God Save the Queen explores the complex and contradictory figure of the royal woman from Late Antiquity to the early modern period, discussing the varied roles that queens played within their societies, their relationship to broader social and cultural institutions such as the Christian Church, and the ways in which queens were celebrated, criticized, and imagined by writers and artists of their time.  By doing so, students gain a better understanding not only of the meaning and significance of queens and queenship in medieval Europe, but of broader ideological and cultural issues as well: the significance of sex and gender as components of identity, the intersection between gender and various forms of power, and the role of kinship and other seemingly "private" relationships in the "public" realm of premodern politics.