What did a medieval queen earn?
10,000 marks a year for life: about 6,667 pounds.
About $1.5 million a month in today's gold.
A month of that pay weighs about as much as 5 bricks in gold.
You arrived from France with almost nothing. A year later: ten thousand marks a year, for life.
Where the money came from
Margaret of Anjou was fifteen when she married Henry VI at Titchfield Abbey in Hampshire in April 1445; he was twenty-three. She brought a remarkably small dowry of 20,000 francs. The crown had no cash to spare, so the king asked his subjects for loans to bring her to England. The first budget set aside more than £1,230 for fifty-six ships for two months, and more than £880 to run her household for forty-five days. Some historians put the cost of the wedding and her journey at over £5,000. As queen she held a dower of duchy of Lancaster lands worth £2,000, which made her a great landowner with estates and a large household to manage. Her letters show a businesswoman: she had beech trees sold to pay for repairs to two of her manors, and now and then she traded overseas. They usually opened with the words "By the Quene", and one went to the City of London about harm done to her tenants at Enfield, part of her dower lands. She lived in lavish state at Greenwich, in a palace she took over and renamed Pleasaunce. By one rough estimate a knight's income averaged £60 a year and a lord's £865. Her duchy lands alone were worth more than twice a lord's income and over thirty-three times a knight's.
Sources: en.wikipedia.org · kinghenryvi.com · cambridge.org · en.wikipedia.org 2
What a queen's pay bought in 1350
a knight's full armour: less than a day's pay
a great stained-glass window: 3 days' pay
a warhorse: 5 days' pay
Harlech Castle: 16 months' pay, more than a whole year of it
the ransom of the King of France: 83 years' pay, more than a whole year of it
Every price of 1350, with its source, is on the prices page.