Imprisonment Excuse for Consort

For a Medieval times what would be a reason to execute a consort?

If a Queen consort commits adultery, this threatens the legitimacy of the royal line. So that is an excuse, and possibly a reason to exclude all the children from succession.

What about one who is caught spying for another kingdom?
 
Not in medieval times. The position of a queen consort at that time was sanctified by god and the church, she was seen as the earthly verision of the Virgin Mary. If the consort was poisoned or otherwise secretly assasinated then that was that. But to execute a anointed queen was a different thing.

For adultery or espionage imprisonment is the punishment, but I don't think anyone in Europe from the middle ages and up executed their consort until Henry VIII chopped Anne Boleyns head off. And that was horrific enough.
 
For adultery or espionage imprisonment is the punishment, but I don't think anyone in Europe from the middle ages and up executed their consort until Henry VIII chopped Anne Boleyns head off. And that was horrific enough.

The charges of adultery against Anne was dubious (almost certainly false and if it did happen Henry VIII certainly didn't keep any evidence for the historians), but Henry VIII's actions shows that he thinks the English aristocracy would accept the execution of a consort if the charge of adultery was true (again, dubious at best). I don't know if he was right about that.

So what you are saying is that, there really wouldn't be an acceptable reason to off a consort (even with actual adultery, espionage, formenting rebellion or whatever) and a King would have to settle for locking up his troublesome consort (like Henry II did when Eleanor backed rebellious barons and his rebellious sons for the umpenteenth time)
 
That makes it even worse. A public execution was unheard of for a crowned consort or a consort in general. Being poisoned or shut up in a nunnery was the usual route. The reason why the nobility accepted Anne's beheading was because they disliked her and her upstart family. Imagine if it was Catherine of Aragon on the chopping block. Henry was a psychopath, pure and simple.

If lack of sons had been a legitimate reason then Anne of Brittany, Joan of Portugal, queen of Castile and Eleanor of Aquitaine (in her first marriage), would have lost their heads long before they died.

Not even Henry II (who had a rather large pair of balls on him) dared to execute Eleanor.
 
Henry was a psychopath, pure and simple.

I don't doubt this at all. The way he treated Katherine was simply unjustifiable and he doesn't really get any better of a person as time passes.

But I'm sure in addition to that fact that he was a psychopath, I'm pretty sure he thought "adultery" would be acceptable excuse for execution of a consort in the eyes of his earls, otherwise he wouldn't dare. I don't know if he's right, just that he thought it would be an acceptable excuse. I'm sure "lack of sons" would be a nonstarter, which is why he made up the accusation of adultery. In fact, I don't even know why you bring up "lack of sons" since I'm talking about the official reasons not the real ones.

I guess what you're saying is that in general, nothing a can do, even if proven instead of made up, would excuse an execution and locking up is the worst a king is supposed to do, even if his wife was cheating or even if his wife was the organizer of a rebel conspiracy.
 
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The creation of Anne Boleyn, Susan Bordo, 126-7.

"The problems with theories that postulate a crisis that turned Henry from a virtuous prince into the sort of man who could order the execution of a wife is that Henry was always capable of decisively and irrevocably turning of the switch of affection, love, tender feeling, and shared memories; striking a fatal blow; and refusing to look back. In fact, those whom he loved most - Wolsey, More, Anne, Cromwell - were most at risk. Because he love them, they had the most power to disappoint him - and for Henry, disappointment could never be "slight". All wounds to his authority, his manhood and his trustwere bloody gashes that he could repair only by annihilating the one who inflicted the wound."

Henry had moved heaven and earth to get Anne as his queen, had alienated Europe, the pope, his own kingdom to a large degree and his most trusted advisors, had executed More, Fisher and many other. He had discarded his only surviving child and his most worthy wife to get a son with Anne. And what did he get in return? A girl baby. No, even if the charges were bullshit and I'm 99 % sure that they were, it in itself was irrelevant. She had failed to be what Henry had wanted her to become. She had failed him in the most horribly way. He almost died in 1536 and god do I wish he had, but the time had come to do away with Anne. The adultery was just a excuse at this point. If wasn't like Katherine Howard, at that point Henry had a son. I'm sure that Henry considered adultery a acceptable reason to axe a consort, ergo Katherine Howard, but at Anne's time the adultery was just the official reason.
Jane was a quiet simpering little dishrag who was Anne's opposite, so why deal with Anne when she had failed her purpose?

There is also a broad spectrum between doing nothing and publically executing a consort for the reasons you provided.
 
But I'm sure in addition to that fact that he was a psychopath, I'm pretty sure he thought "adultery" would be acceptable excuse for execution of a consort in the eyes of his earls, otherwise he wouldn't dare. I don't know if he's right, just that he thought it would be an acceptable excuse.
Legally adultery of the Queen was treason and punishable by death.

That said the Earle were rather happy at her death as she was unpopular and her family were upstarts.

Her father's title was not earned or legally inherited but gained due to royal favour because according to court gossip Henry was sleeping with Anne Bolyn's mother and sister. The King denied the mother but admitted the daughter. Don't forget the French king talking about your sister as the greatest who're in the world. It really does something for your reputation.

Then of course most of the nobility would have been born Catholics so the idea of divorcing your wife just wasn't acceptable even if they had since left the church.
 
I think, if we look at the dynamic of medieval queens, there was more a precedent for imprisonment than execution - Eleanor of Aquitaine, the three royal consorts in the Tour de Nesle Affair, (even la Louve de France, Queen Isabella, who was considered guilty of adultery - IIRC she was the reason behind the English bringing in the treason act that led to Mistress Boleyn's beheading), Catherine de Valois and Marguerite d'Anjou (Elizabeth Wydeville too) were never executed - I mean, Liz Wydeville was in Westminster Abbey claiming sanctuary from her husband's enemies (first the Lancastrians then Richard III) where it would've been easy enough to bop her off (Edward IV had no such reservations about defiling sanctuary.) Two of the three Tour de Nesle ladies had their marriages annulled and were quietly shuffled off to a convent/ prison. The person of the queen, much like that of the king, to the medieval mindset was sacrosanct. Adultery with her was considered defilement, but her judicial murder (like Henry did with Anne and Kitty) was unthinkable (and as stated, he would never have tried that with any ofhis foreign wives, but the Howards and the Parrs and the Seymours owed their positions to him).
 
Ok, so the consencus is that even with actual adultery or outright treason, the aristocracy is not going to accept any excuse for an execution for a consort. Henry VIII thought his Earls accepted his excuse of "adultery" even though "no sons" was his real reason, but in fact, the Earls would not have accepted the excuse and were more like "well, Anne totally had it coming."
 
For a Medieval times what would be a reason to execute a consort?

If a Queen consort commits adultery, this threatens the legitimacy of the royal line. So that is an excuse, and possibly a reason to exclude all the children from succession.

What about one who is caught spying for another kingdom?
It's pretty much a queen's duty to spy for her father/brother's family.If the Queen was from another kingdom,her role was to act as an ambassador between the two countries.
 
It's pretty much a queen's duty to spy for her father/brother's family.If the Queen was from another kingdom,her role was to act as an ambassador between the two countries.

Eh, I can see the duty of a Queen spying for her father and brother's family and that being a-OK... well sort of. But spying for another Kingdom when it's not even her family?

That said, the general consensus seems to be that the counts/earls/countesses would be unnerved by an execution and feel much better if the troublesome consort was locked up.
 
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