Anne of France, "Madame la Grande"

Anne of France, duchess of Bourbon and regent of France (died 14 November 1522)

One of the most powerful women of the late fifteenth century, Anne of France is relatively unknown today, at least to those of us whose first language is English.* While she is occasionally mentioned in the political biographies of her father, Louis XI of France, and her brother, Charles VIII, her own story remains unfamiliar--there have been no lavish feature films, costumed television dramas, or best-selling novels about her life, as there have been for her contemporaries in England, who fought so savagely during the Wars of the Roses.

Anne of France, detail,
Master of Moulins

Yet in the waning years of the fifteenth century, Madame la Grande, as she was known to her contemporaries, controlled the government of France for eight years, guiding it through a series of political crises that threatened the state from without and, perhaps more ominously, from within. 

Born in 1461, Anne was the third child of Louis of France and his second wife, Charlotte of Savoy, but the first to survive more than a few months after birth. Although we know where she was born—at the chateau of Genappe, some thirty miles north of Brussels—we do not know exactly when, only that her birth preceded the death of her grandfather Charles VII on 22 July of that year. 

Only a few months after her father became king, he began the process of securing political alliances through her marriage. On 27 November 1461, Louis betrothed his only child to Nicholas, the grandson of René of Anjou; by the end of 1462, that alliance was abandoned in favor of an Aragonese match, that project, in turn, giving way to proposals for her marriage to Edward IV of England, then to Francis of Brittany, and even to the French king’s own brother, Charles, duke of Berry.

Meanwhile, we have very few details about Anne’s childhood. On becoming king, Louis XI had installed his mother, his wife, and his infant daughter in the chateau of Amboise; there, the princess was attended by a demoiselle d’honneur, at least two chambermaids, several nurses, and a woman hired to rock her cradle. This female household has not been kindly assessed by Anne’s French biographers, who variously describe Amboise as a prison, an isolated fortress, or as a “royal gynecium”; we might instead regard it as a kind of “city of ladies,” a remarkable environment that made possible the development of a remarkable woman. 

Just as little is known about Anne’s life at Amboise, little has been written about her mother, Charlotte of Savoy, but that “little” is very negative. One contemporary noted that while she was “an excellent princess in other respects,” she was “not a person in whom a man could take any great delight,” another that she failed to inspire the king’s sexual desire. 

Modern historians, at least the few who have mentioned her, have been no more kind, dismissing her as a charming but lifeless non-entity, as a sad, prematurely aged romantic, as a saint-like figure “crowned with a halo of sweetness and modesty” who knew nothing about politics, or as “feeble in health and weak in character.” But surely she was something more. As the daughter of Anne of Lusignan, Charlotte of Savoy was raised by a mother of considerable political influence and skill, while the contents of her personal library indicate the breadth of her intellectual interests. 

Louis XI’s mother, Marie of Anjou, was also part of the Amboise household for the first years of Anne’s life. The dowager queen was the daughter of the formidable Yolande of Aragon, who for fifteen years ruled Anjou as its regent; while Marie may have been “delicate,” as one modern biographer has described her, she is also credited with having been the source not only of her son’s good sense but also for the “discreet work” of diplomacy that reconciled her husband and her brother.

Whatever else happened in the chateau of Amboise during Anne’s childhood, her biographer Jehanne d’Orliac seems rightly to have concluded that her intelligence was “ripened” there. Meanwhile, her father may certainly have abhorred the “intrigues” and “coquetries” of women in general, and the person of his wife in particular, but he must also have recognized both the political expediencies of a female regent and the ability of women to succeed in such a role. 

His paternal grandmother, Isabeau of Bavaria, had been regent of France, and, as we have seen, his maternal grandmother had ruled Anjou for her son. One sister, Yolande of Valois, was regent of Savoy for her son, Philibert, another, Madeleine, was regent of Foix for her daughter, Catherine, who inherited the throne of Navarre as queen regnant; in England, the king’s cousin Margaret of Anjou played an active role in the battle to preserve the throne of England for her son, Edward.

St. Anne, Anne of France,
Suzanne of Bourbon,
part of triptych
by the Master of Moulins

Whatever he felt about his queen, Louis left his son, the dauphin Charles, in the female universe of Amboise, while his daughter Anne became part of his court at Plessis-les-Tours; after her marriage to Pierre of Beaujeu in November of 1473, Anne seems to have spent much of the next ten years in the company of her father. “She is the least foolish of women,” he is famously to have said, “—and as for wise women, there are none.” 

When Louis XI died in 1483, his son and heir Charles was thirteen years old, arguably old enough to succeed to the French throne in his own right, but the aging king circumvented the argument. Just before his death, Louis transferred custody of his son to his daughter and her husband. His son-in-law was a loyal and firm presence, but lacked political skill or insight; Louis named Pierre of Beaujeu lieutenant-general of France. 

The twenty-two-year-old Anne, on the other hand, was different. To this “least foolish of women,” he entrusted the dauphin’s care and education, leaving to her the responsibility to govern France, if not the title of regent. Lacking the name of regent, Anne of France was nevertheless recognized as controlling the person of the king, the finances of the state, and the power of the realm. In his account of her role during the period from 1483 to 1491, historian John Bridge concludes, “We can affirm . . . that the lady of Beaujeu really governed France during the first years of the nominal reign of her brother.” 

When Anne of France left the court in 1491, she was thirty years old, but rather than retiring, she was, instead, beginning a new phase of her political career. In the years following her marriage, she and her husband had been rewarded and enriched first by her father and then by her brother; when the duke of Bourbon, Pierre of Beaujeu’s oldest brother, died without an heir, she acted quickly and ruthlessly. In securing the title for her husband, she “gave herself alone the duchy of the Bourbons.” 

In gaining Bourbon, she secured independence for herself, and for her daughter, Suzanne, who was born on 10 May 1491. In her chateau of Chantelle, not far from the Bourbon capital of Moulins, Anne reigned as sovereign, signing acts with the royal formula Car tel est notre plaisir (“for such is our pleasure”) and reorganizing and codifying the laws of the Bourbonnais. 

She also recreated the “city of ladies” of her childhood at Amboise, educating and training a generation of young girls as they grew into women. As the inveterate gossip Pierre de Brantôme noted, “there were no ladies or daughters of great houses in her time who did not receive lessons from her, the house of Bourbon being one of the greatest and most splendid in Christendom”; on this point he had good authority, since his grandmother Louise de Daillon was among those daughters who had been brought up by Anne of France. 

And she also remained involved in affairs of state. When her brother invaded Italy in 1494, he arranged for his sister, not his wife, to manage in his absence, and like his father, in making this unorthodox arrangement he avoided the official designation of regent; instead, by the “express order of the king,” his queen Anne of Brittany was placed in his sister’s guardianship, and the government of France was “transported” to her court at Moulins. 

By the time the king returned from Italy in 1495, his son, the French dauphin, was dead; three years later, Charles VIII of France, not quite twenty-eight years old, was also dead. The new king was Louis XII, whose rebellion in the first years of Charles VIII’s reign had culminated in the aptly named “Mad War.”

At least one observer thought that Anne of France might intervene in the succession—it was reported that “she thought for a moment to claim the crown for herself, saying that ‘she was the first among the descendants of the kings of France.’” Although she had no such intention, the new king decided “to call his old adversary to his aid”; in exchange for her support, he awarded her more land, more titles, more revenue and, more important, the assurance that her daughter Suzanne would inherit Bourbon after Pierre’s death.

Although Anne of France would also survive Louis XII, we will end our discussion of her life here. It is important to note, however, that she never withdrew entirely from the political center of government; she regularly attended affairs of state, like Louis XII’s entry into Paris, to name only one example, and in 1503, when he fell ill, it appeared as if the king might called upon her to take control of the government of France once more. 

Although he survived this illness, when his death was imminent in 1514, he designated Anne of France to take charge of any posthumously born prince. She was in Paris in 1515 when Louis XII died, and it was again said that she would take control of the government herself. But that was just a rumor; she was in Reims for the coronation of Francis I and in Paris to witness his entry into the city. She herself would live until 1522, her life spanning the reigns of four French kings. 

By the time she died at the age of sixty-one, on 14 November 1522, Anne of France had outlived all her contemporaries, and Madame la Grande had become Madame la Vielle, “the old Madam.” Her brother had died in 1498, her sister Jeanne in 1505. Isabella of Castile, with whom Anne had conducted business for eight years, died in 1504. Ludovico Sforza, who had lured her brother to Italy and who had tried to arrange for the marriage of one of his sons to Suzanne, died in 1508. Anne saw her one-time enemy Louis of Orléans succeed her brother as king of France; Louis died in 1515. Anne of Brittany, married first to Charles VIII and then to Louis XII, was also gone; she died in 1514. And in what must have been a terrible series of blows, Anne’s grandson François, born in July 1517 and named after his royal godfather, died within months of his elaborate baptism. Just a year later, Suzanne gave birth to stillborn twins. Suzanne herself died in 1521, just thirty years old.

Her biographers have viewed the last months of Anne’s life as a period of “darkness and despair”: “She fell victim to the blows of a malady that remains mysterious to us,” comments one, adding that it was a malady “doubtless fed by grief.” Another concludes that “agony of mind and heart finished her off.” 

But one of Madam’s formidable contemporaries faced her own losses and defeats with the unflinching gaze so characteristic of Anne herself. “I am habituated to grief,” wrote Caterina Sforza, “I have no fear of it.” Surely Anne of France would have agreed.

And at some point in her life, probably toward the end of the fifteenth century, Anne of France composed a series of enseignements, or "lessons" for her daughter, Suzanne. Several years ago, as I was working on an English translation of her Lessons, I found myself remembering the words of Virginia Woolf.

In A Room of One’s Own, Woolf suggested that “we think back through our mothers if we are women.” I found myself thinking of this claim as I was at work translating Anne of France’s lessons for her daughter. The process was a strangely intimate one: slowly, word by word, sometimes even letter by letter, I was deciphering the admonitions, advice, and warnings a fifteenth-century princess directed to her daughter, all the while and against all logic hearing my own mother’s voice in my mind. 

And then one day, midway through the process of turning French into English, I looked away from my pile of dictionaries to the framed portraits of Anne and Suzanne that sat on the desk where I was working. Studying their faces, I knew I had to find the quotation that I remembered. 

I did find it, about three quarters of the way through the slim volume, as Woolf was describing the struggle of women writers. Although they were confronted by “discouragement and criticism,” Woolf wrote, “that was unimportant compared with the other difficulty which faced them . . . when they came to set their thoughts on paper—that is that they had no tradition behind them, or one so short and partial that it was of little help.” And then the sentence: “For we think back through our mothers if we are women.”

Anne of France’s text seems at first to challenge Woolf’s claim, for in composing a series of lessons for her daughter, Anne did have a tradition of women behind her, and a rather long one. As she wrote, she could “think back” to Christine de Pizan’s The Treasure of the City of Ladies, written a hundred years earlier, a book that Anne had owned and read, a book that, in fact, she had inherited from her mother, Charlotte of Savoy, queen of France. 

And, although Anne addressed her lessons to her daughter, she clearly came to see herself contributing to the tradition she inherited, since her book was passed on to other daughters of other mothers: her lessons were published “at the request” of Suzanne, doubtless with her mother’s approval.

The opening page of the
first printed edition
of Anne of France's
Enseignements

This first edition, printed between 1517 and 1521, was followed by a second printing in 1534. A third edition was published the next year, this time dedicated to Marguerite of Angoulême, a daughter of another powerful mother, Louise of Savoy, and herself the mother of Jeanne d’Albret, who would become queen regnant of Navarre.

But, despite the status of Anne of France and her daughter Suzanne, and despite the fact that the book went through three editions within thirty years of its composition, her work disappeared. The tradition she had inherited was also lost—Christine de Pizan’s Treasure of the City of Ladies, composed in 1405 and widely circulated in manuscript, was printed in Paris in 1497, 1503, and 1536, but, in the words of Sarah Lawson, who published the first translation of Christine’s work in English, “by the seventeenth century hardly anyone had heard of her.”

We almost surely would not be able to “think back” to Anne’s text today if it weren’t for the work of one man, a nineteenth-century scholar named A. M. Chazaud. Chazaud never tells us how or why or when he became interested in Anne’s lessons for her daughter—it’s not even clear that he knew of the existence of her work before he traveled from France to the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. 

As archivist of the department of Allier, formed from the old province of Bourbonnais, he may have gone to the Hermitage to work with a manuscript of the chronicles of Louis I, first duke of Bourbon; Chazaud returned to France to publish an edition of that fifteenth-century text in 1876. Whether or not he knew about Anne’s work before he arrived in St. Petersburg, while there he transcribed not only the chronicles of the duke of Bourbon but her text; he added an introduction, appended a discussion of her language, compiled a glossary, and published Les Enseignements d’Anne de France . . . à sa fille Susanne de Bourbon in 1878. 

While he does not tell us how he came to edit Anne’s text, Chazaud does explain how the book that Anne had given her daughter came to be in Russia, for the manuscript he found there was, in fact, Suzanne’s own copy of the book: Ce livre est à moy, Susanne de Bourbon, et l’ey eu de la meson de Bourbon was written on the first folio (“This book is mine, Susanne of Bourbon, and it comes from [literally 'I have had it from'] the house of Bourbon”).

The story of the manuscript’s journey from France to St. Petersburg is fascinating, and starting from the information Chazaud supplies, we can fill in a few more details of the manuscript’s odyssey. After the death of Suzanne’s husband in 1527, the Bourbon library became the property of King Francis I and was transferred from the library of Moulins to Fontainebleu. 

Later, the manuscript was a gift to Diane de Poitiers, who had been educated by Anne of France, and it became part of the library at her chateau of Anet. Diane de Poitiers (1499-1566) was not only raised by Anne of France, but her marriage was also arranged by Anne; after the death of her husband in 1521, Diane became the mistress of Henry II of France, son of Francis I, who probably presented her with the manuscript. There is no indication when she received the gift or when the manuscript left her library at Anet. 

Two brief notes in the manuscript indicate that on “the last day of the month and year of 1632” a certain Monsieur Baillet de Sainte-Barbe from the town of Dreux gave the book to an unnamed but very happy recipient who lived on Chantre street in Paris; once in Paris, the manuscript passed to the library of Pierre Séguier, chancellor of France under kings Louis XIII and Louis XIV. 

From the library of the chancellor, the book passed to his grandson, Henri-Charles du Cambout de Coislin, bishop of Metz, and from him to the library of the abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. In 1791, in the midst of the French Revolution, some fifty of the Saint-Germain manuscripts were acquired by a Russian diplomat, Peter Dubrovsky, who was in Paris purchasing books for Catherine II, empress of Russia, and, ultimately, for his own growing collection. Anne’s manuscript was among Dubrovsky’s acquisitions; in 1805, it was transferred to the Imperial Public Library. 

And there it remained, at least for a time. The few scholars who have written about Anne’s text have assumed that the manuscript is still there, preserved for us, waiting for us to pick it up and touch the very pages that Suzanne turned as she read her mother’s words. But the manuscript is there no longer—it was sold at some point during the 1930s, and its current location, if it still exists, is unknown.**

And so, in the end, Anne of France’s book seems to illustrate rather than to challenge Woolf’s view that the “tradition” women have inherited is a fragmented and disrupted one. Like so many medieval texts, the survival of her work seems entirely a matter of chance—passed from hand to hand, the manuscript copy of her lessons also passed through more than four centuries of disaster, war, and revolution, only to be sold and then to disappear. 

And yet, despite the odds, her text did survive—one copy of the first printed edition, one of the second, two of the third, and, luckily, a careful edition of the manuscript itself, made before its disappearance. Chazaud’s 1878 edition, which itself survives in only a handful of copies, was reprinted in 1978, ensuring that Anne’s lessons could be passed on to a generation of scholars intent on recovering women’s history and enabling them, in Woolf’s words, to begin rewriting the “short and partial” tradition they inherited. 

From Anne of France to Suzanne of Bourbon to Diane de Poitiers to Catherine the Great to us. 

*This post has been adapted from material in The Monstrous Regiment of Women: Female Rulers in Early Modern Europe (Palgrave Macmillan) and from Anne of France: Lessons for My Daughter (Boydell & Brewer).

** For the specific date the manuscript came into the possession of the Imperial Public Library, I am indebted to A. P. Romanov, Chief of Foreign Acquisitions, National Library of Russia, personal letter, 22 July 2002.  According to Romanov, the manuscript (then catalogued as MS. Fr. Q.v.III.2) remained at the Imperial Public Library from its receipt until 1849, when a group of illuminated manuscripts was transferred to the Hermitage Museum as part of a display. The manuscripts remained there until 1861 when, Romanov writes, “all illuminated manuscripts were returned from the Hermitage to the Public Library.” Then, according to Romanov, the manuscript was sold “through the ‘Antiquary,’” which was either “an antique store or an auction”; the library knows “nothing about its location.” 

One further query produced a confirmation from Marie-Elisabeth Boutroue, Institut de Recherche et d’Histoire des Textes (Centre Nationale de la Recherche), Section de l’Humanism (Paris), who indicates that nothing further is known of the manuscript, but who holds out the hope that “with luck” it may perhaps be found someday (Email, 17 January 2003). 

Joan of Arc and the Victory at Orléans

Joan of Arc (breaks the siege of Orléans, 7 May 1429)

Born about the year 1412, Joan of Arc would be burned at the stake on 30 May 1431. But, rather than memorialize her on the date of her death, I prefer to remember her today, on the most important date of her life.

A triumphant Joan,

miniature in Antoine Dufour's

Les vies des femmes célèbres 

(Nantes, Musée Dobrée, 

MS. 17, fol. 76v 1504-1506)

On 7 May 1429, although she had already been injured in battle, Joan of Arc led the French army in its final effort to break the siege of Orléans--a siege that had lasted for nearly seven months. The English retreated the next day. It was her greatest military victory. 

Joan of Arc was convicted of and executed for heresy, but a retrial after her death nullified her conviction. Joan of Arc was canonized by Pope Benedict XV in 1920.

Meanwhile, in a fitting connection, the writer Christine de Pizan, whose portrait heads every page of this blog and whom I describe as a "founding mother" for this project, composed a triumphal poem in 1429 to honor of Joan of Arc's victory. 

In her "“Ditié de Jehanne d’Arc" ("The Tale of Joan of Arc"), a narrative poem of sixty-one stanzas, Pizan tells the story of the "blessed Maid," Joan, "born at a propitious hour," Joan "ordained by God," who has led her people "from evil," just as Moses "by a miracle led his people out of Egypt."

In her praise of Joan, Pizan not only compares the "young maid" to the Old Testament hero-warriors Joshua and Gideon, but also to the biblical heroines Esther, Judith, and Deborah. Joan is depicted in her role of military champion, "sent by divine command, guided by God’s angel," whose strength surpasses that of men, even the great heroes Hector and Achilles. 

And Joan’s deeds "are not an illusion," Pizan asserts, but are, rather, the fulfillment of ancient prophecies. "Oh, what an honor to the female sex!" Pizan exclaims. After the defeat of the English and the restoration of Charles to his throne, Pizan predicts not only the king’s return to Paris but, with Joan at his side, a return to Christendom’s "harmony" and, ultimately, the conquest of the Holy Land, ridding it of all heretics and unbelievers. 

Just as she has carefully dated the opening of her "tale of Joan of Arc," Pizan closes the poem precisely: "This poem was finished by Christine in the above-mentioned year 1429, on the day that ends July." The triumphal end of the poem and its joyful tone have led most critics to conclude that Pizan must have died rather soon after completing the "tale," certainly before Joan’s unsuccessful attack on Paris in September of 1429, her capture in May 1430, and her death a year later. 

The literature on Joan of Arc is huge--but if you're going to read one book, I recommend Helen Castor's new Joan of Arc: A History. I might also suggest Nancy Goldstone's The Maid and the Queen: The Secret History of Joan of Arc because it introduces readers to one of the most intriguing and influential women of the period, Yolande of Aragon, duchess of Anjou--who protected the dauphin of France (he was, after all, married to her daughter, Marie of Anjou), promoted his cause, financed his defense of his title, and was a strong supporter of Joan of Arc. (Yolande was also the grandmother of a woman we have met before, Margaret of Anjou, queen of England.)

If you want to read Christine de Pizan's poem in praise of Joan of Arc's victory, there are several translations online, but you might also be interested in Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski's The Selected Writings of Christine de Pizan, which contains her translation of the ditié as well as a broad range of Pizan's work.

Margaret of Anjou: A "Tiger's Heart Wrapped in a Woman's Hide"?

Margaret of Anjou (born 23 March 1430)

Margaret of Anjou has been endlessly vilified, most famously by Shakespeare in his memorable descriptions of her as the "she-wolf of France" and, as quoted in the headline to this post, a "tiger's heart wrapp'd in a woman's hide."* But, despite that vilification, Margaret of Anjou has been an inspirational figure for many women--and I include myself among them.

Margaret of Anjou,
from a manuscript image, c. 1445

Married to Henvy VI of England in 1445, when she was fifteen, Margaret initially failed in her most important duty as queen, the production of a male heir. To make matters worse, when the ineffectual king was incapacitated by some kind of mental breakdown in July of 1453, the void he had left was filled by his wife.

And so contemporary opinion justified the opposition of Richard of York, who was credited with having perceived that "the king was no ruler:" "the whole burden of the realm," according to York, had come "to rest in the direction of the queen."

When Margaret of Anjou finally did manage to produce a son and heir a few months later, in October 1453, her "success" became just one more failure; as one historian has recently commented, the birth of her son "served to . . . bring the queen into politics as a ruthless, even fanatical, supporter of Prince Edward of Lancaster's right to succeed his father."

In an effort to protect her son's rights during her husband's illness, Margaret attempted to secure the regency for herself, a newsletter circulated in January of 1454 reporting that she had "made a bill of five articles" which, if granted by Parliament, would have had the effect of giving her "the whole rule of this land."

Although Henry recovered in January of 1455, when he fell ill again in October, York was made protector, and the result was civil war. Margaret of Anjou's subsequent efforts to preserve the English crown for her son--her establishment of what amounted to her own court, her leadership of this court party, her negotiations with Scotland and France for support, her ultimate role on the battlefields of the War of the Roses--resulted in the deterioration of her own reputation. 

She became, in one contemporary judgment, "a great and strong labored woman" who "spareth no pain to sue her things to an intent and conclusion to her power." She was judged to be "inexorable" and arrogant: "All marveled at such boldness in a woman, at a man's courage in a woman's breast."

For Edward Hall, writing during Henry VIII's reign, Margaret was a "manly woman using to rule and not to be ruled"; deciding "to take upon her the rule and regiment," she fought not for her son but for herself, "desirous of glory and covetous of honor."

By the time the Elizabethan chronicler Ralph Holinshed described her, she had become the archetypal virago: 

a woman of great wit, and yet of no greater wit than of haute [high] stomach . . . desirous of glory and covetous of honor, and of reason, policy, counsel, and other gifts and talents of nature belonging to a man; full and flowing of wit and wiliness she lacked nothing, nor of diligence, study, and business she was not unexpert; but yet she had one point of a very woman, for oftentime, when she was vehement and fully bent in a matter, she was suddenly like a weathercock, mutable and turning.

She was widely reported to be sexually promiscuous, her enemies claiming that Edward was not Henry's son at all but the child of Margaret and one of her lovers, most likely Edmund Beaufort, duke of Somerset. Such hostile representations of Margaret of Anjou depict her as unnatural and her actions as a violation of woman's nature. 

And yet, in an interesting way, Margaret of Anjou's role in England was not only a response to the political crisis in that country; the role she assumed as queen and mother had been shaped by the political circumstances of her own childhood and by her own experience of women's abilities and capacities. As Margaret's biographer J. J. Bagley notes, "Politics, war, and administration seemed to be the natural vocations of women in her family."

A manuscript illustration of the marriage of
Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou,
from Vigiles of Charles VII, 1484

Margaret of Anjou was the daughter of Isabelle of Lorraine, who both fought for her husband René of Anjou in Sicily and served as his regent there.

While her mother was engaged in pursuing and defending René of Anjou's interests in Sicily, Margaret spent eight years with her grandmother, Yolande of Aragon, who was regent of Anjou for her oldest son, Louis III.

After Louis' death, Yolande remained active in politics and in her family's fortunes, marrying her daughter Marie to the French dauphin and encouraging him in his efforts to recover his throne.

Margaret of Anjou had been shaped by the example of these active and powerful foremothers.

England neither offered such powerful, independent exemplars for women, nor accepted them. Indeed, it was Margaret of Anjou herself who became a powerful exemplar for women--an example of the dangers of the determined woman who, ignoring "proper and permissible feminine activity," behaved, or tried to behave, like "ruling princes."

In the end, Margaret could not keep her husband on the throne or ensure her son's succession to that throne. Henry VI was deposed in 1461, briefly restored in 1470, then deposed again and imprisoned in the Tower of London, where he died on 21 May 1471. Margaret campaigned endlessly after Henry's initial deposition, and it was due to her tireless efforts that he was restored in 1470. She fought to defeat her Yorkist opponents, but she was defeated at the battle of Tewkesbury on 4 May 1471, her son Edward, fighting with her, killed on the field. (Margaret's son Edward was married to Anne Neville, whom we have already met.)

After the battle, Margaret was taken captive and held prisoner, but she was ultimately ransomed by her cousin, Louis XI of France. She lived in poverty and obscurity until her death, in Anjou, in 1482. She was buried in Anjers Cathedral with her parents, but as a final insult, her remains were scattered and lost during the French Revolution.

Margaret of Anjou has been the subject of several recent historical novels, and a character in others, most notably Philippa Gregory's Cousins' War series. But her life is too rich to need fictionalizing. She is included in Helen Castor's She-Wolves: The Women Who Ruled England before Elizabeth, its title a nod to Shakespeare's description of Margaret of Anjou, and in Lisa Hilton's Queens Consort: England's Medieval Queens from Eleanor of Aquitaine to Elizabeth of York. But I recommend Helen Maurer's excellent full-length biography, Margaret of Anjou: Queenship and Power in Late Medieval England.

*This post has been adapted from The Monstrous Regiment of Women: Female Rulers in Early Modern Europe (Palgrave Macmillan).

Anne Neville, the Kingmaker's Daughter

Anne Neville, queen of England (died 16 March 1485)

Isabelle and Anne Neville were the sole heirs of their wealthy and powerful father Richard Neville, the earl of Warwick, a man whose role in the so-called War of the Roses earned him the title of "the Kingmaker." Anne's role during that tumultuous period illustrates the lives of so many women in the deadly political games that were always being played.

Richard III with Anne Neville as queen,
depicted at their coronation, 6 July 1483,
from the Salisbury Roll

Warwick was originally a supporter of King Henry VI of England, and with his enormous wealth and military success, Warwick fought on behalf of the Lancastrian king against the rebellious duke of York.

But as Warwick's interests and allegiances shifted, so did the political marriages he ultimately arranged for his two daughters.

By the time Anne was born in 1456, Warwick had switched sides, no longer supporting King Henry but fighting for the Yorkists at the battle of St. Albans.

He ultimately helped to bring down King Henry and to secure the throne for the Yorkist claimant, who became Edward IV in 1461.

Having helped Edward to the throne, Warwick's goal was to marry his own two daughters to the new king's brothers, George, duke of Clarence, and Richard, duke of Gloucester.

But Warwick's ambitions were thwarted, and he grew increasingly alienated from the king. Despite Edward's opposition, Isabelle and Clarence were secretly married in 1469--but by 1470, Warwick had once again changed political sides.

Warwick switched his allegiance back to the Lancastrians--and his "new" ties were confirmed by the betrothal on 25 July 1470 of his younger daughter, Anne, to Edward of Lancaster, the son of Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou. The two were married in December, when Edward was seventeen and Anne fourteen. Within a year's time, however, Anne's father was dead, killed at the battle of Barnet, and her husband was defeated and killed at the battle of Tewkesbury. At fifteen, Anne was a widow, no longer princess of Wales.

Although neither Edward IV, newly restored to his throne, nor Clarence, hoping to secure the entire Warwick inheritance for himself, wanted Anne to remarry, she was eventually to become the wife of the man her father had first selected for her, Richard, duke of Gloucester. The two were married in 1473, but the legal wrangling about her inheritance dragged on for some time. Anne gave birth to a son, named Edward, in 1476.

Anne Neville, center, with her two husbands,
from The Beauchamp Pageants, c. 1485

The story of Richard, duke of Gloucester's usurpation of the throne in 1483, following the death of Edward IV, is well known. Less well known is Anne's story. Her only child, Edward, died in April of 1484. The emotional response of both the king and queen to this loss was widely reported; according to a contemporary chronicler, "you might have seen his [Edward's] father and mother in a state almost bordering on madness, by reason of their sudden grief." Anne died less than a year later, on 16 March 1485. 

Richard III would be defeated and killed at the battle of Bosworth a few months later, on 22 August 1485. 

There are several good online accounts of Anne Neville's life; I recommend the one posted by the Richard III Society.

For many readers, Philippa Gregory's historical fiction has inspired an interest in the women of this period. But there are many excellent historical sources for those interested in moving beyond fiction. While accounts of Anne Neville, queen of England, are included in Lisa Hilton's Queens Consort: England's Medieval Queens, J. L. Laynesmith's The Last Medieval Queens, and Sarah Gristwood's Blood Sisters: The Women Behind the Wars of the Roses, there is one book-length biography of her, Michael Hicks's Anne Neville: Queen to Richard III--there is actually very little historical evidence about Anne's life, and this biography focuses heavily on the men of the period, but, still . . . 

And while you're at it, you may be interested in reading about Anne's aunts, the six sisters of Richard Neville--David Baldwin's The Kingmaker's Sisters: Six Powerful Women in the Wars of the Roses expands the story of the Wars of the Roses beyond the battlefield and into the lives of the women affected by this period of civil war.

Isabella of France: He's King But She Rules

Isabella of France, queen of England (1 February 1327)

On 1 February 1327, Edward III was crowned king of England, and although he would become one of England's most powerful kings (reigning fifty years), at the time of his coronation his mother was ruling for him, as regent. 

Isabella of France (1295-1358) had assumed the regency in 1326 before the death of her husband, the notably incompetent Edward II, whose disastrous twenty-year reign staggered from one controversy to another.

(Isabella's father was the French king Philip IV. Her mother was Joan of Navarre--by marriage Joan was queen of France, but she was also a queen in her own right--she had inherited the throne of Navarre. She ruled there, as queen regnant, from 1274 to 1305.)

A fifteenth-century illustration showing Isabella among the troops
at the Siege of Bristol, 1326

Edward II lost his throne after years of mismanagement and civil strife--and Isabella played an active role in the events that led to her husband's defeat, capture, and, in the end, deposition. She seized power in the last few months of 1326, with Edward's formal abdication taking place 25 January 1327.

Isabella's regency lasted until 1330, when Edward III successfully rebelled against his mother's ongoing control. Roger Mortimer, who had long acted as Isabella's political partner (and who is generally believed to have been her sexual partner as well), was accused of treason, convicted, and executed. Isabella was initially under house arrest, but she was allowed to "retire" from power and the court, though she remained very wealthy. She eventually regained some measure of influence, entering into peace negotiations for Edward III in France (1348) and Navarre (1358). She remained very close to her children and, eventually, her grandchildren, a welcome member at court.

History has not been kind to Isabella--contemporary chroniclers condemned her as "that harridan" and "that virago." In his play Edward II, Christopher Marlowe had one character refer to her as "that unnatural Queen, false Isabel," while the fictional Edward described his wife as "my unconstant Queen, who spots my nuptial bed with infamy." In the eighteenth century, stealing a phrase from Shakespeare, the poet Thomas Gray described her as the "She-Wolf of France," who, "with unrelenting fangs" ripped through "the bowels of thy mangled mate." (Shakespeare had coined the phrase for another powerful woman-who-would-be-king, Margaret of Anjou.)

Such descriptions survive--in Berthold Brecht's adaptation of Marlowe's play, "Isabella" applies the name to herself: "I shall become a she-wolf," she says, "Ranging bare-toothed through the scrub." Contemporary historians are not much kinder. Helen Castor's She-Wolves: The Women Who Ruled England before Elizabeth at least gives Isabella some companions in the "she wolf" business, though her discussion of Isabella is titled "Isabella: Iron Lady," which is marginally more positive. Elizabeth Norton uses the same phrase for her She Wolves: The Notorious Queens of England, with the chapter on Isabella titled "The She-Wolf of France."

Isabella landing in England with her son, Edward,
in 1326

While her popular biography of the queen is not particularly condemnatory, Alison Weir's title capitalizes on Isabella's reputation as a monster: Queen Isabella: Treachery, Adultery, and Murder in Medieval England. In his Treasury of Royal Scandals: The Shocking True Stories History's Wickedest, Weirdest, Most Wanton Kings, Queens, Tsars, Popes, and Emperors, Michael Farquhar writes about Isabella in a brief chapter called "A Royal Pain in the Ass." (At least Farquhar's monsters are gender-balanced.) 

My recommendation? There's also a fine chapter on Isabella of France in Lisa Hilton's Queens Consort: England's Medieval Queens.