This biography of Queen María de Molina thematically explores her life and demonstrates her collective exercise of power and authority as queen. Throughout her public life, María de Molina’s resilient determination, as queen and later as regent, enabled her to not only work tirelessly to establish an effective governing partnership with her husband King Sancho IV, which never occurred, but also to establish the legitimacy of her children and their heirs and their right to rule. Such legitimacy enabled Queen María de Molina’s son and grandson, under her tutelage, to fend off other monarchs and belligerent nobles. The author demonstrates the queen’s ability to govern the Kingdom of Castile-León as a partner with her husband King Sancho IV, a partnership that can be described as an official union. A major theme of this study is María de Molina’s role as dowager queen and regent as she continued to exercise her queenly power and authority to protect the throne of her son Fernando IV and, later, of her grandson Alfonso XI, and to provide peace and stability for the Kingdom of Castile-León.

"Professor Pepin’s book is an excellent medium to make Maria de Molina’s political life more easily accessible to an English-speaking audience, showing a remarkable effort of translation of medieval Spanish sources, and written by someone who has been in a vivid closeness with the places Queen Maria visited and lived in." - The Catholic Historical Review

"The greatest benefit of Pepin’s work is that it provides an accessible introduction for those who are unfamiliar with the history. It is a relatively slim and entertaining book that is easy to read, and Pepin does an excellent job of explicating the political circumstances surrounding complicated issues, such as the papal bull that María and Sancho sought to secure their dynasty. Furthermore, she makes connections between María’s rule and that of her female relatives, which serve to contextualize her exercise of queenship. . . . Pepin’s work and the attention that it brings to this obscure, yet worthy subject are most welcome." - Bulletin of Spanish Studies