View source for Matilda: Wife of the Conqueror, first Queen of England by Tracy Borman

{{infobox1
|title=Matilda: Wife of the Conqueror, first Queen of England
|author=Tracy Borman
|reviewer=John Van der Kiste
|genre=Biography
|rating=4.5
|buy=Yes
|borrow=Yes
|isbn=9780099549130
|pages=297
|publisher=Vntage
|date=September 2012
|website=http://www.tracyborman.co.uk/
|summary=The first biography in English of Queen Matilda, consort of William the Conqueror.  Although little is known for certain about her life, the author has done well in supplementing the bare facts with a very readable life and times.
|cover=0099549131
|aznuk=0099549131
|aznus=B005NHQE8W
}}
Writing the biography of any woman who lived as long ago as the eleventh century, even someone as illustrious as a Queen, is a pretty thankless task.  There will always be huge gaps in the knowledge available.  For example we do not know when Matilda was born, and likewise we do not have a precise date for her marriage, although we do know when she died.  No lifelike images of her are known, though evidence suggests that she was quite short of stature.  In a male-dominated society, there are approximate records of when her sons were born, but not her daughters.  Even more confusingly perhaps, many of the stories passed down to us throughout history are quite probably false.  It is hardly surprising that this appears to be the first full-length life of her yet to appear in English.

At the start of the introduction, we read of one of the tales from history that I remember being told in my lessons at school when I was aged about ten – namely that William, Duke of Normandy, rode to the palace of Baldwin, Count of Flanders, seized his young daughter Matilda, and beat her soundly because she had refused to marry him.  A few days later, after she had recovered in bed, she declared that she would marry nobody but him.  Later in this book we read that it is a good story - but only a story.  According to other legends, she was unfaithful to him in Normandy while he was busy with the conquest of England in 1066, and when he was told he had her dragged naked through the streets as a punishment; and that she had a girl hamstrung for having an affair with her husband, an action which so enraged him that he had her beaten so badly that she died of her injuries.  Most if not all of these appear to be the inventions of a thirteenth-century chronicler – or should we call him a writer of fiction instead?  Perhaps most importantly of all, the long-cherished belief that she was responsible for the making or even the commissioning of the Bayeux Tapestry, telling in pictures the story of the Norman conquest and the battle of Hastings, is firmly laid to rest.

If this book was solely confined to the life of Matilda, it would be a very thin one indeed.  So we also learn a certain amount about the life of William, later her husband, later the Conqueror and later the first of the Norman Kings of England.  To an extent it was a fortunate marriage for both of them. In that she bore him several children, probably nine in total, and all were healthy.  She took a great interest in their upbringing, and her husband was always faithful to her; unusually for the age, he appears never to have had any offspring by other women.

There seems little doubt that she was for most of their married lifer intensely supportive of his ventures, something which he always respected.  When he was preparing his invasion of England, to which he had laid claim after the death of the childless Edward the Confessor, she commissioned the spectacular longship Mora on which he embarked as he sailed with the fleet, leaving her behind to act a regent of Normandy in his stead.  It was a role which she was content to assume for the first few years of his reign as King.  That she presided over the administration of the duchy was a remarkable feat in itself, at a time when the few strong women rulers of Europe were very rarely women who also had strong husbands.

When she came to England, she was initially regarded with suspicion, but her natural dignity and mild disposition formed a welcome contrast to her often arrogant, brutal husband.  She even had some influence on him as a ruler and probably helped to soften his hard character to an extent.  While he was abroad, he knew he could rely on her as a capable head of English government in his absence.  It was this streak in her character which later created a gulf between them, when she doted on her firstborn son Robert, to whom his father took a dislike, and who eventually rebelled against this overbearing patriarch.  Yet despite the differences that this created between husband and wife, they were reconciled a few months before she fell ill and died, leaving him stricken with grief for the remaining four years of his life.

Although a certain amount of this biography is rather circumstantial – it is inevitably a case of ‘would have’ and ‘must have’ for part of the time – Ms Borman has given us a very readable, lively life and times of the period before and after the Norman conquest.  There is perhaps not much to be learnt about the family life of William, Matilda and their children, but she has filled in the slender details with a vivid picture of Normandy and England during the turbulent eleventh century, as well as telling us much of how it was to be a powerful woman in a man’s world.

If this book appeals then we're sure that you'll also enjoy [[Tower by Nigel Jones]]

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[[Category:History]]