The Maid and the Queen

by Nancy Goldstone

  But Geoffrey and Horrible were not to be the cause of the family’s downfall; that distinction belonged to Raymondin. For despite all Melusine had done for him, eventually there came a Saturday when Raymondin, prodded by his father, the earl of the Forest, could no longer resist the urge to spy on her. Making a small hole in the door of her room with his sword, he peered through and, catching his wife in the bath, discovered her to be a large snake from the waist down. When in anger he later confronted her with this information, calling her a serpent, she cried:

  “Evil was the hour and season wherein I first saw thy treason and falseness! Thine unmeasurable language has condemned me to eternal pain…. Had you kept your covenant truly, I should have been a woman at all hours, and, at death, the King of Glory would have borne away my soul, and I should have been buried with great honor. Alas! I must now suffer pain…. God pardon you for being the cause of my suffering torment.”

  Thus tragically betrayed, Melusine assumed the form of a serpent and flew around her namesake castle of Lusignan, as a public warning to others who would violate a solemn oath. “Melusine came to Lusignan and circled it three times, shrieking woefully in a plaintive female voice. Up in the fortress and in the town below, people were utterly amazed; they knew not what to think, for they could see the form of a serpent, yet they heard the lady’s voice issuing forth from it.” Significantly, before she left, Melusine vowed to appear again in the future, “if not in the air, [then] on the earth or by this fountain,” whenever mastery of the castle was about to change hands, as a sign of the lawful rights of the new owner.

  By this device did the author, Jean of Arras, cleverly complete the task assigned to him by his employer. For at the end of The Romance of Melusine, the fairy reappears in the bedroom of the castle of Lusignan, both as a serpent and as a beautiful woman, “to tell the last English tenant… that it must be handed over to its besieger, the duke of Berry,” thereby justifying the duke’s claim.

  Jean of Arras’s book was not a completely original work. The legend of the fairy Melusine had been around, in various incarnations, for decades. Jean in fact based his story partly on some old writings purporting to recount Melusine’s exploits found in the castle of Lusignan by the duke of Berry when he moved in. But what Jean of Arras did, to brilliant effect, was to seamlessly weave together fact and fiction, past and present, for the express purpose of lobbying public support for a piece of partisan shenanigans. “It is in Jean d’Arras, for perhaps the first time in vernacular European literature, that we find the fairy realm joined to the contemporary, political world for the purpose of making political allegory,” observed Professor Stephen G. Nichols, a specialist in medieval French history and literature.

  Raymondin breaks his vow and spies on Melusine on a Saturday.

  The Romance of Melusine, written in Latin but translated promptly by the author into French, was a phenomenal success. Because of its overwhelming popularity, versions of the book appeared in England, Spain, and Germany. Nearly a century later it was one of the very first volumes (after the Bible) printed in Geneva in 1478 with Gutenberg’s newfangled invention of movable type. In France, Jean of Arras’s work acquired such a huge, enthusiastic, and loyal readership that it was almost impossible for a literate person not to be aware of the book. The novel was distributed at festivals as a mark of special favor. Significantly, in 1444 the court of Lorraine ordered the production of a beautifully bound copy that was presented as a gift to Charles VII, king of France. With the arrival of the printing press, The Romance of Melusine went through twenty editions in French in the fifteenth century alone.

  The great strength of this work was that it managed to flatter both parties in the dispute. The story recognized and celebrated the Lusignans’ history of great men and stirring deeds, immortalizing the family by providing them with a genealogy that traced their antecedents to royalty, a tactic that at the same time augmented the duke of Berry’s achievement in taking their castle away from them. Moreover, by associating the previous occupant of the fortress with the English, Jean of Arras lent to his patron’s otherwise selfish actions the stirring aura of French nationalism. Everyone who read The Romance of Melusine at the time it was written understood its political implications, and support for the duke of Berry’s position increased proportionately. The duke was very pleased with his secretary.

  This book, so admired throughout Europe, was of even greater importance to the princess Yolande of Aragon and her family. For although Jean of Arras had written the romance at the request of the duke of Berry, he had dedicated the work to the duke’s sister, Marie, duchess of Bar. “And to the pleasure of my Right high and mighty lord John, son to the king of France, duke of Berry… the which history [Melusine’s] I have begun after the true chronicles which I have had of him… and because his noble sister, Marie, daughter of the king of France and duchess of Bar, had Required my said lord to have the history,” Jean of Arras inscribed in the opening to his book. In fact, according to French scholarship, The Romance of Melusine was written not only “for the amusement of Marie of France” but also to aid in the “political education of the children” of the duchess of Bar.* Jean of Arras even based two of the characters in the romance on Marie’s eldest daughter, the queen of Aragon, and her husband, King John. Everyone associated with Marie—friends and family—received copies.

  That the novel was dedicated to her grandmother and that her parents were a source of inspiration to the author would have only increased the value of the work in Princess Yolande’s eyes. This was the book of her family.

  And so, decades later, when Joan of Arc, claiming to be a messenger from God, appeared at the royal court of Chinon and approached the dauphin with the words, “Very noble lord dauphin, I have come and I have been sent from God to bring aid to you and to the kingdom,” the resemblance to Melusine would have been immediate and profound. As a result, Joan did not have to overcome resistance in order to convince Yolande of Aragon of the genuineness of her mission.

  On the contrary. Yolande was waiting for her.

  * He is more commonly known as Joan, which is the Catalan spelling of Juan. Under the circumstances, however, this seemed unnecessarily confusing, so I have anglicized his name.

  * Not to be confused with Yolande of Aragon, the subject of this biography. Yolande of Bar was Yolande of Aragon’s mother. Children were often named after their parents in the Middle Ages.

  * This copy of the Belles Heures is now part of the collection of the Cloisters Museum in New York, where it is on permanent display.

  * Almost all the incidents depicted in The Romance of Melusine—the adventures of Melusine’s children, for example—refer to actual episodes in French history, many associated with the duchy of Bar. That’s why the work was considered such a useful tool for teaching children.

  CHAPTER 2

  To Be

  a

  Queen

  ESPITE HER PARENTS’ preoccupation with troubadour culture, Princess Yolande’s education was not limited to poetry, books, and music. She also gleaned the fundamentals of rule and government through firsthand observation of the workings of the court. On his ascension to the throne, her father had inherited a vast empire that required a significant degree of political wrangling with the various representative assemblies, known as cortes, from Catalonia, Valencia, and Majorca as well as Aragon.

  The administration of so large a territory was a daunting task, and one for which John, who was frequently ill—it has been hypothesized that he suffered from a form of epilepsy—was particularly unsuited. To compensate for the king’s deficiencies, his wife inserted herself aggressively into the governing process. In 1388, when John impatiently threatened to disband a particularly fractious meeting of the general assembly, Queen Yolande stepped in and provided the diplomatic initiatives necessary to effect compromise between the crown and its regional representatives. The queen also participated in all the royal councils and accompanied the king on his official
visits throughout the realm. “She was very interested in the affairs of state and she wanted always to be at his [the king’s] side, using to her advantage the talents of a woman who knew herself to be beloved by her husband,” wrote Spanish scholar Rafael Tasis I Marca. Yolande of Bar’s activist role, which antagonized many of the functionaries of her husband’s court, strongly influenced her daughter’s perceptions of the responsibilities associated with government.

  But of course the principal civic duty of any medieval princess, particularly one who hailed from so prestigious a realm as Aragon, was to attract the marital attentions of a similarly illustrious suitor, and thereby produce a match that would bring honor, wealth, and territory, or at least some combination of the three, to the kingdom. This obligation Yolande of Aragon managed to fulfill while still a child. For no sooner had her father succeeded to the throne in 1387 than two high-ranking ambassadors, representing the king of Sicily, appeared at the royal court to formally request the princess’s hand. The king of Sicily being only ten years old at the time, the ambassadors were actually sent by his mother, the formidable Marie of Blois. If the councillors to the court of Aragon thought Yolande of Bar an ambitious woman who meddled too much in affairs of state, in Marie of Blois they were about to get an education as to what a resolute and indefatigable female could achieve in the political arena when she set her mind to it.

  MARIE OF BLOIS was the widow of Louis I, duke of Anjou, count of Provence, and (even though he was French to his core) king of Sicily. Louis I was another of Charles V’s many siblings, which meant he was also the brother of the duchess of Bar.* In the complicated mess that was the genealogy of the French royal family, this made him the queen of Aragon’s uncle, so Marie of Blois was Yolande of Bar’s aunt.

  Until the last years of his life, the kingdom of Sicily, which in the fourteenth century encompassed most of Italy south of Rome, was little more to Louis I than a drawing on a map. But in 1381, his distant cousin Joanna I, queen of Naples, Jerusalem, and Sicily, had been threatened with invasion and, desperate for allies, had offered to make Louis her heir if he came to her aid. This proposition was too tempting to be refused, and so the following year Louis, adding the prestigious denomination “King of Sicily” to his title, had raised a tremendous army and crossed into Italy. Large armies move slowly, however, and by the time he made it down to Naples, Joanna I was dead and the kingdom held by a rival militia. Louis attempted to take his legacy by force, but his troops had been decimated by sickness and starvation on the long march south and he was unable to secure a military victory. Refusing to surrender the inheritance he had risked everything to claim, he retreated to the eastern coast of Italy and sent to France for reinforcements. Louis’s persistence was admirable but his luck rather less felicitous, and he died soon thereafter of a chill contracted at a drafty castle, before the requested supplementary regiments had time to arrive.

  By any reasonable standard, Louis I’s dream of sovereignty should have died when he did. The French ruling family had no political experience in southern Italy, no knowledge of local customs or the serpentine nature of the various family and baronial alliances necessary to maintain power. They were hazy even on the geography of the place. But none of this stopped Louis’s widow, Marie of Blois, from relentlessly pursuing what she considered to be her family’s lawful inheritance. She was an intensely practical middle-aged woman and must have known that her chances of succeeding at so ambitious a quest were low. But she had two sons, the eldest of whom, Louis II, was just seven when his father died, and opportunities to claim large, prestigious kingdoms didn’t materialize every day. Marie had no intention of letting this one slip by without a fight.

  The first step was to get little Louis II officially recognized as count of Provence. This was itself a difficult task, as most of the towns in the county, hearing of the death of Louis I, were in revolt. To achieve her goal, Marie would have to force the rebellious Provençal barons, grown men all, to go down on one knee and do homage to her son.

  And so at the age of forty Marie pawned her valuables, everything she owned right down to the gold and silver dinner service, and bought herself an army. It wasn’t a large army—only “400 lances,” which translated into about fifteen hundred men—but Marie counted on its being just formidable enough to give the opposition pause. Then, with her son by her side, and her remaining money from this transaction conveniently stashed in silver coins in her saddlebags, she led her force into Provence.

  She stopped in village after village, introducing Louis II to the local officials and noblemen, graciously listening to their grievances and, more important, dispensing privileges and largesse. With her gifts of silver and her ever-present soldiers hovering ominously by her side, Marie proved herself a master of the art of carrot and stick. Her reputation swelled as town after town, baron after baron, came over to her side and paid homage to her son. “And for certain this lady was very astute in her ability to determine who could serve and help her… and for magnanimity and courage of heart she exceeded many of the princes of her time and for this reason was greatly feared, prized, and esteemed,” observed Jehan de Bourdigné. The rebellion fizzled in the face of Marie’s steely-eyed determination, personal charm, and large cache of cash. By the fall of 1387, Louis II’s authority was firmly established and at the age of ten he was able to enter the capital city of Aix, where he was accorded all of the rights, dignities, and income due to the official count of Provence.

  Having secured her son’s inheritance, Marie looked to similarly settle his future. No sooner was Louis II formally invested with his title than his mother made her first overture to the court of Aragon, sending two high-ranking Provençal knights to King John to ask for the hand of the princess Yolande in marriage. John was interested enough to send an envoy to Provence to discuss the details, and even seems to have committed himself, in a general way, to the alliance.

  Having come this far, Marie continued to lobby aggressively for her son’s advancement, and especially for his legitimate installation as king of Sicily. By this time, Charles V was dead, and his son, Charles VI, had ascended to the throne of France. Charles VI was very fond of his young cousin and lent authority to Marie’s cause, first by knighting Louis II at a grand celebration held in Saint-Denis, and then by agreeing to attend a coronation for the boy in Avignon, seat of the papal court.

  At last, on All Saints’ Day, November 1, 1389, in a solemn ceremony witnessed by an august assembly including the king of France and his retinue, the pope crowned twelve-year-old Louis II king of Sicily, Naples, and Jerusalem.* With the public support of the French crown came aid of a more tangible nature, and the following August, Marie had the satisfaction of watching her son, accompanied by a papal legate, sail out of Marseille at the head of a fleet of warships bound for Naples, with the intention of conquering his kingdom.

  She would not see him again for nine years.

  NEGOTIATIONS BETWEEN Marie of Blois and the court of Aragon for a marriage between her son and Princess Yolande had continued throughout the period preceding Louis II’s embarkation for Italy. An alliance with King John was critical to the success of Marie’s plans. The crown of Aragon controlled much of the Mediterranean, including the island of Sicily itself. Marie could not take the risk that powerful Aragon would try to thwart her son’s title to his adopted kingdom by sending an army to fight against him. A way had to be found to neutralize Aragonese ambitions in southern Italy. To unite both parties’ interests by arranging a marriage between Louis II and Yolande of Aragon seemed the perfect solution.

  But while such a union was certainly to be desired by Marie of Blois and her family, the advantages to Aragon were less obvious, particularly as Louis II’s uncles, the dukes of Berry and Burgundy, demanded a dowry of at least 200,000 francs. This seemed a large sum to pay for a thirteen-year-old king who had yet to secure his realm. Yolande was an only child, and a very pretty one at that, and her parents were convinced that their daughter’s roy
al lineage, powerful connections, and considerable personal charms merited a brilliant match. The marriage negotiations with Provence ground to a halt. To extricate the crown of Aragon from whatever legal difficulties might arise from the verbal assurances given in the past, when she was eleven years old, Yolande signed a document disavowing any promise made by her or her ambassadors on the grounds that these had been wrung from her before she reached thirteen, the age of consent.

  In this way was the ground laid for the appearance of a rival suitor, and in due course he presented himself. In 1395, when Yolande was fourteen, emissaries from the recently widowed Richard II, king of England, arrived at her parents’ favorite castle at Zaragoza to solicit the princess’s hand. A nuptial agreement with the twenty-eight-year-old Richard, who actually ruled his kingdom, and had the sort of financial, diplomatic, and military resources that might prove useful to Aragon in the future, was much more in keeping with her parents’ views of their daughter’s station in life, and they entered into negotiations enthusiastically.

  This marriage, with its implied expectation of an alliance at the highest levels between France’s perpetual enemy, England, and the powerful kingdom of Aragon, was sufficiently disquieting to provoke an energetic response from the French king. Charles VI hastily offered the hand of his own daughter, Isabelle, supplemented by a massive dowry of 500,000 francs to Richard. Despite the French princess’s extreme youth—she was six years old—Charles VI’s proposal was accepted by the English, and Isabelle and a down payment of 200,000 francs were conducted to London, there to await the bride’s reaching the venerable age of thirteen or fourteen, at which point it would be legally permissible for her patient middle-aged husband to consummate the marriage, the trigger at which the remaining 300,000 francs of the dowry would be paid.*