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Theresa Earenfight, Yolande of Aragon (1381–1442) Family and Power: The Reverse of the Tapestry, French History, Volume 31, Issue 1, 1 March 2017, Pages 110–111, https://doi.org/10.1093/fh/crx009
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A glance at the contents of this book reveals a study of a Spanish woman who became queen of Naples–Sicily–Jerusalem examined through the framework of familial power across a life span, from upbringing to marriage, from queen-consort to queen-dowager. But that brief description is, to say the least, an understatement.
The queen in question, Yolande of Aragon (1381–1442), was at the forefront of European politics who ‘employed diplomacy, political brinksmanship, military force, and celestial intervention’ to secure a stable future for her family and their subjects. This is more than a study of one woman: It is a densely contextual empirical study of events in France between 1400 and 1442. Her natal family ruled the Crown of Aragon; her husband’s was a cadet branch of the Valois dynasty. She lived in the tumultuous period that witnessed the assassination of Louis I, Duke of Orleans in 1407; the defeat of the French by the English at Agincourt in 1415; and Joan of Arc’s battle to save France. Yolande was not only at the centre of all this, she was instrumental to many of the key decisions that stabilized the French monarchy after the debacles of the later Hundred Years’ War.
