Blanche of Valois ****************************************************************************************** * ****************************************************************************************** By Anna Košátková We don’t know much about the lives of medieval queens. Their stories are reconstructed fro incomplete sources, references in chronicles and fragments of documents. We therefore can’ the life of Blanche of Valois, the first wife of Charles IV, yet we have more information many of her peers. Her story, though, can’t stand alone, separated from the story of her h very first reference to her person is related to Charles IV – it’s included in Charles’s a Caroli Quarti: “Anno domini one thousand three hundred twenty-three, my father sent me to King of France in the seventh year of my boyhood; the French king had me confirmed by the me the same name he had, Charles. And then he gave me the daughter of Charles, his uncle, Margaret, called Blanche, to marry.” Similar information is also included in the Zbraslav boy of eight got engaged to a girl called Blanche, a sister of French king Philippe, of th The 7-year old girl of the Valois house was christened Margaret, yet everybody called her allegedly for her fair hair. We don’t know much about her childhood in France. We can only she enjoyed the education typical for noble girls – social conduct, manual crafts, dancing foreign languages. We, however, know nothing about her literacy. The further information dates back to 1330. In the quoted autobiography Vita Caroli, Charl writes: “The king sent me back with my wife, his sister Blanche, to my father John, King o Luxembourg.” Blanche of Valois lived in Luxembourg for three years, while her husband spen Northern Italy, supporting the interests of his father John in the “Italian signoria”. Thi struggle to seize the regions in Northern Italy, such as Brescia, Bergamo, Parma, Cremona, Modena, or Lucca in Tuscany, didn’t succeed in the long run, though. In 1334, the throne pretender Charles returned to Bohemia. His autobiography describes liv the kingdom ravaged, with villages burned down, and Prague Castle unfit to live in. At the however, he wrote: “At that time, we have sent for our wife, still dwelling in Luxembourg. and after a year, had the first daughter Margaret. It was the time our father gave us the Moravia, so we used that title.” Before Charles and his wife moved to Moravia, Blanche’s a important event, mentioned by the author of the Zbraslav Chronicles Peter of Zittau: “That evening, June 12, Lady Blanche, wife of Charles, heir of the Kingdom of Bohemia and Margra came from France to enjoy a glorious and warm welcome from the clergy and all people of Pr time, she found a home at the Prague Castle.” After a month, a large part of Blanche’s entourage returned to France. We can only guess w we can assume it was a pragmatic move to minimize the disputes between courtiers of variou Should we again resort to period chronicles, we’ll find that Blanche “…certainly pleased e beauty, and I hope she will be loved for her virtues too; she brought with her the customs ladies’ fashion, and rich trousseau as required by her position and the royal house.” That Zittau tells us in his Zbraslav Chronicles; other chroniclers offer similar testimonies. As far as available information goes, the marriage of Charles IV and Blanche of Valois was two daughters – Margaret (1335–1349) and younger Catherine (1342–1395). At the age of seve married off to the Hungarian king Louis I, 16 at the time; she died childless at the age o was married off at 14 to Rudolph IV of Habsburg. In 1365 she became a widow, and a year la married off again, this time to Otto V of Bavaria, the Margrave of Brandenburg. She spent life in Prague and Vienna where she was buried. We cannot tell more about other relationships of Blanche of Valois to other people. There’ in the story told by Peter of Zittau, commenting on the Prague journey of Beatrix of Bourb wife of King John of Bohemia. “An unexpected but true rumor spread in the Bohemian Kingdom John lawfully married a maiden Beatrix, daughter of the duke of Bourbon, Earl of Clermont. some point, Blanche’s competitor; in 1337, Beatrix of Bourbon was crowned the Queen of Boh nevertheless, ever felt at home in the Bohemian environment, and the relationships to the weren’t great either. King John allegedly cast Blanche out of the Prague court for some ti avoid quarrels. However, Beatrix of Bourbon didn’t last long in Prague, though she gave bi children – son Wenceslas and daughter Bona. Shortly after that, she moved to Luxembourg wh rest of her life. Peter of Zittau noticed wryly that “the people celebrated her departure arrival.” An important cornerstone in the lives of Charles IV and Blanche of Valois was the coronati and Queen of Bohemia in 1347. The ceremony took place on September 2 in St. Vitus’s Cathed Castle, it was celebrated by the Archbishop Ernest of Pardubice. For this opportunity, Cha St. Wenceslas’s Crown, and the coronation code for kings and queens of Bohemia (Ordo ad co Boemorum) was written. A special ceremony was designed for the queen’s coronation: the que the altar with her hair loose, knelt down, touched the ground with her forehead, then the her his blessings just like he did to her husband, placed the scepter to her hand, put the her finger, and placed the crown on her head. The abbess of St. George’s monastery then le throne where the new crowned queen sat at the king’s side. Blanche of Valois died on August 1, 1348, in Prague. The historians are still unsure about her death, and the accurate answer is probably impossible. Some researchers suspect plague death” spreading across Europe since 1347. This theory is, however, challenged by the fact epidemic only hit Bohemia two years later. Of course, there are other possibilities, more It could have been a rapid disease with unpredictable development, or tuberculosis, or eve It’s true we don’t know much about the life of Blanche of Valois. All information we got a to the deeds of her husband. We know nothing about her material situation, about the peopl or about her donor activities – the sources are really sparse. The chronicles left us only hints, and most of the diplomatic documents haven’t preserved. We can however say that she first Bohemian queens not coming from German or Polish territories. Her French origin lift policy of Bohemian kings to a higher level. Bibliography: ČECHURA, Jaroslav – HLAVAČKA, Milan – MAUR, Eduard. Ženy a milenky českých králů. Praha: A ČORNEJ, Petr. Osudy českých králů a královen: od Přemyslovce Vratislava II. k Habsburkovi Reader’s Digest, 2013. EICHLER, Joachim – MÜLLER, Heribert – SCHNEIDMÜLLER, Bernd. Francouzští králové v období s ke Karlu VIII. (888–1498). Praha: Argo, 2003. KAVKA, František. Čtyři ženy Karla IV. Praha: Paseka, 2002.