Anne of Bohemia: Overcoming Infertility

Abstract

Anne of Bohemia (b.1366–d.1394) was the childless first wife of deposed king, Richard II. This chapter examines her struggles with infertility, and her ability to still achieve a largely positive reputation. Anne never gave up in her attempts to have a child (as shown by an apothecary bill), but she also sought out other outlets, such as intercession. After her untimely death, Richard II helped burnish his wife’s image through her epitaph and other memorializations that emphasized the queen’s work as a nurturing, albeit non-biological, mother. In addition, Anne brought prestige to Richard’s court through her imperial blood, she was a successful patron, and she supported Richard’s political endeavours. She also functioned as an imagined patron for authors such as Chaucer, who seems to have thought quite highly of the queen. By examining all of Anne of Bohemia’s accomplishments, we can see that queenship was much more than motherhood.

On the day that Anne of Bohemia arrived at Dover in December 1381 to marry Richard II, a violent storm broke out and the future queen’s vessel was the first destroyed.¹ According to the chronicler Thomas Walsingham, monk of St Albans Abbey, many interpreted this event favourably as “prophesying the coming of good fortune upon the land” because Anne survived. Others, however, maintained “it meant that she would cause the kingdom trouble.”² Coupled with the Westminster Chronicle’s derisive description of Anne as a “small scrap of humanity,” it appears that chroniclers were certainly not eager to welcome the new queen.³

Yet Anne managed to weather the storm. At her death in 1394, the Queen was described as “gracious” and “was held to have been beneficial, to the extent she was able, to the glory and reign of England. Nobles and common people suffered greatly at her death.” Although this same chronicler blamed Anne for importing fashionable, but ridiculously long, shoes called “cracows” or “pykes,” one “execrable” fashion was far outweighed by all the good Anne did.⁴ Centuries later, Victorian historians called her “good Queen Anne.”⁵ To some extent, this seems unusual, given that Anne was childless and one of a queen’s primary duties was to bear children.⁶ Queens, however, did much more than bear heirs. As Christine de Pizan illustrated in The Treasure of the City of Ladies (1405), if a queen promoted peace in the realm, was charitable, and was wise in politics, she would still be considered to be an ideal princess and thereby craft a positive reputation.⁷ Christine’s sentiment of peace-making bears remarkable similarities to the intercessory activity engaged in by English queens. Anne of Bohemia, for instance, was used to reconcile rebellious subjects to Richard in the aftermath of the Peasants’ Revolt.⁸

Earlier writings promoted similar queenly virtues. The Life of St Margaret, written to educate Matilda of Scotland (first queen of England’s Henry I) in queenship, advocated that a queen should ensure her kingdom had good laws. The text stated that queens should also promote religion, economic developments (such as trade), and intercede with the king. As Matilda helped rule, she “was seen as a mother figure for the realm at large”—not simply for her own children.⁹ St Anselm of Canterbury even advocated that Matilda see herself as a mother (as well as a nurse and queen) to the tenants on her lands who were under her care.¹⁰

Anne of Bohemia largely followed this model. The Queen became a noted intercessor who ensured reconciliation between rebellious subjects and her husband and promoted mercy. During Anne’s earliest days in England, the citizens of London gave the Queen a petition that asked her to intercede for them in the tradition of previous consorts. The petition further indicated that should Anne prove a successful intercessor, she would receive the Londoners’ favour.¹¹ Anne took this to heart, as will be further explored. In addition, Anne dispensed charity and patronage—both monetary and cultural. And while Anne never became a biological mother, thereby leaving the succession insecure and denying her an outlet to power as the mother of a (future) king, her tireless mediation tapped into a different sort of motherhood. Just as Christine de Pizan described a princess who essentially mothered her subjects by visiting them when ill and setting a good example, Anne mothered her subjects through intercession and good works.¹²

Childhood and Arrival in England

Anne of Bohemia was born 11 May 1366, the daughter of Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV (r. 1346–1378) and his fourth wife, Elisabeth of Pomerania. Anne’s parents had married in Krakow on 21 May 1363. Her father is one of the most famous Holy Roman Emperors and is still much feted in Prague today. Charles was the son of the old Přemyslid dynasty on his mother’s side (Elisabeth, daughter of Wenceslas II) as well as the new, less established Luxembourgs on his father’s side (John of Luxembourg, later called John the Blind).¹³ Her mother was the daughter of Bogislaw V, Duke of Pomerania, and her maternal grandfather was Casimir III, King of Poland. Anne could thus claim an impressive royal lineage, one of the most elite of any medieval English consort. Charles’ court was sophisticated and international: he welcomed scholars such as Petrarch to his court and was “undoubtedly one of the greatest patrons of art of his time.”¹⁴

In 1377, when Anne was eleven, Charles IV made overtures for a match between Anne and Richard, but the English were initially uninterested. The beginning of the Church’s Western Schism in 1378, however, divided Europe into pro-Roman-pope and pro-Avignon-pope camps. Urban VI, the Roman Pope, played a major role in the match, which was designed to create an alliance between two of his supporters. Wenceslas IV, Anne’s elder half-brother and her father’s successor as King of Bohemia, proposed the match again, and the English proved amenable. Preliminary negotiations began in 1379, English emissaries visited the continent in 1380, and the final treaty was sealed on 2 May 1381.¹⁵ Anne set off in September, although she did not reach Dover until 18 December.¹⁶ Anne spent time at Leeds, Kent, before arriving in London on 18 January 1382. She married Richard at Westminster Abbey two days later, on 20 January, and was crowned queen in the same place two days after that, on 22 January.¹⁷ After Anne’s coronation, there was a magnificent jousting tournament that lasted several days. Richard and Anne then went to Windsor where Froissart noted that the King “kept an open and noble house. They were very happy together.”¹⁸

This happiness lasted throughout their marriage, as Anne and Richard became close companions. The two travelled about the kingdom together early in their marriage.¹⁹ During times of political turmoil, such as the Appellant Crisis, Anne was at Richard’s side. The Appellant Crisis lasted from 1386 to 1389. In brief, Richard lost power and five magnates (known as the Appellants) ruled in his place. They accused and prosecuted many of the King’s friends for treason.²⁰ In late December 1387, in the throes of the Crisis, Richard and Anne dined with two of the five Appellants (all five had been invited) at the Tower of London. Mere days later, Richard was briefly deposed and held at the Tower; presumably Anne was with him at this fraught time.²¹ Anne also attempted to save Simon Burley, Richard’s former tutor, from being executed by the Appellants.²² Since Anne was not in a position of power at that time, the Appellants disregarded her pleas and even snidely suggested she should direct her energies towards saving her husband.²³ Richard eventually regained power in May 1389. The couple’s companionate partnership provided Anne with frequent and trusted access to the King, which kept her near the centre of power and permitted her to exercise the office of queen with few restraints on her power.

Infertility

When Anne died in June 1394, she and Richard had no children. Anne, however, seems to have been pregnant at least once. A letter from the Queen to her brother probably refers to a miscarriage or stillbirth, given that the Queen used a Latin word for childbirth rather than one meaning conception.²⁴ In the early-to-mid 1380s, Anne wrote: “We thus describe our position to your highness as lacking nothing that could be desired, except that we write grieving that still we are not rejoicing in our childbirth, but, concerning this, hope of health works in the near future, if the Lord permits.”²⁵ Having been pregnant once, Anne hoped to give birth soon. Unfortunately for the grieving Queen, she was never to become a biological mother.

Anne, of course, did not know this, and she tried to become pregnant throughout her life. An apothecary bill from the last year of her life includes a number of items that, according to medieval medical texts, were probably purchased for their reputed efficacy in improving fertility.²⁶ Given the nature of medieval medicine, the remedies Anne purchased had multiple uses, not all of which enhanced fertility.²⁷ For instance, one of the compound medicines Anne bought was trifera magna, which the pharmaceutical treatise Antidotarium Nicholai noted would provoke “the menses in a woman who is not conceiving.”²⁸ Trifera magna was also so named because “it confers great utility to women and makes them fruitful.”²⁹

Anne tried multiple cures for her infertility—from a visit to the Marian shrine at Walsingham with Richard in 1383, to a donation of a ceiling at a hospital under the protection of St Anne, patron saint of the childless.³⁰ Chroniclers commented on how often the couple were together, with Thomas Walsingham even claiming that Richard rarely allowed Anne to be absent from his side.³¹ Perhaps this closeness was not only a result of the couple’s successful arranged marriage but also a strategy to facilitate conception. Although children were not forthcoming, Anne worked diligently to fulfil other queenly roles such as that of intercessor and charitable patron.

The Office of Queenship: Intercession and Patronage

Anne did not let her sorrow over her childlessness keep her from being an active queen. If anything, her childlessness might have enabled her to be more active. Louise Tingle has suggested that childbirth, and the attendant lying-in period that kept a queen secluded from court could hamper a queen’s ability to engage in typical queenly roles such as intercession.³² Since Anne was never a biological mother, she never had those periods of isolation. Perhaps ironically, Anne had plenty of time to focus on queenly duties such as intercession, which enabled her to play the role of a nurturing, albeit non-biological, mother. As queens sought to smooth over disputes, promote mercy (often gendered feminine and associated with the Virgin Mary, the mother par excellence), and generally help others, they enacted nurturing motherhood.³³ Intercession’s connection with nurturing maternity provided a way for childless queens to exert influence and accrue some of the power queens often gained as mothers of heirs.³⁴ As a childless queen, Anne thus had both practical and symbolic reasons to frequently intercede with Richard.

Intercession was an established duty of England’s queens. They often obtained a pardon for a criminal selected by the king or his advisors on their coronation day and continued to secure pardons and mediate throughout their reigns.³⁵ Given her closeness to Richard and intercession’s connection with queenship, it is unsurprising that Anne was the most active intercessor of her husband’s reign, although the politically prominent John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, who was Richard’s uncle, was a close second.³⁶ As queen, Anne interceded for a variety of people, with her earliest pardons being for participants in the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. In fact, the general pardon for the revolt had been issued, using Anne as an intercessor, before the future queen even arrived in England.³⁷ This particular pardon highlighted the connection between intercession and queenship both in general and for Anne in particular. First, it reflected that intercession was an important duty for queens and that their intervention legitimised the exercise of mercy.³⁸ In this regard, the pardon for the revolt was similar to the pardons previous queens secured at their coronations, when they too were new to England and likely did not have the opportunity to personally select whom to pardon. Second, the Peasants’ Revolt was an extraordinary event, for which no other intercessor was suitable. As W.M. Ormrod has argued, Richard’s mother, Joan of Kent, herself a noted intercessor before Anne’s arrival, was unable to fulfil this intercessory role both because she had been harmed by the rebels and because the arrival of a queen diminished Joan’s status (Joan was only a dowager Princess of Wales, rather than a dowager queen).³⁹ For such an unusual and serious event, only the merciful, feminine intervention of a queen would do.

Throughout her reign, Anne acted politically and fulfilled her traditional responsibilities as queen; her subjects reaped the benefits. She interceded for numerous men who obtained individual pardons relating to the revolt, such as Hugh de Garwell, John Mylot, and Richard Martyn, all in 1382.⁴⁰ Later, she helped Adam Saunsom obtain a pardon for a killing he was not present for.⁴¹ Anne likely learned of these pardon seekers through written petitions drafted by lawyers, a common way to request pardons.⁴² Unfortunately, only three petitions to Anne are extant, two involving her lordships and one involving supplication.⁴³ Balthasar Obriake, a Florentine merchant, requested that Anne ask the King to provide him with a safe conduct to trade in England, which he received shortly thereafter.⁴⁴ Two pardons Anne obtained, however, can be traced to petitions sent to the King. Robert Feer petitioned Richard for a pardon from theft and rape, arguing he had been falsely accused. His pardon was granted through Anne’s intercession in 1384.⁴⁵ Adam Lygthfote also petitioned the King for a pardon for a killing and received his pardon through Anne’s intercession in 1389.⁴⁶ Anne’s access to petitions presumably gave her opportunity to evaluate petitioners and their circumstances, but no clear preferred causes emerge. She was swayed at least twice by claims of innocence, which speaks well of her sense of justice. The falsely accused who were pardoned were probably particularly grateful the Queen decided to mediate on their behalf, and it provided Anne with an opportunity to cast herself as an advocate for justice and fairness, as well as mercy. After selecting her causes, Anne likely discussed them orally with Richard since they were together often.⁴⁷ Her international mediation followed much the same path, with foreign elites writing her letters about their concerns, which Anne could then take up orally with Richard if she were sympathetic to the request or saw its political importance.⁴⁸

Anne brought grace to Richard’s subjects, which was politically astute and served to increase her image as a benevolent queen. This most notably occurred in 1392 when Richard became enraged with the City of London for not granting him a loan. The subsequent pageant and reconciliation tableau were documented in chronicles, letters, and even a celebratory poem.⁴⁹ In these, Anne takes centre stage (along with some bishops) to convince Richard to restore London’s liberties. In the Concordia, the poem based on the reconciliation pageant, the citizens of London specifically beg Anne to help them: “Therefore your people’s city, prostrate, begs your help / And kindness, for on these it mainly puts its hope.”⁵⁰ At the poem’s culmination, a prostrate Anne begs Richard to forgive London, which he did. Even though the city’s pardon had been pre-arranged (the pageant was part of the agreement), the sources show the Queen acting on behalf of her subjects. Anne worked to turn Richard away from the harsh punishment he had exacted on London, which surely caused many Londoners to view the Queen favourably.

The Londoners showed their appreciation for Anne’s maternal mercy during the Christmas season of 1392/1393, the first after the reconciliation, when they presented both Richard and Anne with unusual presents. The citizens gave Richard a camel and Anne a “remarkable bird with an enormously wide gullet.” Later, Richard, “prompted by the queen and by other persons of rank,” forgave the Londoners part of the fine he had levied earlier in the year.⁵¹ Such a description suggests that Anne’s gift was probably a pelican, which had a rich iconographic tradition in medieval Europe. Various texts and artworks represented the mother pelican as feeding her young with her own blood, sacrificing herself for them in a maternal act of devotion that prefigured Christ.⁵² Just as she had over the summer, Anne laboured to ease the punishment Richard had imposed. By giving Anne a pelican, the Londoners acknowledged the Queen’s maternal role and how she, just like a pelican, had made sacrifices for her children. In another parallel with Christ, Anne also sacrificed for her non-biological children.

Anne also provided tangible, financial support from her own resources in order to build alliances and reward useful servants, a clear expression of good lordship. Sir Richard Abberbury was granted the reversions of the fees of manors in Oxford and in Berkshire in 1385. Although Abberbury was the Queen’s chamberlain, Anne stated the grant was “in compensation for the loss he sustained by selling his manors of Shorham and Tadham to support the king’s estate in his youth.”⁵³ The Queen supported religious foundations, granting land to St Mary Graces by the Tower of London and assisting the convent of Bromholm in obtaining various licenses to appropriate churches.⁵⁴ Anne also ensured that her treasurer, Thomas More, received a prebend in Wales, even making sure Richard reissued the letters patent pertaining to the original grant.⁵⁵ Among other grants, the Queen provided annuities of twenty pounds to both her esquire James Schelya and her confessor James Beuesschaw.⁵⁶

Little is known about Anne’s charity. According to Walsingham, Anne was “a woman of unbelievable devotion to God, a lover of almsgiving, supporter of the poor and of the Church, a devotee of the true faith and of justice, who carried out her penance in secret.”⁵⁷ Financial accounts of Anne’s almsgiving do not survive, but she did support Joan de Aylston, an anchorite in Nottingham, with two pence a day from the Nottingham fee farm.⁵⁸ After her death, laudatory eulogies of Anne praised her charity. According to the eulogy “Anglica Regina,” Anne “was always eager to give gifts to the poor: / There never lived a patroness so great in her bestowal of good.”⁵⁹ A second eulogy, “Femina Famosa,” described Anne in saintly terms, noting “she gave nourishment to the sick, going to them on foot, however far off” and that she visited the ill and women in childbed while “poorly dressed.”⁶⁰ Finally, a third eulogy, titled “Nobis Natura Florem,” referenced Anne’s virtue several times and claimed that her “piety runs to the aid of the destitute.”⁶¹ Although the eulogies were designed as works of praise for the late queen, Walsingham was less inclined to flatter Anne: directly following his praise, he noted that “many spoke ill of her and slandered her.”⁶² Thus contemporary evidence demonstrates that Anne was a conventionally pious queen, who gave alms, protected her subjects (such as those she interceded for), and supported the church.⁶³ All of these were vital duties of queens, again emphasizing how Anne ably fulfilled her political and charitable roles.

The Office of Queenship: Cultural Patronage

Anne and her heritage also added sophistication to Richard’s court. She is not known to have commissioned paintings, but her cosmopolitan status and some members of her train might have influenced English artists. The exact nature of Bohemian influence on English art during Richard’s reign is far from settled. Art historians such as Sabrina Mitchell believed there to be a clear influence. Mitchell argued that the Liber Regalis (an illuminated manuscript containing the coronation service that is housed in Westminster Abbey) evidences connections with the Bible of Anne’s half-brother, Wenceslas IV. Mitchell further suggests that Anne brought manuscript illuminators with her because many “late-fourteenth-century manuscripts have notes written in Low German.”⁶⁴ It is possible Anne brought illuminators with her because by 1378 Prague had the second largest number of manuscript illuminators of any European city, surpassed only by Paris.⁶⁵ Margaret Rickert also contends that Anne brought manuscript illuminators with her to England and that they painted the miniatures in the Liber Regalis.⁶⁶ Amanda Simpson, on the other hand, has argued that Bohemian influence in English art was minimal.⁶⁷ In general, scholarly opinion seems to be swinging back towards an acknowledgement of Bohemian influence on English art, albeit a more restricted influence than previously claimed.⁶⁸ Anne perhaps functioned more as an inspiration, with her status as the daughter of a famous artistic patron drawing artists to England or encouraging English artists to branch out stylistically.

The reign of Richard II coincided with a great flowering of English literature, including notable works by Geoffrey Chaucer. Anne influenced English literature because of what she represented, rather than because she personally commissioned poetry. Andrew Taylor has argued that Anne was a “woman of significant cultural authority” and that scholars have underestimated that authority as a consequence of emphasizing Chaucer’s independence as an artist.⁶⁹ Anne was a “historical surrogate” who inspired Chaucer to expand his horizons by exploring the concept of wifely eloquence and is a historical counterpart to creations such as Alceste in the Prologue to The Legend of Good Women.⁷⁰ Anne was an imagined patron for Chaucer because she was representative of a more cosmopolitan, European culture.⁷¹ Anne’s cultural authority inspired authors such as Chaucer to reach new literary heights and develop English literature into something special.

Anne’s transmission of ideas and objects from her natal family’s glittering court might have helped to increase the prestige of Richard’s court and his sense of his place in the world. As Nigel Saul in particular has demonstrated, Richard’s court became more formal over time. One of the most obvious signs of this was a change in speech. Beginning in the 1390s, Richard encouraged his subjects to address him (at least in written form) as “prince” and “your majesty” rather than “your grace,” which applied to all lords.⁷² The emperor was generally referred to as “your majesty,” both by his own subjects and fellow monarchs. However, since the 1200s there was another king that was also called “your majesty”—the French king.⁷³ The change of address can thus not be decisively attributed to either Imperial or French influence.⁷⁴ Anne, however, might have encouraged or supported Richard. If Richard was pushing court address more towards continental standards, Anne might have seen this as natural and normal, rather than innovative. In this regard, attributing Richard’s more formal, elaborate court to French practices does not have to negate Anne’s influence. While she might not have been the sole, or even primary, source for the changes, she likely supported Richard as he moved his court in directions with which she was familiar.⁷⁵

Richard certainly had an exalted view of his kingship, and he aimed to increase his earthly status after Anne’s death through his quest for the imperial crown.⁷⁶ Although deceased, Anne likely influenced her husband in this, as she was Richard’s dynastic link with the empire.⁷⁷ Three years after Anne died, Richard sent envoys to the Frankfurt diet in May 1397,⁷⁸ and in June messengers from the Empire visited Richard and indicated he was soon to be elected emperor.⁷⁹ However, this was hasty because Richard later offered gifts to the Archbishop of Trier and the Duke of Saxony, hoping to turn the final two to his side.⁸⁰ Over a year later, in September 1398, Richard was still not emperor. In that month, Sigismund, then King of Hungary and Anne of Bohemia’s younger brother, wrote about Richard’s pretensions to Wenceslas, then King of the Romans. Sigismund had heard Richard had designs on the imperial crown, and he urged his older half-brother not to permit the imperium “to be transferred from ours into an alien family.”⁸¹ Richard might be Sigismund and Wenceslas’ brother-in-law, but, in Sigismund’s eyes, he was not a member of the imperial Luxembourg dynasty. Try as Richard might, he was simply Anne’s husband and that connection, especially with Anne dead, was not enough to win the imperial throne.

While an Englishman had previously been elected King of the Romans (the precursor to emperor),⁸² it would seem more likely that Richard’s interest in the empire came from his marriage. David Wallace suggests that Richard felt imperial prestige by having an interceding Anne kneel to him when she was alive, and after her death, he made overtures to become emperor in order to maintain access to that prestige.⁸³ Anne’s imperial heritage thus supported Richard in both his quest to formalize his court protocol and obtain a second crown, although only one was ultimately successful.

Death and Memorial

Anne of Bohemia died of an unstated illness (perhaps plague) on Pentecost Sunday, 7 June 1394, at Sheen in Surrey. She was only twenty-eight years old, and Richard was devastated.⁸⁴ In his grief, the King ordered Sheen razed to the ground, although this ultimately did not occur for almost a year after Anne’s death.⁸⁵

Anne’s funeral at Westminster Abbey did not take place until 3 August. Walsingham sniped that the funeral cost more than any other of the era, although the event was surely more notable for Richard’s angry outburst at the exceedingly rude Earl of Arundel.⁸⁶ Richard was angered:

so taking his attendant’s cane, he struck the earl violently upon the head with such force, that he collapsed and his blood flowed profusely over the pavement. The king would have liked to kill him in the church if he had been permitted. This act was perpetrated at the beginning of the funeral office. He was obliged to delay the funeral while the priests of the church hastened to the solemn service of reconciliation. It was nightfall before the funeral ended. The result was that everything was in a turmoil, the whole atmosphere confused.

The reason for the king’s anger was that the earl was not present at the procession and the carrying of the queen’s body when it was taken from the church of St Paul’s to Westminster. And when he arrived late, he was first of everybody to ask permission to withdraw because of certain matters which were causing him concern.⁸⁷

After Anne’s death, Richard commissioned, and saw the completion of, the couple’s joint tomb (Fig. 5.1). This indicates Richard approved of the epitaph left for Anne on the monument.⁸⁸ It reads:Verse

Verse Under this wide stone lies Anne now buried, While living in this world married to Richard II, Devoted to Christ, she was noted for good deeds: Always prone to render her gifts to paupers: She settled quarrels and relieved pregnant women, With beautiful body and beautiful, meek face, Supplying solace to widows, medicine to the sick She departed to heaven June 7 1394.Footnote

Duffy, Royal Tombs, 172. My translation. Original Latin:Verse

Verse Sub petra lata nunc Anna iacet tumulata, Dum vixit mundo Ricardo nupta secundo. Christo devota fuit hec factis bene nota: Pauperibus prona semper sua reddere dona: Iurgia sedavit et pregnantes relevavit. Corpore formosa vultu mitis speciosa. Prebens solamen viduis, egris medicamen: Anno milleno ter C, quarto nonageno Junii septeno mensis, migravit ameno.

Fig. 5.1

Tomb Effigy of Anne of Bohemia, Westminster Abbey. (© Dean and Chapter of Westminster)

In her epitaph, Richard praised Anne for her traditionally feminine good works. Anne smoothed disagreement, a reference to intercession, and assisted the pregnant, widowed, poor, and ill. As Michael van Dussen has noted, Anne’s epitaph was probably based on three verse eulogies for the Queen; all three are now only extant in a manuscript in Prague.⁹⁰ The epitaph condenses the sentiments of the eulogies, which can provide additional information on the meaning behind the epitaph. One of the eulogies (mentioned above), entitled “Anglica Regina,” declared, “Hence, as we ought who lose such a mother, / Let us shed tears for her and often pray.”⁹¹ Anne was here cast as a spiritual mother to those who mourned her.⁹² The tomb itself, providing as it did an official, monumental body for the Queen, also “realised ritual emphasis on her ageless nurturing-intercessory function,” again highlighting Anne’s nurturing maternity.⁹³ The Queen’s commemorations thus promoted her as a mother, just not of the biological variety.

Overcoming Infertility

Although Anne never had children to keep her memory alive, she has a good posthumous reputation.⁹⁴ This perhaps reached its peak in the Victorian era, when the influential historian William Stubbs first floated the unfounded idea that Richard II was insane and that his reign deteriorated without Anne to provide a check on her husband.⁹⁵ Although it is an odd way to acknowledge Anne’s importance and influence, such wild speculations testify to the favourable role Anne was able to carve out for herself and for her English subjects. In addition, these ideas suggest that Anne was more likely to have been a help to Richard, rather than an agent of his downfall. Anne might not have given Richard a son, potentially weakening the king, but sons, as Edward II experienced, were no safety against deposition. Furthermore, there is the distinct possibility that Richard’s childlessness saved him from deposition during the Appellant Crisis. With no clear successor in 1387, the Appellants Thomas of Woodstock and Henry Bolingbroke (later Henry IV) could not agree on the succession, and Richard remained on the throne.⁹⁶

Through her intercession, patronage, and charity, Anne fulfilled most of the major requirements of a queen, while also serving as a nurturing mother. Because Anne mothered her subjects and inspired poets, she has achieved a reputation as a good queen. In Anne’s case, childlessness ended up not being detrimental, either in life or in death. Her life demonstrates that queenship had space for both the fertile and the childless.