Queen Consorts Trivia Quiz

Answer:

Emma of Normandy was the Queen of England on three separate occasions. She was married to King Æthelred II, who was monarch from 1002 to 1013 before being briefly deposed and reclaiming the throne in 1014. After his death in 1016, Emma married Cnut, his successor as king, making her queen of Denmark and Norway as well as of England. Matilda of Flanders was the wife of William I, also known as 'the Conqueror'. Matilda acted as regent to William as Duchess of Normandy and in England and was the mother of two English kings, William II and Henry I.

Eleanor of Provence married Henry III of England in 1236 - he had already been king for twenty years as he became the monarch aged only nine on the death of his father, King John. Eleanor was a clever woman but unpopular in England's capital since she brought a large group of relatives with her, many of whom were given high positions which would normally have gone to English nobles. Edward I was the next king and was married to another Eleanor, from Castile. The marriage was closer than most royal partnerships, which were usually made for strategic and political purposes, not love. When Eleanor died, Edward commissioned a series of crosses to mark the route of her final journey to London, with the final being at Charing Cross.

Anne of Bohemia was the queen consort of Richard II and they married in 1382. She died during a plague outbreak in 1394 and Richard was said to be devastated. The couple had no children and Richard was removed from the throne in favour of Henry IV in 1399. Henry V was married to Catherine of Valois from 1420 until his early death in 1422. Catherine gave birth to one child, also named Henry, who was destined to become king when aged only eight months - his father never saw him.

Margaret of Anjou was the wife of Henry VI having married him in 1445. The king was prone to bouts of insanity and Margaret was very much the power behind the throne. Henry was deposed in 1461 and returned briefly to the throne between 1470 and 1471. This period of English history was dominated by the Wars of the Roses and Margaret played a prominent role due to Henry's mental fragility. The Tudor wives are too well known, so I've skipped them to move to Anne of Denmark, wife of James I, the successor to Queen Elizabeth I. James was also King of Scotland, as James VI, so Anne, who married James in 1589, was already the Queen of Scotland before becoming the Queen of England.

Anne and James were the parents of Charles I, who succeeded his father in 1625. He was married to Henrietta Maria of France. She remained Queen of England until 1649, the year that Charles was executed. Henrietta lived in France during Oliver Cromwell's time in power, returning only with the Restoration, when Charles II became king. She was not popular, primarily due to being a Roman Catholic in Protestant England - her faith meant that she could not be crowned. Mary of Modena, in Italy, was married to James II, who succeeded his older brother, Charles II, in 1685. Both Mary and James were Roman Catholics, so their tenure as monarchs was short-lived, Both were deposed in 1688 and lived in exile in France for the rest of their lives.

We skip forward now to the nineteenth century with Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen, wife of William IV. Like her predecessors, the wives of Georges I to IV, Adelaide was German. and she and William were married from 1818 until his death in 1837. He was succeeded by Queen Victoria, so there were no more queen consorts until the twentieth century. Victoria's death in 1901 saw the accession of Edward VII who was married to Alexandra of Denmark from 1863 until his death in 1910. Alexandra was known for her generosity and was a popular queen with the public. The final queen consort listed is Mary of Teck, the wife of George V. Although of German heritage, Mary was born and grew up in London and married George in 1893. She herself lived long enough to see the accession of Queen Elizabeth II. Mary was the mother of both Edward VIII and George VI. Edward married an American, and abdicated, while George married Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, breaking the pattern of looking for a bride among the Royal families of Europe.

The five other queens were all queens of France. Matilda of Frisia was married to Henry I, Blanche of Castile to Louis VIII and Isabella of Aragon to Philip III. Anne of Brittany was the wife of Charles VIII and Louis XIII married Anne of Austria.