Above, Queen Matilda of Flanders, who is of an older generation and different from the Empress Maud of the Anarchy so well chronicled in the Cadfael series. Interesting, the succession challenges that even a royal system can bring. Human ego, I guess, eh? Last shots from my stroll around the Jardins du Luxembourg, final morning in Paris before heading off to Zermatt last October.
Yes, Mary Stuart aka Queen of Scots was also Queen of France for a while too. The sign at the bottom notes that these are a series of sculpture of famous queens and other women of power and influence through the ages. Taken in the Jardins de Luxembourg, adjacent to the Palais de Luxembourg where France’s Senate now convenes, but which Louis XIII seems to have built for his Mom, Marie de Medici (another woman of power), after her husband passed and left her queen mum instead of queen :-), as it were.
(so much world, so little time....) 