SOURCE: Anderson, Carolyn. “Narrating Matilda, ‘Lady of the English,’ in the Historia Novella, the Gesta Stephani, and Wace's Roman de Rou: The Desire for Land and Order.” Clio: A Journal of Literature, History and the Philosophy of History, 29, no. 1 (fall 1999): 47-67.

In the following essay, Anderson considers the significance of Wace's treatment of the figure of Matilda, the mother of England's King Henry II.

Robert Wace's Roman de Rou¹ virtually omits Queen Matilda and most of the twelfth-century English civil war she fought with her cousin, Stephen of Blois. Given the text's predilection for battles and wars, Matilda's disappearance is anomalous. After all, in her own generation, she is represented as a powerful actor in texts as varied as legal documents and contemporary chronicles, which deal with the English succession dispute. In this article, I suggest that Matilda is a feminine threat to order and that contemporary misogyny...