Goodreads alerted me to the fact that this book by Shelley Puhak was coming out and I promptly requested it from my library before I could forget about it. For the most part, I’ve gotten pretty good at accepting that I can’t possibly read all the books, but for some reason I couldn’t let this one slip by.
I’m so glad I read it!
It’s narrative nonfiction about two 6th-century queens, Brunhild and Fredegund, who were sisters-in-law and collectively ruled most of Europe. This book is fascinating.
It starts when each woman meets the king they ended up marrying. Brunhild was a Spanish princess whose marriage to King Sigifred was arranged, so she never met him until she arrived for the wedding.
Fredegund was a palace slave who managed to work her way into the bed of King Chilperic, Sigifred’s brother. Unfortunately, Chilperic decided he could not be outdone by his brother’s marriage, so he sent his wife to a convent and arranged to marry Brunhild’s older sister, but one of the conditions of the marriage was that he stop sleeping around. He promised, but apparently he couldn’t uphold that promise because his wife kept finding him in bed with Fredegund. They fought about it and then one morning the queen was found strangled to death in her bed. Shortly after her funeral, Chilperic married Fredegund.
Sigifred and Chilperic were constantly at war over land and the borders of their kingdoms. Their father, King Clothar, had ruled almost all of Europe, but in his will he divided up his kingdom into four parts and gave one part to each of his sons. That turns out to have been a not-so-great idea because Chilperic in particular seemed to feel shorted and kept sending armies to invade Sigifred’s kingdom, Austrasia, where it bordered his own, Neustria.
Eventually, Fredegund hired a couple slaves to assassinate Sigifred. Brunhild then married one of Chilperic’s sons, but he was later forced to take monastic orders before he was assassinated. Fortunately for Brunhild, she had given birth to two sons during Sigifred’s lifetime, but they were not yet old enough to rule on their own so she positioned herself as their regent, and continued to rule even after her eldest grew into his majority. After he died, she ruled as regent for his sons.
Chilperic was also eventually assassinated just after Fredegund gave birth to their youngest (and only surviving) son, and she also managed to rule as regent. The two women ruled for decades and it was fascinating to see how they survived so many coups, wars, and assassination attempts, although the men tended to be the targets of assassination.
Puhak also covers how these women have been treated by history. From the very beginning, they were either wiped from the historical record or portrayed as evil, power-hungry femmes fatale. At best they were portrayed as two women bickering rather than two queens who ruled most of a continent and led armies into battle.
Puhak further points out the way these women have been portrayed in popular culture – from Brunnhild in Wagner’s Ring Cycle to Cersei in Game of Thrones. They all have parallels to the original two queens of Europe and they’re both punished for their strength and quest for power. Fredegund also probably influenced a number of fairy tales featuring evil stepmothers, given the steps she took to ensure her children would ascend the throne rather than their older half siblings.
I also learned a lot about the Catholic church in its early days. Apparently it was pretty common for kings to send their wives to a convent so they could marry someone else and the church was totally fine with it. If only that had still been the case in the 1530s.
I also learned so much about the importance of networking. Both women learned from their mother-in-law the importance of brefriending powerful people in both the state and the church because you never know when you might need a favor…