She-Wolves: England's Early Queens

800 years ago Matilda came within a hairs breadth of being the first woman to be crowned queen of England in her own right. In this programme historian Helen Castor explores how Matilda reached this point and why her bid for the throne ultimately failed. Her daughter in law Eleanor of Aquitaine was an equally formidable woman, she's remembered as the queen of courtly love but in reality during her long life, she divorced one king, married another, only to lead a rebellion against him. She only finally achieved the power she craved in her seventies.

In 1308 a 12-year-old girl Isabella of France became queen of England when she married the English king. A century later another young French girl Margaret of Anjou followed in her footsteps. Both these women were thrust into a violent and dysfunctional England and both felt driven to take control of the kingdom themselves. Isabella would be accused of murder and Margaret of destructive ambition - it was Margaret who Shakespeare named the She Wolf. But as historian Helen Castor reveals in this programme their self-assertion that would have seemed natural in a man was deemed unnatural even monstrous in a woman.

In this programme, historian Helen Castor explores what happened when England was faced not just with inadequate kings, but no kings at all. In 1553 for the first time in English history, all the contenders for the crown were female. In the lives of these three Tudor queens, Jane, Mary and Elizabeth, Helen Castor explores how each woman struggled in turn with wearing a crown that was made for a male head. Elizabeth I seemed to show that not only could a woman rule but could do so gloriously. But at what cost?