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These and other Queens Consort will pass before us in the following pages, some of them good, a few bad, and most of them unhappy. There is no desire to dwell especially upon the sad and gloomy features of their history, or to represent them all as victims; but it must not be forgotten, in condonation of the shortcomings of some of them, that they were sent from their own homes, kin, and country, often mere children, to a distant foreign court, where the traditional etiquette was appallingly austere and repellent; sacrificed in loveless marriage to men whom they had never seen; treated as emotionless pawns in the game of politics played by crafty brains. No wonder, then, that girlish spirits should be crushed, that young hearts should break in despair, or, as an alternative, should cast to the winds all considerations of honour, duty, and dignity, and seek enjoyment before extinction came. Some of them passed through the fiery ordeal triumphant, and stand forth clear and shining. Great Isabel herself, another more colourless Isabel, the Emperor’s wife, a third, Isabel of the Peace, most beloved of Spanish Queens, and Anne her successor, as solemn Philip’s wife. Of these no word of reproach may justly be said, nor of Margaret, the Austrian consort of Philip III., nor of the spirited Isabel of Bourbon, daughter of the gay and gallant Béarnais, and sister of Henriette Marie of England. These and others bore their burden bravely to the last; and of the few who cast theirs down, and strayed amongst the poisoned flowers by the way, it may be truly urged that the trespasses of others against them were greater than their own transgressions. Such of their stories as are here told briefly are set forth with an honest desire to attain accuracy in historical fact and impartiality in deduction therefrom. There has been no desire to make either angels or devils of the personages described. They were, like the rest of their kind, human beings, with mixed and varying motives, swayed by personal and political influences which must be taken into account in any attempt to appraise their characters or understand their actions. Several of the lives are here told in English for the first time by the light of modern research, and in cases where statements are at variance with usually accepted English teaching, references are given in footnotes to the contemporary source from which the statements are derived. The opening of the archives of several European countries, and the extensive reproduction in print of interesting historical texts in Spain of late years, provide much of the new material used in the present work; and the labours of recent English, French, and Spanish historians have naturally been placed under contribution for such fresh facts as they have adduced. Where this is the case, acknowledgment is made in the form of footnotes.