Thanksgiving and one of my favorite medieval queens

I hope all of my American friends and readers have a lovely, peaceful Thanksgiving tomorrow. And that those of you who are traveling will arrive safely at your destinations; these storms sound scary. Here is a post that I did last year—for the benefit of new readers, new Facebook friends, and those like me, who have very fuzzy memories!
Historically, the 27th of November was the date of death in 1198 of one of the most interesting and courageous medieval women, Constance de Hauteville, Queen of Sicily in her own right, unhappy wife and happy widow of the royal sociopath, Heinrich von Hohenstaufen, and mother of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederic II, one of the most colorful and controversial rulers of the MA. Constance had a remarkably eventful life—nearly being killed in a Salerno riot, captured and turned over to her husband’s rival, Tancred, only to escape as she was being taken under guard to Rome. She is most famous for getting pregnant for the first time at age 40 and then arranging to invite all of the local matrons to watch her give birth after learning that Heinrich’s enemies were claiming her pregnancy was a hoax. She also involved herself in a rebellion against her despot husband, horrified by the cruelty he was inflicting upon her Sicilian subjects, and likely would have been punished far worse than Henry punished Eleanor if not for an opportunist mosquito who chose that time to give Heinrich the malaria that claimed his life. (It has also been suggested he was poisoned, but while that is certainly plausible, historians tend to accept the malaria story) Constance at once kicked all the Germans out of Sicily and took the reins of power on behalf of her three year old son. Sadly, she outlived Heinrich by little more than a year, spending her last months in a desperate attempt to safeguard Frederick’s inheritance. She is the star of my first (and probably last) short story, A Queen in Exile, which appeared in George RR Martin’s anthology, Dangerous Women. She also made appearances in both Lionheart and A King’s Ransom. Here is my depiction of her death in Ransom, pages 567-568
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Constance de Hauteville had celebrated her forty-fourth birthday on All Soul’s Day, but she knew it would be her last. She was dying. She’d been ill for months, and not even the doctors of the famed medical school in Salerno had been able to offer either hope or relief from the pain. She’d been very bitter at first, for she’d had little more than a year of freedom, a year to rule Sicily, to rid her kingdom of the Germans, to have her son with her—a privilege that Heinrich hade denied her, for he’d given Friedrich into the care of the Duchess of Spoleto soon after his birth. One year, one month, and twenty-seven days to have been a queen, a mother, and, God be praised, a widow. Not enough time. Not nearly enough.
She’d faced it as she’d faced every crisis in her life, without flinching, without self-pity or panic. What mattered was her son, still a month shy of his fourth birthday. She’d done all she could. She’d exiled Markward von Annweiler, who’d been made Duke of Ravenna and Romagna by Heinrich. In May, she’d had Friedrich crowned as King of Sicily, letting Otto and Heinrich’s brother Philip fight over the imperial crown. And she’d turned to the only man powerful enough to protect her son, the new Pope, Innocent III. In her last will and testament, she’d named Innocent as Friedrich’s guardian until he came of age. Now, in what she knew to be her last hours, she could only pray that it would be enough, that her son would be kept safe, his rights defended by the Church, and that he would not forget her too quickly.
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