The Valois Children: Joan Albret
Joan Albret.
Biographies have been written about Louise of Savoy and her children Marguerite of Angoulème and Francis I but few, if any, point out their cruel sides.
Because Francis was in the pecking line for the Crown of France Louise whooped with joy each time Queen Anne of Brittany had a miscarriage, a still birth or a daughter.
How do we know? She recorded her glee in her diaries.
When Francis was defeated in battle, he asked his captor to allow his two little boys, six and seven, to take his place in the dark damp prison. They were there four years before the ransom was paid for their release.
When Marguerite and her husband, Henry, King of Navarre, had a daughter, Joan/Jeanne, much to her father’s dismay Francis removed her from his Court in Navarre and brought her up with his own children at his Court in France.
As for her mother, she was with Francis all the way. What her beloved brother wanted her brother got.
When Joan was twelve, Francis wanted an ally in Germany so earmarked her for William the Rich, the twenty-four year old Duke of Cleves.
The girl was distraught. She didn’t want to get married to who was, in her young eyes an old man, she didn’t want to live in Germany and let the King and her mother know in no uncertain terms.
Marguerite sacrificed her only child on her brother’s political altar. Louise of Savoy must also have been complicit.
Joan did not go quietly.
She signed two documents which officers of her household counter signed.
‘I, Jeanne de Navarre, persisting in the protestations I have already made, do hereby again affirm and protest by these present, that the marriage which it is desired to contract between the duke of Cleves and myself, is against my will; that I have never consented to it, nor will consent...’
Although her mother tried to beat her into submission, Joan had to be carried bodily to the altar kicking and screaming.
Before she was old enough to consummate the marriage, the duke went over to the enemy’s side. He signed an agreement with Charles V and ended his alliance with France.
The marriage was annulled on the grounds that it had not been consummated and that Jeanne was forcibly married against her will.
She remained at the royal court until Francis I died and she could marry for love.
She became the Queen of Navarre after the death of her father and, against all odds, while the bloody Wars of Religion were tearing Roman Catholic France apart, declared hers was a Protestant country.
It remained so for the next forty years until her son Henry IV converted to Catholicism because the people would not accept a Protestant king. The Protestant religion was not recognized until the French Revolution*.
Henry IV was the first Bourbon King of France. The troubled House of Valois was well and truly over.
* It is estimated that today there are about two million Protestants in France.
Post by Pamela (BA History of Art).
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