THE TWELFTH CENTURY saw an unusual number of female candidates for major thrones in western Europe. In the Spanish kingdoms, Urraca of León-Castille inherited the crown of her father, Alfonso VI, in 1109 and managed to hold the realm together for her own son to inherit despite nearly constant challenges from rebellious barons and members of her natal family, especially her half-sister Teresa of Portugal. In England, Henry I forced his barons to swear to support the claims of his daughter Matilda almost a decade before his 1135 death after his only legitimate son died in a shipwreck. Although Matilda never managed to rule over England, she and her husband did have effective control over Normandy. The long civil war between Matilda and her cousin Stephen eventually resulted in Matilda giving up her claim for the throne in return for a promise that her son would inherit upon Stephen's death. Finally, in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, Melisende (1105– 1161), eldest daughter and heir of King Baldwin II, ruled in partnership with her husband Fulk of Anjou until his death in 1143, and then alone until her son Baldwin III came of age and they shared power until her own death in 1161.

The claims of these women stem from an increasing preference in European kingdoms for direct lineal inheritance over other means of claiming monarchic power, and their struggles and successes are well known to scholars and students of the medieval period. But there is another, less well-known female monarch at the fringes of Europe who rose to power in the twelfth century, and whose reign is generally considered to mark the apogee of her medieval realm. This woman, Tamar of Georgia, was born ca. 1160, and by 1178 her father had her crowned as his co-ruler and heir. After overcoming initial opposition from ecclesiastics and aristocrats, she ruled a united and culturally flourishing kingdom. But, despite the length of her reign and its successes, Tamar is seldom discussed among Western medievalists, largely, it can be argued, because of the challenges of dealing with the linguistic problems raised by surviving sources in Georgian, Armenian, Russian, and Greek, as well as the Latin with which historians of the medieval West are accustomed to working.