The Powerful Feminine
The concept of ‘power’ is complex. It was long viewed in modern scholarship as purely political and military – the sole preserve men, more specifically royal aristocratic men early medieval period. More recently, has been defined with greater nuance, allowing study power women, who only rarely held ‘traditional’ forms power, to progress. Janet Nelson, working on Carolingian Francia, investigated women’s abilities control people lands after their husbands’ deaths, noting that while ‘[t]o claim widows’ at least partial empowerment not same thing women empowered such’, word ‘widow’ gender-specific, therefore some were empowered. Nelson also examined queenly roles, arguing work kings queens different but complementary, ‘the queen's performance, active enactive, maintained well-functioning, stability coherence realm’, giving her own right. Pauline Stafford too analysed widows eleventh century, figures wielded though a form by men. She emphasised ‘with these we are dealing female kingship, queenship. Queen or empress case king; she wife mother one’. These feminine distinct from masculine kings.