The forgotten monarchs: A journey to give Joanna, wife of Henry IV a voice

Anne O’Brien recounts her exhilarating search to flesh out Joanna, wife of Henry IV

Historical novelist, Anne O'brien, at home in the Welsh Marches (Tom Pilston)

Name six English queens.” Faced with this question at the pub quiz night, most teams would make a fairly accurate stab at it. Elizabeth I. Bloody Mary. Queen Victoria. Elizabeth II. A guess at the wives of Henry VIII, beginning with Anne Boleyn. Not one of them a medieval English queen.

Why is it that so many of these wives of our early English kings have remained almost invisible, while the sins or exploits of their husbands are legendary? King John is notorious but few would claim to know much about Isabelle of Angoulême.

Richard II is brilliant, usurped and tragic, thanks to Shakespeare, yet Isabelle de Valois hardly makes a mark. Edward I, Hammer of the Scots, built castles and led his armies. Who can relate more than the basic facts about Eleanor of Castile other than the romantic tale of Eleanor crosses erected by her grief-stricken husband?

Were these queens consort so lacking in authority, in influence or even in intelligence as to become anonymous? Were they uneducated, fit for nothing but to be decorative witnesses to the daring or desperate ventures of their husbands? The impression is that medieval queens merely waited for their menfolk to return from war, plying a needle as they sang and prayed and gossiped in a feminine world.

Why is this so? The answer is simple enough. They are rendered silent because they lived in a man’s world, written by men, about the feats of men. Women are given no voice, not even royal women, except for the very few, such as the infamous Eleanor of Aquitaine whom it was difficult to silence, yet even she was incarcerated by an enraged Henry II for stirring rebellion among their sons.

Women are recorded for us in their relationships with men. Thus our medieval queens are skeletons without flesh, two dimensional in their lack of character, without even a physical description since medieval portraits are rare.

It would seem improbable that they should have nothing to say about what they and their regal husbands were doing. How could they be mere onlookers, with no opinion of the people and the political goings-on around them?

One queen of England who is more invisible than most is Joanna of Navarre. Who has even heard of Queen Joanna of England who, in 1403, was invested as Queen Consort in Westminster Abbey, with crown and sceptre, as wife of King Henry IV. A remarkable woman, regal from her toes to her fingertips, she was the daughter of King Charles II (the Bad) of Navarre and Joan de Valois, who was a daughter of King John II (the Good) of France.

Through this pedigree Joanna was related to almost every important family in Europe through either blood or marriage. As the wife of the Duke of Brittany, she became regent for her young son on her first husband’s death. Joanna is fortunate if she manages more than a few paragraphs in most history texts. So, where does the reader discover more? Through the pages of historical fiction.

But here lies a problem: historical fiction has been damned as a lesser talent, a repository for unnecessary emotion, inaccuracy and a fair sprinkling of anachronisms. David Starkey infamously stated: “We really should stop taking historical novelists seriously as historians. The idea that they have authority is ludicrous.”

Meanwhile Niall Ferguson, in his well-publicised exchange with Jane Smiley, argued that historians are “not allowed just to make it up”, which implies that historical novelists do exactly that. Both are opinions that any writer of historical fiction would deny. Accurate research must be the bedrock of the protagonist’s story, which, in its telling, demands to be true to its historical setting. Writing historical fiction is a skilled and responsible occupation.

My research to discover Queen Joanna, to breathe new life into her, proved to be exhilarating. A simple timeline of recorded fact created the structure of her life, an insight into her character, and the pitfalls that lay in wait for her. Unpopular as a Breton by her first marriage, accused of greed over her extortionate dowry, she soon came under attack for her extensive Breton household and her suspect opinion on English foreign policy.

Layers of material, accumulated from delving into the dark political issues of the reign of Henry IV, then gave real depth to Joanna’s world. What a troubled reign it was, with insurrection, civil war instigated by the mighty Percy family, Welsh rebellion under Owain Glyn Dwr, all exacerbated by a king who was a usurper.

Here were the issues faced by Joanna, the malice-laden motivations of those around her, not least in her new marriage with its unforeseen loyalties. Here was the essence of her story.

But now a different skill was called for, and an often heart-breaking one to apply. Much of the hard-won research must be wilfully jettisoned to create a fine balance, for too much “history” can be the death-blow to the sheer excitement of a novel, destroying any drama by simple weight of facts.

Joanna’s life, written in the first person, proved particularly troublesome thanks to the complexities of politics in which she was not directly involved. The political murder of Richard II was regretfully trimmed as it all happened before Joanna even set sail for England.

The bloody outcome of the battle of Shrewsbury, with Harry Hotspur dead on the field, followed by the English glory at Agincourt, was almost omitted since Joanna had no direct connection with either. Joanna’s lifestyle in captivity as a witch was ruthlessly edited although it was worthy of a novel in its own right. The historical facts must carry the plot and direct Joanna’s life, not be buckled on like a piece of extraneous armour.

So, do we then know Joanna, the woman? A further layer is essential, for our medieval queen existed in a three-dimensional world. Her skeleton demands to be clothed with flesh and garments and appropriate jewels. She must display her talents and her preferences, even to purchasing a lute and a cage for her parrot. Joanna must step out of the pages, to keep company with the reader.

And yes, imagination is part of the process, as long as it is informed imagination. How would a woman of Joanna’s calibre react to criticism and imprisonment? With all her Valois pride, how would she face the choices placed before her – her children and her power or marriage to Henry?

Joanna must react to events as we would expect her to react, or even, startlingly, as we would not expect. We must rejoice and suffer with her through her happiness and her tragedy.

The research is done, the facts closely honed, the character developed. At last, through The Queen’s Choice, Joanna emerges from her tiny footnote in the record books. Queen Joanna of England can never again be swept behind the arras of history.