Through detailed study of these women the author demonstrates the integral place of royal queens in the rule of the English kingdom and in the process of unification by which England was made.

Pauline Stafford was born and educated in Leeds and received her first degree and doctorate from Oxford University. She now holds a personal Chair at the University of Huddersfield. She is author of numerous articles on early English history, and on the history of early medieval women. Her previous books include Queens, Concubines and Dowagers (1983) and Unification and Conquest: A Political and Social History of England in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries (1989). She was consultant editor of The Biographical Dictionary of British Women (1996) and is a member of the editorial Collective of Gender & History. She is married with three children.