The Maid and the Queen Read Online Free PDF Page A

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.

C HAPTER 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 influencedher 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