The grief of the kings of England, 1066-1307

Cultures of emotion in the high medieval era were complex, shifting, and central to the operation of royal power. Grief was particularly potent and dangerous. Contemporary sources are littered with descriptions of kings expressing extreme, debilitating, and often public grief. What can these descriptions tell us about the nature of grief and kingship during the period? I will examine instances of kingly grief to determine how grief and attitudes to grieving changed from the eleventh to thirteenth centuries (Boquet/Nagy, 2018); the role of emotions in strengthening or weakening a king's influence, reach and legitimacy; and the relationship between grief and identity.
Little work has been done on grief and kingship in the high middle ages or on the history of emotions related to death. Though scholars have touched briefly on grief (Boquet and Nagy (2018), Evans (2003), and Korpiola and Lahtinen (2005)), studies of pre-modern grief focus on other times, places, and subjects (Vaught, 2003; Aldrin, 2005; Lansing, 2008; Sullivan, 2013; Mills, 2013). The sources describing the grief of the kings of the period with the perspective and methodologies of the history of emotion have yet to be analysed. Only by analysing the precise meaning of grief in its varied occurrences can we delineate emotional communities and begin to unpick its changing meaning.
Building on my undergraduate dissertation, The Grief of Henry II of England, I will focus on the grief of England's kings from William the Conqueror to Edward I, a period of significant emotional change as others have identified. I will compare the work completed on French monarchs of the same era to test the assumption that the culture of grief remained shared across the period (Korpiola/Lahtinen, 2005). As well as undertaking an analysis of the accounts in chronicles of kings grieving, I will examine letters, lives, and advice to kings (such as mirrors of princes and consolatio) for descriptions and instructions given to princes on appropriate grieving. In these sources, the authors - often ecclesiastics - draw on, interpret and adapt biblical models of male grief and broader religious thought, from the patristics - particularly St Augustine's Confessions - to changing contemporary philosophies. These contexts - alongside medical texts - reveal changing understandings of passions and their spiritual and physical effect; they are key to unpicking the cultures of grief. Poetry and courtly literature may indicate where lay culture may differ from religious prescription. A comparison of a broad range of sources which variously describe, praise, condemn, and advise will offer a picture of overlapping and varying emotional culture.
If the interrelated history of grief and kingship has been neglected, the history of emotions is a growing field, increasingly understood as central to comprehending historical change (Bailey/Barclay, 2017). Emotions during the medieval era had enormous political, cultural, and social significance: emotional displays were an essential tool of kingship, with the power to unify and exclude, organise and disrupt, across every level of society (Boquet and Nagy, 2018). An analysis of descriptions of emotion on their own terms will capture what chroniclers sought to convey, and what contemporary audiences understood. By studying the grief of kings, I will offer a new perspective on kingship, historiography and emotion during the high middle ages.