Maureen Quilligan's "When Women Ruled the World: Making the Renaissance in Europe" sheds light on the power dynamics of the sixteenth century, challenging traditional historical interpretations. Focusing on the reigns of four influential queens—Mary Tudor, Elizabeth I, Mary, Queen of Scots, and Catherine de’ Medici—Quilligan unveils a nuanced portrait of female authority during a tumultuous era.

One of the book's most intriguing aspects is its exploration of the relationships among these queens, which diverges from the commonly depicted narrative of rivalry and animosity. Instead, Quilligan emphasizes the culture of mutual respect and alliance-building that characterized their interactions. Through meticulous research, she reveals how these women employed diplomacy, strategic marriages, and gift-giving to forge connections and navigate the complex political landscape of Renaissance Europe. There are a few sections that felt a bit repetitive, but overall, it's an enjoyable historical exploration.

Thank you to the publishers and NetGalley for the opportunity to review a temporary digital ARC in exchange for an unbiased review.

I received an ARC copy of this book through Netgalley for an honest review. The review below is my opinion alone.

This is a great book for anyone who only has basic knowledge of the women mentioned in this book. For someone like me, I already had a good grasp on them, so I found it mostly repetitive. I wouldn't hold it against this book though, as it's a great way to dip a toe into important women during this time.

It may be a two star review for me, but for anyone who wants to know more about the four women, I'd bump it up to four star. The writing is extremely good. It flows very well, and is an easy read. The author goes beyond hitting each significant part of these women's lives, and the details added are really interesting. From this book, I invested in a book exclusively on Catherine de'Medici because I wanted to know more. This book by Maureen Quilligan re-sparked my interest in her.

If another book was to come out by Maureen Quilligan on any subject that I don't know, I would buy it through her name alone. I'd highly recommend this.

Excerpts from a longer article:
Timely Take-aways for life-long Learners: Modern European History: A Fresh Look

Several new works of nonfiction provide fresh insights into early modern and modern European history. Beyond the violence and wars, these books examine the period through archaeology, political actions, and the roles of women.

...
When Women Ruled the World: Making the Renaissance in Europe
Maureen Quilligan, Dec 2022, Liveright, an imprint of W. W. Norton
Themes: History, Europe, Tudor & Elizabethan Era (1485-1603)
Quilligan’s engaging work of nonfiction demonstrates how powerful women challenged tradition by creating strategic alliances and assuming political authority. Through gift giving and political ingenuity, four Queens figured out a way to flourish in a male dominated world.
Take-aways: Use this book as an outstanding example of revisionist history that seeks to demonstrate how creative, intelligent women impacted the European monarchy.

...

Whether helping educators keep up-to-date in their subject-areas, promoting student reading in the content-areas, or simply encouraging nonfiction leisure reading, teacher librarians need to be aware of the best new titles across the curriculum and how to activate life-long learning. - Annette Lamb

When Women Ruled the World focuses on queenship in Renaissance Europe. This book does an excellent job in discussing the role of queenship. The book focuses on four queens Mary of England, Catherine de Medici, Mary, Queen of Scots, and Elizabeth I. While there is no new information that can be gleamed from previous biographies of these women, it was in interesting in discussing how these women wielded immense power. The book is very comprehensive for the general reader. Therefore, this book will be sure to please fans of David Starkey, John Guy, and Alison Weir!

Women monarchs in the medieval world were an anomaly. Most female rulers were consorts, resigned to the sidelines. But there were a few medieval women that stood out, ruling their kingdoms without a male companion.

Maureen Quilligan takes on these female rulers and defines their reigns. Queen Mary of England, Catherine de Medici - the queen regent in France for her sons, Queen Mary of Scotland and Dowager Queen of France, and Queen Elizabeth I of England.

The lives of these women were intertwined, although Queen Mary of England does not hold a very prevalent role in the book, as with her death, she fades into the pages of history. Her sister, Elizabeth, then steps up and it is the lives of the final three that are highly discussed and analyzed.

I truly enjoyed reading through this book. It is one that I plan to buy and include in my home library. It was very interesting to see how the relationships between these women morphed, and truly enjoyed the scholarship from the author.

This is an excellent history book as well as full of wonderful storytelling that make these women rulers come alive. I thoroughly enjoyed this book!

I was hoping for a bit more from this book, as it focused on four key women from the Renaissance; Queen Mary Tudor, Mary, Queen of Scots, Elizabeth I and Catherine de Medici. Unfortunately for me, the narrative felt quite skewed towards the Tudors, with very little of the book covering the Medicis. Also, I thought that the author chose to narrow in on strange things, so there are detailed descriptions of baptismal fonts and bolts of cloth, along with various artworks. I am sure that this book will work well for many readers, but it didn't quite work for me.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review.

This was an interesting read. I leapt at the chance to read this one based on the premise, and because of the promise of seeing a male-dominated world, from women who were powerful in their own right and for the most part this book did deliver. The research and care taken was obvious, and the writing was accessible - although there was some repetition and it felt as though it could have flowed a little better in places, but it avoided the pitfall of becoming too dry. However, it did feel as though it fell a little short of the promises made in the premise - the focus on the gift giving was not as central as you might expect, and there was a bit too much focus on particularly one male figure of the time which seemed odd considering this was supposed to be 'when women ruled the world'. I can understand the need for context, but it felt as though the focus slipped a little too much.

First line: In 1558, when John Knox, the radical Scottish religious reformer, published his misogynist tract, The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women, he called attention to what was strangely true in the middle of the sixteenth century in Europe: a remarkable number of women had ascended to supreme governmental power.

Summary: During the sixteenth century four women ruled over some of the most powerful countries in the world; Mary I and Elizabeth I in England, Mary Queen of Scots and Catherine de Medici in France. In this book the author looks how the interacted and changed the countries they ruled over.

My Thoughts: I love the history of the sixteenth century. I have read much on Elizabeth I but a lot less on the other three women. It was interesting to hear how they communicated, worked together and supported each other. Even though the ends of the two Marys was tragic they made their marks on history. I really want to know more about Catherine de Medici. She is someone who seems to be misrepresented in many historical fiction and movies.

FYI: Good introduction to each woman and how they came to be in their positions.

I read this ARC for an honest review
All thoughts and opinions are mine

Concentrating on four leaders in their own right, this highlight that although a mans world, women make a real difference

Loved this

Recorded history is often dominated by men. Particularly Western History. But there are times, often pivotal times in Western History where women, not men, are the primary movers and shakers of the age. This book takes a look at one such time -- the 1500s and four rulers who were rulers in their own right: Mary Tudor, Elizabeth Tudor, Mary Stuart, and Catherine deMedici.

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If you know me, you know that this is a time period that is near and dear to my heart. It was my focus in college and it's something I've studied extensively afterwards. I absolutely adore these disparate queens but I'm not sure I fully adore this book.

First off, it's definitely an interesting choice to only focus on four queens three of whom rule countries on one small island. Especially since there were other queens ruling at this time including: Joan I (Juana la Loca who ruled Spain until 1555), Anna (Queen of Poland), or even Mary of Hungary (who is mentioned in this book but not as someone who ruled... more of as an extension of Philip II of Spain). And one of the queens focused on isn't technically a queen regnant but instead a queen regent... the choice definitely had me tilting my head a bit.

As did the choice to focus so much time and page space to Philip II, who I will grant was super important and powerful... but by devoting so much time to him and by calling him the true ruler of the world the author not only leans very heavily into colonialism and Eurocentrism schools of thought but also negates her own thesis that the ruling women of this time were just as powerful and worthy of ruling as the men.

For instance in the sections on Mary Tudor, more time is spent on Mary's relationship with Philip and Philip's wooing of Elizabeth than on Mary's accomplishments as queen. While there are a few tantalizing sections on how Mary influenced her sister, there isn't nearly enough focus on the deeds and acts of Mary and how she ruled. Indeed, there's more on confusion regarding a piece of jewelry - La Peregrina.

That isn't to say that this book is bad, it isn't. I found the writing readable and the topics well researched. I particularly liked the inclusion of relevant artwork to bolster the author's claims. But that said, I also found the book meandering, repetitive, and occasionally contradictory.

For example, the author states that the pearl that Mary Tudor is well known for wearing in many of her portraits and even on the currency bearing her image is not "La Peregrina" which was found off the coast of Panama and is part of the Spanish crown jewels. That it was La Peregrina that ended up in the collection of Elizabeth Taylor's jewels and not Mary Tudor's pearl. And the author proceeds to show us this with some pretty compelling circumstantial evidence. But then the author ends this chapter by essentially contradicting the whole thrust of her argument that saying that Mary Tudor's pearl would have been a good addition to Elizabeth Taylor's collection.

On the good side, the author while light on Mary's acts does take the more recently accepted viewpoint that Mary Tudor was a kinder and more popular monarch than most people would think. I would have liked more on this, but what is there is definitely more in line with modern historical thought.

For the most part, I enjoyed this book. It didn't make me angry and it's clear that the author cares about the subject. That said, I feel that this needed at least one more pass through with a red pen to weed out all of the repetitiveness, contradictions, and to add a little more rationale on why focus on ONLY these four queens when there were other strong female rulers that are also worthy of the spotlight.

I think I'm going to give this:

Three Stars

I received an ARC of this book via NetGalley

This was a well-researched and scholarly/academic reexamination of our understanding of the animosity between four monarchical-connected women who were ruling at the same time: Mary Tudor, Elizabeth I, Mary Stuart (Queen of Scots), and Catherine de Medici. The central thesis is incredibly intriguing and I think a testament to the different perspectives we get in academic thinking when we expand the scope of WHO is doing the analysis. The glances at, for example, how the gifts these women gave each other hinted at less hostility and more attempts at friendship, camaraderie, and peace were compelling. However, these pieces never really coalesced for me, unfortunately, feeling rather unfocused in many places to me. There was a point only mentioned in the epilogue that better supported the thesis than many others in the majority of the book. Why? There was also a good chunk of the last part of the book dedicated to Philip II (Mary Tudor's husband and, later, Catherine de Medici's son-in-law) because "he ACTUALLY ruled the whole world." Like, what? Okay, I guess. Quilligan even called out herself that it was strange she was addressing this in a book ostensibly focused on four women, but then proceeded to do so anyway. I get wanting to look at that moment in history holistically, EXCEPT that's not the stated purpose of the book. I had high hopes for this one, and I think there was some solid analysis and historical interrogation here, but overall I think it didn't quite live up to its promise.

Also, I'm not going to judge this too harshly or include it in my rating consideration, because I read an arc of the book, but there was a story retold almost verbatim about Mary Stuart being abducted and raped by her third husband, so that just felt like the editing hadn't quite been finished or something. I'm not sure what happened there, but it left me with some unenjoyable deja vu.

An interesting and well researched book that look at women who were ruler during Renaissance and how their relationships differ from how they are usually told.
It's an informative book and I learned something new about this women.
Recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

I thought this was interesting and I very much appreciated the deeper dive into the woman's relationships to each other. It goes far beyond they "they were rival queens they must have hated each other" and gets deeper into the nuance of relationships, using gifts that were exchanged by the women to illustrate the points. Well done and a nice quick read.

I received a copy of this book from Netgalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Quilligan has made some fine scholarly interventions and enhanced our understanding of gender and sexuality in the early modern period but, sadly, this group biography over claims and only makes some minor adjustments to understanding the relationships of the four queens with which it concerns itself: Mary Tudor, Elizabeth I, Mary Queen of Scots and Catherine de Medici. For general readers more accustomed to popular history which relishes female competitiveness and friction, this may correct the record - but there's no getting away from the fact that there were tensions between these women, even though they also subscribed to a sisterhood that could be culturally, if not necessarily always personally, mutually supportive, especially in a period when monarchy is, more or less, gendered masculine.

It's especially disappointing that the claim that this book will focus on gift-giving between the four monarchs is so sparsely covered in the narrative - a book of poems, some jewels, some tapestries don't make much of an innovative dent in what is, generally speaking, a conventional group biography.

So yes, I would recommend this as a correction to some of the more sensational general books out there and readers of the Tudors and Stuarts may well find the broadening out to include Catherine de Medici's French rule enlightening.

I appreciate the publisher allowing me to read this book. This is a great read I recommend for any history reader.

In "When Women Ruled the World: Making the Renaissance in Europe" by Maureen Quilligan, the focus is on the
gifts exchanged between European women in the 16th century and a fresh look at old misconceptions about women rulers. These women in particular: Mary Tudor, Mary Queen of Scots, Elizabeth I, and Catherine de’ Medici created themselves or had created, gifts of poems, cloth, embroidered items, and golden and silver fonts. The four women all faced hardships in their childhood and as rulers most of them worked toward peace and religious tolerance, more than their male counterparts, like William Cecil, John Knox, and the Pope. Many Hapsburg women had assumed positions of great authority over the family's lands with the backing of Phillip II of Spain. and gifts tied them together as family heirlooms as well. Tapestry was the most expensive form of art and revealed much about family and history. The author brings together recent scholarship by various people and there is a nice bibliography and notes section. Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an advanced copy in exchange for a honest review.