The Queen’s Body: Promiscuity at Court

Abstract

Good queens and bad queens constitute one of the most prominent binaries of the fairy tale genre, a contrast that is also familiar in characterizations of actual queens: Bloody Mary, Wicked Catherine de Médicis, Good Queen Bess. The mutual reinforcement of these moralistic stereotypes in literary and historical representations has contributed to their tenacity, even when fiction and fact both reveal a more complex spectrum of queenly behavior.