December 25th- The Ladies of Misrule

Authority, Inversion, and Women Who Refused Their Place
​Medieval society is often imagined as rigidly hierarchical, orderly, and unchanging—a world where power flowed predictably from God to king to subject, and where deviation from prescribed roles was swiftly punished. There is truth in this picture, but it is not the whole truth. Medieval culture also possessed a deep and paradoxical awareness that order could be tested, inverted, and even temporarily overturned in order to understand it more fully.
One of the clearest expressions of this tension was the tradition of the Lord of Misrule.​

Misrule and the Meaning of Order
During certain festivals—particularly in the Christmas season—a Lord of Misrule might be appointed to preside over games, feasting, mock ceremonies, and sanctioned disorder. This figure, often of low status, temporarily commanded attention and authority, parodying hierarchy through excess, humor, and inversion. Rules were bent, roles reversed, and the absurd was permitted to reign.
Crucially, misrule did not exist to destroy order, but to expose it. By allowing controlled disruption, medieval society acknowledged that power was neither natural nor inevitable—it was constructed, maintained, and therefore visible when turned upside down. Once the festival ended, hierarchy returned, ostensibly reaffirmed.
But not all inversions were temporary.

Women, Authority, and the Problem of Permanence
The women who have inspired our fibre this year are writers, rulers, mystics, artists, abbesses. They did not exercise authority for a day or a season. They did not step into power as a joke or a ritual safety valve. Their authority endured, unsettled, and demanded recognition.
This is precisely what makes them difficult for historical narratives that prefer clean lines and stable categories. Medieval culture could accommodate a Lord of Misrule because he was meant to disappear. A woman who governed wisely, wrote persuasively, argued publicly, or shaped institutions posed a deeper challenge: she made inversion permanent.
Rather than treating these women as exceptions or curiosities, this series approaches them as evidence—evidence that medieval society contained multiple models of authority, some officially acknowledged, others grudgingly tolerated, and many later smoothed out of memory.

Forms of Authority, Not a Single Story
​The figures explored here do not share a single path to power. Some claim authority through learning, others through vision, governance, argument, or artistic mastery. Some operate within institutions; others press against their limits. What unites them is not rebellion for its own sake, but competence sustained over time.
They are not Lords of Misrule. They are something more unsettling: women whose authority worked, I described them as ladies of Misrule, but in reality they are anything but.
By placing these figures side by side, this series invites readers to reconsider what medieval power looked like, how it functioned, and who was permitted to wield it. The result is not a story of constant resistance or triumph, but a landscape of negotiation—between gender, institution, culture, and historical memory.
The medieval world understood that order could be questioned, inverted, and examined. The women who follow did more than that. They lived inside that question and refused to resolve it neatly.
Welcome to a series about authority—serious, strategic, occasionally inconvenient, and very real.

Over the coming days we'll meet a new Medieval woman each day, and the limited edition of fibre named after them. Spare fibre will be available in the shop, and today there's lots of new colours of Superfine Merino, Peduncle Oil and Baby Camel listed.