Publisher Description
The history of women in medieval Wales before the English conquest of 1282 is one largely shrouded in mystery. This misfortune touches even the most well-known royal woman of the time, Joan of England (d. 1237), the wife of Llywelyn the Great of Gwynedd, illegitimate daughter of King John and half-sister to Henry III. With evidence of her hand in thwarting a full scale English invasion of Wales to a notorious scandal that ended with the public execution of her supposed lover by her husband and her own imprisonment, Joan's is a known, but little-told or understood story defined by family turmoil, divided loyalties and political intrigue.
From the time her hand was promised in marriage as the result of the first Welsh-English alliance in 1201 to the end of her life, Joan's place in the political wranglings between England and the Welsh kingdom of Gwynedd was a fundamental one. This first-ever account of Siwan, as she was known to the Welsh, interweaves the details of her life and relationships with a gendered re-assessment of Anglo-Welsh politics by highlighting her involvement in affairs, discussing events in which she may well have been involved but have gone unrecorded and her overall deployment of royal female agency.
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About Jennifer M. Dixon
Jennifer Dixon is a retired board-certified music therapist, licensed counselor, and veteran of the Michigan Opera and several community theaters, that has explored the power of words and music to motivate, inspire, provoke, soothe, and heal-all of which she brings to her work as an audiobook narrator. Even though she was born within the sound of Bow Bells in London England (now residing in the beautiful state of Michigan), Jennifer has a “proper old-fashioned BBC sound, with American overtones,” but can conjure up her cockney side if need be!