Gloriosa Regina or “Alien Queen”?: Some Reconsiderations on Anna Yaroslavna’s Queenship (r. 1050-1075)

The article questions the image that has emerged in secondary sources of Anna Yaroslavna (r. 1050- c. 1075), the Rus-born wife of King Henri I of France (d. 1060), as an “alien queen” who remained a foreigner in Capetian society. Focusing on charter evidence, it examines the ways in which Anna exercised her queenship and demonstrates that while limited evidence suggests that she maintained contact with the Orthodox culture of her homeland, she also became assimilated into her husband’s western-Christian court culture. The article thus also sheds light on relations between western and eastern Christianity in the mid eleventh century.