One scholarly article I found was about how King John was Shakespeare's way of addressing the succession crisis towards the end of Elizabeth I's reign and how it would possibly be resolved. In King John, King John has succeeded his deceased brother Richard I by the right of Richard's will (the same way Elizabeth succeeded according to a will HenryVIII had written), but the more "legitimate" candidate to rule is his nephew Arthur, who is the son of his deceased elder brother Geoffrey. They meet on a battlefield in France along with their supporters: John with his mother Queen Elinor and Arthur with his mother Constance and King Phillip of France. During their initial exchange, Elinor and Constance interrupt the men and exchange insulting barbs to the point that both the kings ask for them to stop arguing, and frankly I couldn't agree better. More than once Arthur is called a bastard and John a usurper. The women invoke their blood ties in order to take control of Arthur, but on Elinor's part it goes south:
QUEEN ELINOR Come to thy grandam, child.
CONSTANCE Do, child, go to it grandam, child: Give grandam kingdom, and it grandam will Give it a plum, a cherry, and a fig: There's a good grandam.
Shakespeare, William (2011-09-07). The Complete Works of Shakespeare (Kindle Locations 63220-63224). Latus ePublishing. Kindle Edition.
Constance is essentially echoing Elinor's command in baby-talk to tell Arthur that his other relations are going to treat him like a baby.
Think about your own family ties. It is as natural for our own grandparents to give us love and respect as it is for sixteenth-century grandmas to give their young grandsons "a plum, a cherry, and a fig." And yet Constance is urging her son to turn away from these natural ties and expectations in order to win a throne. Mary I hardly treated her sister Elizabeth like family, imprisioning and exiling her in order to keep the Protestants from being able to support her "bastard" half-sister. Elizabeth I and her rival, Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, were cousins, and yet they were expected by their supporters to be enemies and prevent the other from taking or keeping what was rightfully theirs and to invoke their own blood ties to claim a throne.
What's wrong with this picture? I can't begin to say, except that while these people are from different backgrounds and life histories the lack of familial affection is frightening to consider. What is Shakespeare observing? The monarchs of Europe are playing a game in order to win the largest dominions through blood legitimacy and ties of inheritance, and the only rule is, "I will insult the other person as much as possible so I can get what I want and they don't." And that approach does not work.
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