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it must be emphasized that in the tales concerned with the inability to conceive, the queen’s impregnation occurs almost exclusively in a female sphere marked by the intervention of the fairy community, whereas the king’s role has been effaced. A king would take credit for siring a healthy heir, but the ultimate responsibility to reproduce is ascribed to the queen.
    Therefore, it is not surprising that in the face of infertility, the queen seeks assistance from a female-empowered world.
    The expression of desire—the proverbial fairy-tale wish—is a common feature of the genre, and one of the most frequently expressed wishes is the longing for a child. Even when the pregnancy wish is not central to the subsequent narrative, the queens’ persistent reproductive laments offer a historical reminder of the royal directive to procreate and the desperation of early modern queens as they sought various resources to help them conceive.
    Early Modern Queens: Catherine de Médicis and Mary Tudor
    Just as fairy-tale queens relied upon the natural world and supernatural intervention to resolve their infertility, so also, early modern queens availed themselves of all manner of assistance, including prayers, pilgrimages, and potions. At times, the pressure to conceive was so intense that women falsely believed they were pregnant. For most women, reproductive desires and processes are highly personal matters, but a queen’s childbearing life was closely watched by her circle at court and speculated upon by the anxious public. When a queen did become pregnant, the occasion was cause for widespread celebration: Isabella of Spain’s daughter, known to history as Queen Juana the Mad, became pregnant shortly after her marriage to Philippe of Burgundy, and one of the ambassadors wrote to her parents from the Netherlands, “She is so gentle and so beautiful and fat and so pregnant that the sight of her would console your Highnesses.” 34
    Queens were watched closely for any signs of pregnancy, one of which was the odd pregnancy craving. Fairy tales and folklore are also filled with accounts of prenatal desires, especially for certain foods. Basile’s “Petrosinella” and Charlotte de la Force’s “Persinette,” early modern iterations of the “Rapunzel” tale popularized by the Brothers Grimm, describe women whose longing for a certain vegetable is so overwhelming that they agree to give up their newborn children in exchange. D’Aulnoy’s “The White Cat” also includes an episode in which a pregnant queen’s “violent urge” puts her in “great despair”: passing by an orchard, “she saw great trees laden with fruits which she imagined to be so delicious, she would eat of them or die.” 35 This queen also trades away her daughter for the desired food. Such powerful urges can lead to disastrous bargains and these tales may, as Holly Tucker points out, “appear initially to reinforce the predominant notion that women cannot be trusted to live within the boundaries of moderation,” but the less extreme manifestations of pregnancy cravings were a welcome confirmation of a normal pregnancy. 36 On February 23, 1533, the Spanish ambassador at the English court, Eustace Chapuys, reported that Anne Boleyn hinted to some courtiers that she was pregnant by announcing a sudden craving for apples. The king said that this was a sign that she was with child, which she denied, but then laughed and left the room. Chapuys and others read this episode as a clear sign of Anne’s “enceinte” condition. 37 Anne’s successor, Jane Seymour, also had cravings when she was pregnant which sent a number of people scrambling to fulfill her wishes. John Husee, servant to Lord Lisle, the governor of Calais and his wife, Lady Honor Lisle, wrote that “the Queen’s grace...is with child” and that the “King commanded me to write to you for some fat quails, for the Queen is very desirous to eat some but here be none to be gotten.” He