Royal childbirth was never a private matter. It was a political event, one that could determine the future of a dynasty and, in many cases, the fate of an entire nation. The arrival of a royal infant was watched by countless eyes, surrounded by ancient tradition, superstition, and fear, with the queen’s personal privacy always taking second place to public interest. The stakes were so high that queens were often required to give birth before a crowd of witnesses, carefully observing every detail to confirm the child’s sex and health and to prevent any possibility of fraud.
When the French queen Marie Antoinette went into labor, some two hundred people crammed into her bedchamber to witness the birth. The moment was so significant that the midwife would cry out that the queen was about to give birth, and hundreds of courtiers would rush into the dark room. The crowd became so extreme that the heat reportedly caused Marie to faint, while onlookers climbed onto the furniture to get a better view of the delivery. Throughout Christian history, the pain of childbirth was viewed as inevitable.
The Bible recorded that God told Eve she would bring forth children in sorrow, and many devout Christians considered labor pains a natural part of a woman’s experience, tied to the fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. This suffering symbolized the weight of original sin. For that reason, the use of pain-relieving drugs was frowned upon, even for royal women. Queens often clutched holy relics and amulets during labor, sometimes tucking prayer papers into the folds of their nightclothes.
The church approved of these practices because they relied on divine protection rather than medicine. It seems no one considered that God might also have created anesthetics. This attitude began to change in the early nineteenth century. Queen Victoria, who gave birth to nine children, became a champion for making pain relief available and acceptable for royal mothers.
During the birth of her eighth child, Prince Leopold, she found a doctor willing to administer chloroform to ease her suffering. She was so pleased with the effect that she later wrote of the blessed chloroform, calling it soothing and delightful. Her choice challenged the belief that women were meant to suffer in labor, and after Victoria’s example, attitudes slowly shifted. Royal women began requesting the use of ether, sometimes called the queen’s anesthesia, during childbirth.
This change spared many women needless agony and opened the way for broader acceptance of new medical procedures. Up until the mid-seventeenth century, royal childbirth was an exclusively female affair. Nurses, midwives, ladies-in-waiting, and other women of the court handled everything, and men were not allowed to be involved. There were no heart monitors or medical instruments to assess the mother’s condition, so those attending relied entirely on the experience of women who had given birth before.
Midwives were expected to be knowledgeable and of good character, entrusted with the life of the future dynasty. They swore an oath not to secretly keep any part of the birth, such as the placenta or umbilical cord. These were not ordinary souvenirs; the rule existed to prevent such parts from being used in witchcraft. The female-dominated tradition of royal birth remained unchallenged until Prince Albert insisted on being present during Queen Victoria’s deliveries.
Victoria was grateful for his support and wrote that no one could have been a kinder, wiser, or more careful nurse than he was. Medieval beliefs about female anatomy were profoundly outdated. Many people thought that a woman’s genitals were simply a man’s turned inside out. This idea dated back to the second century, when the Roman physician and philosopher Galen wrote that if one turned the female parts outward and the male parts inward, they would be found identical in every respect.
The uterus and ovaries were considered the inverse of the penis and testicles. The differences in size and arrangement led some to regard women, or at least their organs, as inferior. Understanding of how a child was conceived was shaky at best. People did not know that the father’s sperm determines the child’s sex, so all credit or blame for the baby’s gender fell on the mother.
Some believed the sex of an unborn child could be influenced by diet or by consuming various drinks. After the queen’s procession through court, labor, and the birth itself, she remained out of sight until she was considered fit to return to public life. A mother typically stayed in her bedchamber for about a month after giving birth until she was purified through the church. Before resuming royal duties, a priest would cleanse and bless her, a purification deemed necessary after such an ordeal.
While the mother remained in seclusion, the newborn was celebrated and publicly baptized in a ceremony the mother could not attend. Fear surrounding childbirth among royal women was so great that a special girdle was created to offer extra support. This elegant garment, often embroidered with silver thread, was designed to ease the queen’s labor pains. As an added benefit, it could include divine blessings.
Sometimes called the holy girdle or the girdle of the Virgin, it was worn during childbirth and often contained pieces of jasper stone, believed to help produce a healthy child. These girdles date from the early sixteenth century and are mentioned in various historical texts. Records show that Eleanor, the pregnant queen of King Henry III, wore such a holy girdle when she was about to give birth to her fourth child, hoping for the successful delivery of a son. A fresco from 1365, The Birth of the Virgin, shows a new mother being attended by her servants, one cleaning the newborn while another receives the special girdle for washing.
Although royal women frequently gave birth before audiences, pregnancy itself remained shrouded in mystery and fear. In the modern era, the process of childbirth is well understood, but for most of history it was not. In the medieval period, giving birth was a dangerous undertaking, and mothers of every rank faced the risk of complications and even death. There are no precise medical records from that time, though a popular idea persists that one in three births ended in the mother’s death.
That figure is far too high. A 2020 study by Rachel Pod of Fordham University, examining mortality among English aristocratic women between 1200 and 1500, found that a medieval woman faced a lifetime risk of dying in childbirth of about one in twenty. That is far lower than one in three, but still far higher than today, where a woman in the European Union faces a long-term risk of less than one in four thousand. In an age when an ultrasound can reveal a baby’s sex months before birth, it seems strange that many women in the past did not even know they were pregnant until they felt movement after about five months.
Even then, a mother could not be entirely certain of her condition or when the child would arrive. Home pregnancy tests were centuries away, so royal women consulted physicians who examined their urine. If the urine was light yellow to white with a cloudy surface, she was thought to be pregnant. When that result was combined with a missed period, it was enough to begin preparations for a royal birth.
If the urine smelled of asparagus, it meant she had probably eaten asparagus at lunch. That was the extent of the science. Other methods of testing for pregnancy involved leaving a needle in urine to see if it rusted. Losing a child, or worse, losing the queen, was the greatest fear surrounding royal birth.
From Catherine of Aragon, who suffered four miscarriages and lost an infant, to Anne Boleyn, who miscarried twice, a queen faced many dangers on the road to motherhood. Necessary for the survival of the monarchy, childbirth was nonetheless full of risk. In 1533, when Queen Elizabeth I was born, it was advised that all royal women write their wills before giving birth. Expectant royal women also engaged in regular religious devotion, praying to God for help with their condition.
Renaissance royal women were often presented with a special gift known as a birth tray. These decorated objects were usually adorned with biblical scenes of the Nativity and given to women during childbirth. The trays were then filled with food such as chicken soup and sweets and brought to the mother. After she had eaten, the tray would be hung on the wall as decoration and kept as a family heirloom.
For all the grandeur and ceremony, royal motherhood was a precarious and often painful calling, shaped by belief, duty, and the constant pressure of public expectation.