Maureen Waller’s main concern in her readable and engaging examination of England’s six “queens regnant” is with their womanhood. How did Mary I (Mary Tudor or Bloody Mary), Elizabeth I, Mary II (better known as one half of William and Mary), her sister Queen Anne and the Queen-Empress Victoria manage, and how does Elizabeth II still cope with the challenges and contradictions inherent in the dual nature of being both “sovereign” and “lady”? Of the first five, only Elizabeth I believed that she was entirely capable of exercising her queenly duties without a man alongside to validate her, and her answer to the vexed question of how to be monarch in her realm yet subservient wife at home was to stay single. Her deliberately created image as the Virgin Queen also saved her from having to expend any of her energy on motherhood, or the attempt to become a mother. Her half- sister Mary had chosen wifely dependence in marrying Philip II of Spain, and fully subscribed to the belief that it was her duty to produce a male heir. But this she proved unable to do, and her desperate longing became so overwhelming that it led to a very public (and ultimately embarrassing and upsetting) phantom pregnancy. Poor Queen Anne had even worse luck, undergoing no fewer than 17 pregnancies, which resulted in a series of miscarriages, stillbirths and early deaths. Her only child to survive infancy, the hydrocephalic William, died at the age of 11.

Victoria had no problem in producing children but was as needy as any of her predecessors, coming to depend to an unhealthy degree on Prince Albert, and unable to function properly for years after his death. Not that she had submitted to Albert without a struggle: “Being an only child with no father to observe as head of the household,” writes Waller, “Victoria did not immediately appreciate her subservient status as a Victorian wife.” Albert succeeded in mastering her partly by belittling her intelligence; ultimately she was served better by Disraeli, who taught her to trust her intuition.

Waller, probably wisely, declines to attempt any detailed analysis of the husband/wife dynamic in the case of the present Queen, confining her remarks about Prince Philip in this respect to his reaction at the family name remaining Windsor after his marriage — “I am the only man in the country not allowed to give his name to his children,” he is reported to have complained, declaring this made him no better than “an amoeba”.

Sovereign ladies need to manage their public image, as well as their men, and again it is Elizabeth I who proved most equal to the task. She understood the importance of image creation and knew how to appeal directly to her subjects. The inflexible Mary I cared nothing for popular opinion, and once she had made up her mind to pursue a course of action could never be dissuaded. Elizabeth, on the other hand, knew the value of compromise.

Mary II (always happy to come second to her husband, despite having far more right to the throne than he did) and Queen Anne both attained a degree of popularity during their reigns. So, for the most part, did Victoria, despite her frequent refusal to do anything she didn’t want to do. The only one of her ministers really able to manage her was Disraeli, whom she valued for his “exoticism” and his willingness to flatter her (he admitted to Matthew Arnold that he laid it on “with a trowel”).

Perhaps because the present queen has less to contend with in terms of being a woman (nobody is likely to refer to Elizabeth II as a representative of “the weaker sex”), Waller concentrates towards the end of the book less on “ladies” and more on “sovereigns”, reflecting on the state of the monarchy in general. Her attitude towards the Queen is deferential, almost adulatory, but she finds little good to say about the rest of her family. As to whether there will be any more sovereign ladies, or even many more sovereign gentlemen, she declines to give an opinion, concluding: “Who knows?”

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