ROYAL WOMEN AND THEIR POLITICAL NETWORKS IN LATE MEDIEVAL IBERIA: PRACTICES, AGENTS, AND RELATIONAL MECHANISMS OF POWER

LLEDÓ RUIZ DOMINGO

Universitat Jaume I

POTESTAS, N.º 28, enero 2026 | pp. 7-10
ISSN: 1888-9867 | e-ISSN 2340-499X | https://doi.org/10.6035/potestas.9333

For a long time, the exercise of political power in the Middle Ages was interpreted almost exclusively through masculine frameworks. Medieval royal women were traditionally confined, in historiographical narratives, to roles associated with dynastic reproduction, piety, or domesticity, while political agency, decision-making, and authority were understood as inherently male domains. From this perspective, women’s interventions in politics were perceived either as anomalies or as the product of exceptional personal qualities, rather than as the outcome of structurally embedded forms of power.

Over the last decades, this paradigm has been fundamentally revised.[1] The development of queenship studies has demonstrated that royal women were not marginal figures within medieval political systems, but rather integral actors whose authority was articulated through a wide range of institutional, social, economic, and relational mechanisms.[2] Power, as Michel Foucault famously argued, was not something that could simply be possessed; it was exercised through practices, strategies, and relationships.[3] Applied to the study of royal women, this approach allows us to move beyond formal titles or legal prerogatives and to focus instead on the concrete ways in which they acted, negotiated, mediated, and governed.

This special issue builds upon this historiographical shift by focusing specifically on the networks of power that sustained and enabled the authority of Iberian queens and infantas during the later Middle Ages (c. 1350–1500). Rather than treating power as a static attribute attached to the royal office, the contributions gathered here approach it as a relational phenomenon, constructed through personal ties, political alliances, institutional positions, territorial lordship, and diplomatic exchanges. In doing so, the volume seeks to illuminate the mechanisms through which royal women, who were often of foreign origin and inserted into unfamiliar political landscapes, were able to consolidate their authority and actively participate in the governance of their realms.

The Iberian Peninsula offers an especially fertile ground for this kind of analysis. The monarchies of the Crown of Aragon, Portugal, Castile, and Navarre were deeply interconnected through dynastic marriages, diplomatic negotiations, and the circulation of people, resources, and political models. Queens and infantas frequently moved across borders, bringing with them entourages, expectations, and networks forged in their places of origin, while simultaneously adapting to the institutional frameworks and political cultures of their new kingdoms. These movements generated complex webs of relationships that linked courts, cities, noble lineages, ecclesiastical institutions, and foreign powers.

Despite the considerable advances made in the study of queenship, the processes through which these networks were formed, maintained, and activated have not yet been systematically explored, particularly from a comparative and cross-Iberian perspective. Existing scholarship has convincingly identified key «power bases» of royal women—[4]such as their households, their lordships, or their financial resources—but has less frequently addressed how these elements functioned as interconnected nodes within broader political and social networks. This volume aims to address that gap by foregrounding networks as both an analytical tool and a historical reality.

This monographic issue is one of the scientific outcomes of the research project REGINET: Power and Authority Networks of Royal Women in the Iberian Monarchies (1350–1500),[5] which aims to analyse the relational, political, and institutional mechanisms through which royal women exercised authority in the later Middle Ages.

The contributions gathered in this monographic issue analyse the networks through which late medieval Iberian queens and infantas exercised, negotiated, and, in some cases, lost political authority. Several articles focus on the construction of power through human agents and delegated authority. Martina del Popolo examines the personnel entrusted with the administration of Sicily on behalf of the queens consort of the Crown of Aragon, highlighting the role of trusted officers and their family networks as intermediaries who enabled the queen to act as an effective administrator and representative at a distance. Similarly, Ana Maria Rodrigues and Inês Olaia explore the human and political networks articulated through gift-giving practices at the court of Queen Maria of Aragon and Castile, queen of Portugal, demonstrating how material exchanges functioned as relational tools for negotiation, alliance-building, and political communication within overlapping Iberian networks.

Other contributions shift the focus to moments of transformation and fragility in female power. Elena Woodacre analyses the networks of four Navarrese royal women during their widowhood, examining how authority was renegotiated after the loss of marital status and how queenship could persist, albeit in reconfigured forms. Francisco de Paula Cañas offers a pioneering study of the human network surrounding Queen Blanche of Bourbon, based on previously unstudied sources, tracing both her attempts to establish herself within a new monarchy and the progressive erosion of her network as her political position weakened. Finally, Lledó Ruiz Domingo applies social network analysis and spatial mapping to the correspondence of Violant of Bar, reconstructing the structures, intermediaries, and dynamics of her political networks and illustrating how digital methodologies can capture both the reach and the limits of reginal power.

Methodologically, the volume is firmly rooted in the approaches of the new political history and the history of women, while also engaging with concepts and tools derived from social and political network analysis. By mapping relationships between individuals, institutions, and territories, the authors seek not only to reconstruct patterns of interaction, but also to assess the strategic use of those connections over time. This perspective allows for a more nuanced understanding of agency, showing how royal women navigated constraints, exploited opportunities, and reshaped existing power structures.

Ultimately, this monograph argues that the study of power networks is essential for understanding the political role of late medieval Iberian queens and infantas. Their authority did not rest solely on formal prerogatives or exceptional circumstances, but on their ability to weave and mobilise networks that connected people, places, and resources across multiple scales. By bringing together case studies from different Iberian kingdoms and by adopting a comparative and relational perspective, this volume seeks to contribute to a more integrated and dynamic understanding of female power in medieval Europe.