Unexceptional Women: Power, Authority, and Queenship in Early Portugal

Abstract

Historiographic assessments of queens as exceptional have particularly hindered understanding of royal daughters, designated queens, who played a very particular role in the function and legitimacy of the Portuguese monarchy in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. The essay explains the adoption of the identity of “queen” by the first ruler of Portugal, Teresa, and then examines the function of the queenship of her female descendants in the courts of Afonso Henriques and Sancho I.