She did not rule in her own right, so comparisons with female rulers like Urraca of Leon-Castile, Isabel of Castile, and Juana of Castile are misleading. María of Castile, and an Aragonese queen-lieutenant in general, may be unfamiliar to most scholars of the Middle Ages, and she may seem anomalous and her experience ungeneralizable to the rest of Europe, but her case exposes the limitations of current explanatory models of queenship.
But more broadly it makes a compelling argument for a reformulation of our understanding of the place of queenship in the institution of monarchy. … This bare outline of her reign tells us much about rulership in the Crown of Aragon in the later Middle Ages. As an official form of co-rulership it is, to my knowledge, unique.
This widely dispersed geography forced the kings to travel frequently and delegate authority normally reserved to the king to their wives, sons, and brothers. The institution was the by-product of innovation brought on by rapid territorial acquisition during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries- encompassing the kingdom of Aragón, the county of Catalunya, the Balearic Islands (Mallorca, Menorca, and Ibiza), Valencia, Sardinia, and Corsica- that stretched across the western Mediterranean. Established in the thirteenth century, the lieutenancy was both an ad hoc adjunct to the king and a training ground for princes to rule one or more of the constituent realms of the Aragonese crown. But in the Crown a unique contractual form of kingship and government had developed that relied heavily on delegated authority to rule the far-flung constituent territories in the Mediterranean. For a medieval queen, this combination of exalted royal status plus official political appointment was not common and may not have existed outside the realms of the Crown of Aragon. María was clearly more than just a wife offering advice: She held the highest political office in the most important of Alfonso’s Iberian realms and, in political terms, was second only to the king himself. In the privilegios that named María lieutenant, Alfonso clearly stated that her powers as lieutenant should be equivalent to his own as king, referring to her as his alter nos. Such legitimately sanctioned political authority in the hands of a queen is remarkable because María governed Catalunya not as queen in her own right, or even as queen-regent, but rather as lieutenant general (lloctinent general).
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