The King’s Two Bodies

"The whole idea of The King’s Two Bodies is that of the divide between the king’s natural body and his representation of the body politic, a more abstract political authority. Those two things come together and have to be worked out in law and authority and language – but it’s always a male body. The physical being of the king is part of that relationship, and the fact is that the very different connotations of the female body make the relationship between a queen and the body politic much harder. The male body is politically neutral, but the female body is sexualised, whether as sinful Eve or the Virgin Mary. It’s very difficult for a queen, as a woman – who’s constructed after all in biblical terms as the lesser being – to find neutral political ground to stand on. Yes, but sometimes she would also harness it in ways that were going to bolster her. For example, her virginity became a useful political tool over the years, but it was a complex process. The emphasis on her virginity in some senses emphasised her sexuality, and she did run a very sexualised court, with all her courtiers required to be “in love” with her. But of course if her virginity bolstered her power in the present, it also meant she couldn’t do the one thing that all kings are meant to do which is to continue their line and produce an heir. I think I discovered that it’s a narrative which is still with us – and that’s one of the things I loved about telling those women’s stories. It’s frustrating, of course, to look around us in the modern world and discover those same things still happening to some extent – but I love that sense of the connectedness of history, that sense that the past is with us. And the other thing that became profoundly important to me as I was writing was the extent to which hindsight dictates our understanding of the past more often than we think it does. That’s not a new thought – but I think it affects us more than we realise. That quest to go back to the moment and see the past through the eyes of the people who were there is so exciting to strive for as a historian."