Hanley clearly lays out her goals for this book, seeing it not as a replacement or corrective to Chibnall's 1991 academic monograph on Matilda, but instead as a work intended for a "new and different type of audience" (3). The author displays a strong familiarity with the primary sources of the period, especially the chronicles of William of Malmesbury, Orderic Vitalis, and the anonymous Gesta Stephani. Clanchy, Chris Given-Wilson, Antonia Gransden, Michael Staunton, and others, as inspiration. In the introduction, Hanley demonstrates her own expertise with the academic historiography of the early Anglo-Norman dynasty, citing the work of Marjorie Chibnall, M.T. Indeed, Hanley deliberately styles Empress Matilda as a model for her descendants, the late medieval and early modern English queens who have proven so popular in books and television. Hanley's book, intended for broad audiences not familiar with the Anglo-Norman period, is a well-written and thoughtful contribution to the growing field of popular medieval women's history, along the lines of works by Helen Castor and Alison Weir. Daughter and only legitimate heir to Henry I of England, Matilda unsuccessfully fought her cousin, King Stephen, for the throne for nineteen years before finally seeing her own son, Henry II, become king in 1154. University of Hanley's Matilda: Empress, Queen, Warrior is an engaging popular history of the life and times of Empress Matilda (1102-67).
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