Book Review: "The Lost Queen: The Surprising Life of Catherine of Braganza--The Forgotten Queen Who Bridged Two Worlds"
Sophie Shorland's erudite biography sheds necessary light on one of England's most underappreciated (and often overlooked) queen consorts.
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It probably comes as no surprise that I’m a voracious reader of books about the British monarchy (or English, if the monarch in question ruled before Queen Anne), and so when I saw Sophie Shorland’s new biography The Lost Queen: The Surprising Life of Catherine of Braganza, I knew that it was going to be a book I must read. I must confess that before reading this book I knew almost nothing about Charles II’s queen, other than that she was Portuguese and that their lack of an heir meant that the throne ended up passing to James II, Charles’ younger brother.
Indeed, I’m not alone in not knowing a great deal about Charles II’s consort. Catherine of Braganza has had rather a rough time of it, both during her own reign and afterward. When you think of noteworthy queens consort, you’re probably more likely to think of Henry VIII’s unfortunate wives, or perhaps Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, the mother of Queen Elizabeth II. You might even think of Isabella of France, wife of Edward II, or Margaret of Anjou, the indefatigable wife of Henry VI. Catherine, however, has largely been relegated to being little more than a historical footnote, partly because she didn’t produce an heir and partly because she was subjected, in her lifetime at least, to a great deal of opprobrium from Charles’ devoutly Protestant subjects.
As Shorland shows in her new biography, however, Catherine of Braganza deserves a lot more recognition than she usually gets and that, far from being a forgettable monarch, she was remarkably influential in her own way. In addition to enduring a great deal of heartbreak at the court, she was also subjected to numerous conspiracies and was frequently scapegoated and targeted by those who loathed her Catholicism and wanted to bring an end to her marriage. She endured all of this and still managed to maintain both her marriage and her faith. As Shorland also astutely observes, the marriage of Catherine and Charles not only helped to solidify Portugal’s monarchy; it also helped to establish Britain as a true imperial power.
Unfortunately, it remains true that Catherine ended up leading a very unhappy marital life, thanks in large part to the fact that her husband was a notorious womanizer, with over half a dozen mistresses and numerous bastard children. Charles was obviously far from the first English king to take women other than his wife to his bed, but even so, the sheer number of lovers and the flagrant way in which he flaunted were startling. A woman like Catherine, however, was raised to tolerate a great deal, and her loyalty to her very disloyal husband rarely ever wavered, no matter how much heartbreak she endured.
However, it wasn’t just Charles’ unfaithfulness that was a challenge. As a Catholic, Catherine was automatically suspect in the eyes of many of her subjects, and their hostility–and their determination to pressure the king into divorcing his wife–only grew more acute when it became clear that she was never going to give birth to an heir. Unlike, say, Henry VIII, however, Charles remained mostly resolute in his devotion to his wife, and he refused to set her aside, even when doing so might have allowed him to produce an heir of his body rather than depending on his younger brother James as a potential heir. The fact that Catherine endured several miscarriages–while many of Charles’ mistresses were conspicuously fertile–just rubbed salt in the wound.
This isn’t to say that his loyalty wasn’t tested, however, particularly when it came to the Popish Plot, in which Catherine was believed by many of Charles’ powerful Protestant subjects to be involved in scheming against the throne. Shorland’s attention to the particulars of the plot and those who were involved in it is useful both for showing us Catherine’s resilience in the face of adversity–for all that she was prone to phantom medical ailments and bouts of severe depression–but also just how much anti-Catholic sentiment played a role in English political and social life in the 17th century.
It is perhaps fitting, then, that Catherine of Braganza ended up outliving Charles and, after his death and after the short and disastrous reign of her brother-in-law James II–as well as the subsequent elevation of her niece Mary II and her husband, William III to the throne–returning to her native Portugal. However, she returned to her home to find that the country had changed a great deal since she left. Like so many of us who spend their lives dreaming of something, she found that the reality very rarely ever measures up to the fantasy.
As Shorland demonstrates, however, this wasn’t the end for our intrepid queen. Once back in Portugal she continued to be a player in the world of politics, even going so far as to serve as regent for her nephew. This little aspect of her biography comes very late in the book, and sadly Shorland gives it short shrift. While I understand that every book has to draw its boundaries somewhere, I would have liked to hear more about this particular period in Catherine’s life even if, as Shorland also observes, it was short, coming right before her own abrupt death.
I particularly enjoyed the way that Shorland managed to find the human beneath all of the panoply and hedonism associated with the Restoration and Charles II. Obviously it’s impossible to really recapture what a woman of Catherine’s station thought and felt–particularly since so much of her correspondence has been destroyed–Shorland makes abundant use of the letters and other correspondence of those who knew and interacted with her. As a result, we also get a sense of Catherine’s political importance and her place in the 17th century political scene.
The Lost Queen is a valuable addition to the enormous bibliography on England’s many queens. While Catherine of Braganza may not have been a woman of intense political aspirations she was, nevertheless, a survivor, someone who weathered more than her fair share of political turmoil and political upset to live a life at least somewhat on her own terms. Moreover, as Shorland also repeatedly reminds us, she ended up having a remarkably powerful impact on British society as a whole, even introducing tea to England. For this, and for so many other reasons, she deserves to be remembered and even celebrated.