Medieval Queen Urraca of Spain

I would like to introduce one of “my” Medieval research area queens: Urraca, ruler of much of Spain from 1109-1126. I like her for many reasons, but one of my favorite things about Urraca was her tenacity. She really steered an unlikely trajectory, and kept reasserting her own life’s ambitions despite the ways her plans didn’t match the culture of the day, and collided with many super powerful leaders. She had no choice about her husbands– the first she was married off to at only age eight (first kid at age 14), and the second was also politically expedient. He physically abused Urraca, so she left him. This was a major deal, and resulted in Spanish lands going to war, because he and Urraca each controlled large territories. Although her relationship was annulled by the Catholic Church, Urraca never remarried, but took on lovers, with whom she eventually had children. Her personality must have been commanding, because many noblemen gave her their allegiance. Her authority extended to legal affairs (this 13th-century painting is of Urraca in a manuscript that contains many land grants), but also military: we know she travelled in tents with her armies at times. Urraca also stood her ground against the powerful Archbishop of Santiago de Compostela. One of the most vivid episodes about her life deals with a moment when she and the archbishop were forced to ally together, because they were facing a mob besieging them in a tower in Compostela. While the archbishop managed to flee unscathed, the mob attacked Urraca, ripping off her clothes before she managed to run away. She eventually returned, got her power back, and governed for another eleven years before dying at age 46, probably because of childbirth complications.