玛蒂尔达和埃莉诺3

On the 24th of June 1141

a 39-year-old woman sat down here at Westminster to a sumptuous banquet

It was a feast to celebrate her planned coronation as Queen of England

Matilda, it seemed

was about to become the first woman to rule England in her own right

Matilda was the daughter of Henry I and granddaughter of William the Conqueror

but you won't find her on the role-call of English monarchs

This faint manuscript image is the only contemporary picture of her that survives

Her attempt to claim the crown was to throw the country into almost 20 years of catastrophic civil war

Matilda herself has gone down in history as a domineering and destructive woman

perceived by men as a she-wolf simply because

she dared to challenge the assumption that only a man could wear the English crown

And her bid for the throne began with a tragedy

The death of the male heir, her brother William

It happened not in England

but when he and their father were returning from their territory across the channel in Normandy