Shelley Puhak Uncovers the Truth of 'The Dark Queens: The Bloody Rivalry That Forged the Medieval World'

Critically acclaimed writer and author of three award-winning books of poetry, Shelley Puhak, shares with us her fascinating nonfiction debut, The Dark Queens: The Bloody Rivalry That Forged the Medieval World. Her story about two rival, medieval queens, Brunhild and Fredegund, surfaced when she was doing research on another project. As she learned more about them, she was astonished to discover that nobody had ever written a book about these two dynamic women. “The Dark Queens covers these two incredibly, influential women whose names most people have probably never heard of before… we have Brunhild and Fredegund, who compete in this epic battle for control of western Europe 1,400 years ago, and this is set during the transition from the Roman Empire to the medieval world of these feudal nation states and they have this really fierce rivalry, but they’re also going to accomplish a lot of things that are still having an impact on life today.” While both rose to power and became formidable rulers, their reputations were quite different. Of the two, Fredegund is seemingly more nefarious and ruled rather ruthlessly and mercilessly. “…Fredegund, I have to say, she’s just so unapologetic about her ambition and as awful as it is, at the same time, you know, look around and just see what were the men around her doing and they were doing the exact same thing. They were doing it for generations before and generations after… I think, comparatively speaking, she’s not doing anything that hasn’t been done before by her male counterparts and some of it, you can argue, that she has to do to stay alive because she doesn’t have any of the wealth or the family in her corner, so she’s going to do what it takes.”

Set during an age when women were reputed to have very little power, there were, surprisingly, other female leaders ruling during this period of time. Puhak remarked, “I’m really surprised to find out that there are all of these female political leaders in the 6th century. So there are six female heads of state ruling at the same time during the so-called Dark Ages… this is a real high point for female political power but also for every female at the top. We get this glimpse of all of these women just below the surface. So we have not just these other powerful queens that are advising them and positioning them, but all of these other women that are… business owners and healers and we have women taking one another and men to court and suing them, we have women engaged in political plots, we have nuns participating in armed rebellion. So I was really heartened to see the degree of cooperation and support between women and these networks that they were able to build even in this time period…”