royal women who ruled, or attempted to rule in their own right: these queens regnant are Empress Matilda, Lady Jane Grey, Queen Mary I and Queen Elizabeth I. Each of them received the same level of attention in the author's previous work, Lives of England's Monarchs (2005), as was given to their male counterparts. The main events in the lives of these reigning queens are easily found in the previous work and in many other sources; thus, the lives of reigning queens are only briefly reviewed in the present study. Here, more emphasis is given to queen consorts, the wives of the reigning kings of England. Histories of England usually consider it sufficient to ascribe to these great ladies little more than the fact that they were mothers of a rising heir. Aside from producing an heir to the throne - or failing to do so - queen consorts are known more for negligence than recognition of the roles each played consecutively in England's pageant. The queen consorts recounted here are those of the Norman, Plantagenet, and Tudor dynasties: namely, Norman queen consorts, Matilda of Flanders, Matilda of Scotland, Matilda of Boulogne; Queen consorts of the Plantagenets, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Berengaria of Navarre, Joanna of Gloucester, Isabella of Angoulême. Eleanor of Provence, Eleanor of Castile, Margaret of France, Isabella of France, Philippa of Hainault, Anne of Bohemia, Isabella of Valois, Joanna of Navarre, Catherine of Valois, Margaret of......middle of paper.. ...to clarify important events, long footnotes called "Digressions" are inserted. Like any footnote, they can be ignored without fatal harm to the narrative that follows. An appendix entitled "Royal Lines of Descent" summarizes the lineages of the reigning monarchs in the seven English dynasties that have ruled England from Saxony to modern times. The appropriate portion of this table is repeated in the introduction to each dynasty as it is introduced in the text; the seven lineages are 1. Saxon-Wessex Earl-King Dynasty (802-1066); 2. Norman dynasty (1066-1154); 3. Plantagenet Dynasty (1066-1485); 4. Tudor Dynasty (1485-1603); 5. Stuart Dynasty (1603-1714); 6. Hanoverian Dynasty (1714-1901); 7. Saxe-Coburg-Gotha: Windsor dynasty (1901-present). The queens of the Stuart, Hanover and Windsor lines are the subjects of a volume in progress to follow.