| Abstract: | Some twelfth-century continental historians regarded the Empress Matilda as an angel. But the English chroniclers mirror the distinctly negative traits in her character. They accuse Matilda of having lost her war against King Stephen because of her pride, arrogance and even cruelty. Why did the daughter of King Henry I have such a very bad press in England?Undoubtedly the empress irritated the English by her harshness. She had not always been a devil, however. In 40–1139 Matilda acted in close harmony with her brother, Earl Robert of Gloucester. Both were willing to conclude a truce with King Stephen. But in 1141 the Angevin party in England lost its cohesion, and after the battle of Lincoln the empress began to follow her own path. It seems that Gloucester did not approve of all of her actions. Matilda took possession of her father's crown in Winchester and claimed to de domina et regina — just as Stephen, her prisoner at that time, was dominus et rex. She tried to turn back the wheel of history and made enemies everywhere. The empress believed in her ability to rule in her own right, but Anglo-Norman feudal society did not allow for the erection of a dominatio feminea. The verdict on Matilda began to take shape when she tried to settle the affairs of the kingdom in a ‘tyrannical’ way. |
