Excerpt from Queens of Old Spain

IN a previous volume I have remarked upon the extremely small political significance of most of the Queen Consorts of England, although socially the country has become what it is mainly through feminine in¿uence. In Spain the exact reverse has happened, and in no Christian country has the power of woman been less formative of the life and character of the nation, whilst, largely owing to personal and circum stantial accident, the share of ladies in deciding the political destinies of the country from the throne has been more conspicuous than in other European monarchies. The oriental traditions dominant in Spain for centuries tended to make wives the humble satellites rather than the equal companions of their husbands, and the in¿ated gallantry, before marriage at least, that sprang from the chivalrous obsession grafted upon mixed feudal and Islamic ideals, affected to exclude woman from the harder facts of existence, and from the practical problems that occupied the minds of men. But whilst these traditions limited the power of Spanish women generally, they were insufficient to counteract the extraordinary political in¿uence of a series of remarkable feminine personalities who, mainly owing to feebleness and ineptitude of consorts, or to.

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