Book Review of Four Queens: The Provencal Sisters Who Ruled Europe

Four Queens: The Provençal Sisters who Ruled Europe
Nancy Goldstone
Viking, New York 2007
978-0-670-03843-5
336 pages
$24.95

Today in the U.S., there are legitimate concerns about having two families alternately control the government for a period of two decades. We Americans get fidgety when power remains in someone's hands for too long (think presidential term limits after FDR), and with control of the executive branch seeming to oscillate between members and even generations of only two families, we are beginning to question why we would intentionally install monarchs after fighting so hard to get rid of one. This attitude, however, is a fairly modern development. Centuries ago in Europe, familial rule was a standard form of governance embodied in the ubiquitous monarchies, some of which still symbolically rule today. In the Middle Ages, a close degree of consanguinity with the sovereign was a sign of legitimacy for a successor or vassal. Nancy Goldstone's latest book takes place within this context, and it describes an exceptional situation where an entire family of sisters ruled contemporaneously as queens across Europe. Four Queens relates the remarkable stories of these women while exploring the complex politics of Europe in the Middle Ages.