Mothering a teenager is never easy. This is particularly true when that teenager is the sovereign ruler of an empire that reaches across Spain, Italy, the Southern Netherlands and much of the Americas. Silvia Mitchell has given us a stimulating and engaging study of the processes and pitfalls of the regency period of Mariana of Austria, queen of Spain, as mother of Carlos ii, and as stateswoman guiding the Spanish monarchy between 1665 and 1679. The book is well situated within current historiographical discussions about the nature of queenship and gendered politics, but also within the wider reassessments of the last reign of the Spanish Habsburgs that question the traditional viewpoint of ‘decadencia’ or decline. While engaging with this historiographical material, Mariana is presented here not specifically as a woman (as the author points out in her introduction, p. 7), but as a Habsburg, of either gender, capably manipulating her dynasty's ties across Europe to make use of diplomacy as an effective tool of governance. In other words, as Mitchell suggests, Mariana's greatest successes came from her ability to marshal the forces at her disposal, and to arrest the downwardly spiralling political situation left behind by her husband, Philip iv, notably an interminable war with Portugal and an increasingly aggressive Louis xiv. These paired pressures led to a nearly crushing victory by Louis xiv's France in the War of Devolution (1667–8), but the queen was able to avoid this near disaster by turning most of the Sun King's allies against him and forming one of Europe's first large-scale diplomatic alliances with the specific purpose of maintaining the balance of power (the Quadruple Alliance of 1673). In doing this, Mitchell successfully dismantles the age-old visions of her regency, whereby she is a tool completely manipulated by her favourites, Nithard and Valenzuela, and, as a woman, irrationally tries to keep control over her son long after he reaches his majority. But Mariana was no saint in this regard, and indeed clearly did over-reach her motherly control (pp. 177–8). This is one of the strengths of this book, not a hagiography by any means, and the author states in her introduction that the queen was indeed guilty of infantilising and emasculating her son (p. 18). Yet Mariana's overall success as a stateswoman is clear: the Spanish monarchy avoided a dismantling at the hands of Louis xiv and was in a stronger position on the international stage than it had been for decades.

Queen, mother and stateswoman is not a biography. Instead it examines a particular set of questions about the transferrals of power that happen at the start and finish of a regency, and the twin spheres of activity through which a regent can run an empire: diplomacy abroad and alliances with court grandees at home. Mitchell effectively makes use of rich archival sources in diplomatic correspondence and court records. One of the most interesting of the former is the correspondence that connected the Habsburgs across Europe, in a manner well-known to historians of the sixteenth century, with Charles v and his sisters (as studied magisterially by Paula Sutter Fichtner), but still very much in action in the late seventeenth century: between Mariana in Spain, her brother the Emperor Leopold in Vienna and her step-daughter Queen Marie-Thérèse in France. Intriguingly, much of this correspondence passed through the informal channel of the nuns at the convent of the Descalzas Reales in Madrid, long associated with royal Habsburg women. As regards the court, Mitchell makes good use of household accounts as well as records from government councils, and successfully navigates the differences between favourites in the household (such as Nithard and Valenzuela) and entrusted allies in the government, such as the marquis of Aytona or the duke of Medinaceli, yet at the same time realising, as a good historian of the court, that household and government cannot be entirely disentangled, and both of these men, for example, had prominent positions within both institutions (Medinaceli was both Summiller de Corps and a member of the Council of State). The point is well made, however, that while personal advisors certainly were favoured by the queen and had great power within the court, they did not dominate her, as contemporary and subsequent critics suggested, nor prevent her from exercising her sovereign authority as regent. All of this is supported very well in the notes section in this book, heavily detailed and useful to researchers who may wish to pursue individual threads. The book is handsomely produced and impeccably edited, with carefully selected illustrations. Each chapter has a clear introduction and conclusion, which will make this a useful source for teaching as well as research.

There is little to criticise here. Very occasionally the author slips into popular biography mode, with sentences like ‘she stepped into her role, however, deftly and with confidence’ (p. 29), when describing the fourteen-year-old Mariana's progress from Austria to Spain, suggesting internal feelings and impulses that are of course impossible to obtain from the sources. Sometimes names need to be translated into modern forms (such as Trier, not ‘Treveris’ as one of the imperial electors, p. 93; or spellings of Belgian town names like ‘Scarpa’, ‘Tornay’ or ‘Furness’, p. 106); or there are slips on other details about non-Spanish princes (Brandenburg was not ruled by a ‘bishop-elector’, p. 99; Franche-Comté was not a ‘duchy’, p. 102); or minor details of chronology (the duke of Pfalz-Neuburg was not yet the Elector Palatine in 1676, p. 159). These are minor details. What I would have liked a little more of would have been a comparison with other regencies: notably that of Anne of Austria, as there are many parallels, for example in looking at how Anne (Mariana's aunt and sister-in-law) more successfully relinquished power when her own son, Louis xiv, attained his majority in 1651. Or parallels with a later regency, such as that of the Regent Orléans, whose authority was crippled in a similar manner to Mariana's through a misguided marital negotiation in 1721, again involving a Habsburg princess (in Mariana's case, the Archduchess Maria Antonia; in Orléans's, the Infanta Mariana Victoria). There is some comparative material, but there could be more. The book might also have looked more carefully at Don Juan de Austria's motivations for refusing to leave Madrid in 1668 and coming with an armed force in 1677. Why he was so keen to remove Mariana from power is only vaguely explained. Nevertheless, this book sets out to explore and answer certain questions pertaining to regency, agency, favouritism and motherhood, and satisfactorily delivers.