Historical Truth or Literary Embellishment? Uncovering the voices of historical queens in medieval Irish sources

The purpose of this dissertation is to analyse the roles and representations of Irish queens in early medieval Ireland, systematically bringing together historical and literary sources on this topic for the first time. This thesis is a re-examination of Irish queenship, the main aim being to locate the experiences of Irish historical queens and to examine their position in society and how this changed over time between the seventh and tenth centuries. This will be underpinned by an analysis as to whether the sources allow us to think of queenship as forming a distinct institution and /or title or role. A secondary but important aim is to identify the disparity between Irish and contemporary Frankish and English queenship, for the first time placing Irish queens in a European context. While the sources are wide-ranging in subject matter and genre, specific details relating to queens are scarce and as a result an array of sources will be examined. The first chapter will introduce the research aims, provide a literature review, and discuss the theoretical framework and key concepts of the thesis. The second chapter will examine the wide range of sources relevant to this study including law tracts, annals, genealogies, literature and material culture. The third chapter will explore the queen in society establishing the position of queens through an analysis of status and marriage laws, with a particular focus on royal marriage practices. The fourth chapter will examine the evolution of how Irish queens are recorded in the Irish annals while also extrapolating aspects of their role within society through the use of social network analysis. The chapter will also address the questions concerning whether Irish queenship was perceived as an institution that was more than a royal marriage. Chapter five will look to the literary representation of queens in the form of the sovereignty figure and explore what it meant in the Irish imagination. The chapter will disentangle the legendary representation of Irish queenship from the historical reality. Chapter six will provide a comparative chapter in which Irish queenship is placed in the context of European queenship. Together these chapters enable the thesis to develop its questions and arguments in order to demonstrate the roles of Irish queens and their growth in importance over time.