{"author":"Alison Weir","author_id":"Alison+Weir","total_quotes":16,"quotes":[{"text":"News of the death of James V on 14 December gave even further cause for rejoicing, because his heir was a week-old girl, the infant Mary, Queen of Scots. Scotland would be subject to yet another weakening regency—it had endured six during the past 150 years—and should give no further trouble.","author":"Alison Weir","tags":["elizabeth","england","henryviii","humour","kinghenryviii","maryqueenofscots","queen","scotland"],"id":9453,"author_id":"Alison+Weir"},{"text":"They inhabited a lost world of splendour and brutality, a world dominated by religious change, in which there were few saints.","author":"Alison Weir","tags":["feminism","history","non-fiction","royalty","women-s-history"],"id":12023,"author_id":"Alison+Weir"},{"text":"Perhaps the Queen's prayers, and those of Bernard, had been efficacious, or perhaps Louise had been more attentive in bed, for during 1145--the exact date is not recorded--she bore a daughter, who was named Marie in honour of the Virgin. If the infant was not the male heir to France so desired by the King--the Salic law forbade the succession of females to the throne--her arrival encouraged the royal parents to hope for a son in the future.  Relationships between aristocratic parents and children were rarely close. Queens and noblewomen did not nurse their own babies, but handed them over at birth into the care of wet nurses, leaving themselves free to become pregnant again.","author":"Alison Weir","tags":["equality","history","pregnancy","royalty","women"],"id":49459,"author_id":"Alison+Weir"},{"text":"Until quite recently women's histories were largely overlooked but in the wake of feminism there has been increasing interest in retrieving them.","author":"Alison Weir","tags":["british-history","feminism","history","non-fiction","royalty","women-s-history"],"id":152391,"author_id":"Alison+Weir"},{"text":"At school, up to the age of sixteen, I found history boring, for we were studying the Industrial Revolution, which was all about Acts, Trade Unions and the factory system, and I wanted to know about people, because it is people who make history.","author":"Alison Weir","tags":["history","school","people "],"id":162916,"author_id":"Alison+Weir"},{"text":"Court life for a queen of France at that time was, however, stultifyingly routine. Eleanor found that she was expected to be no more than a decorative asset to her husband, the mother of his heirs and the arbiter of good taste and modesty.","author":"Alison Weir","tags":["boredom","eleanor-of-aquitaine","history","medieval","medieval-history","royalty"],"id":181792,"author_id":"Alison+Weir"},{"text":"In the South of England northerners were regarded then as uncouth, brutish, undisciplined savages ...","author":"Alison Weir","tags":["england","north","nothingchanges","opinion","south"],"id":182572,"author_id":"Alison+Weir"},{"text":"... Only one man could have been responsible for their deaths: Richard III.","author":"Alison Weir","tags":["conclusion","murder","royalty","war-of-the-roses"],"id":194125,"author_id":"Alison+Weir"},{"text":"Was I right?' she asked him. 'Was I right to make a stand against what I believed to be wrong? Even though many ills have come from it? I have been asking myself this a lot lately. I must be quiet in my conscience.","author":"Alison Weir","tags":["historical-fiction"],"id":200975,"author_id":"Alison+Weir"},{"text":"I prefer to be left alone with my books.","author":"Alison Weir","tags":["book-lover","jane-grey","solitude"],"id":263672,"author_id":"Alison+Weir"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":16,"pages":2,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}