Katherine of Valois: The Vicissitudes of Reputation

Katherine of Valois is probably better known as the wife of Owen Tudor than as the queen of Henry V. She was queen of England for less than two years and thus had little time to exercise queenly roles, beyond producing an heir, the future Henry VI. Consequently accounts of Katherine, both medieval and later, have focused on her not as a queen but as a woman. Based on a single line in a chronicle written down over twenty years after her death, Katherine is regularly characterised as lustful and reckless, hence her extraordinary marriage to Owen Tudor. This essay challenges such approaches to Katherine, arguing that her decision to marry him may have been, instead, a thoughtful act of political self-preservation. It highlights that aspects of her established reputation tell us little about what she was actually like, but instead are founded on gendered stereotypes and misogyny.