The Wars of the Roses - Alison Weir [67]
Henry duly received her portrait, a miniature by a renowned but anonymous French artist in the pay of Suffolk, and instantly fell in love with it. By October 1443 he was writing to Suffolk and describing the sitter as ‘the excellent, magnificent and very bright Margaret’.
Margaret of Anjou was born in March 1429 at Pont-à-Mousson, Lorraine. She was the daughter of René, Duke of Anjou and titular King of Naples, Sicily and Jerusalem, by Isabella, daughter of Charles the Bold, Duke of Lorraine. Baptised at Toul, she was reared in infancy by her father’s old nurse, Théophanie la Magine, and spent her early years moving between the castle of Tarascon on the River Rhône and the old royal palace at Capua in Naples. Her mother, herself a gifted woman, saw that she was well-educated, tutoring her herself and perhaps arranging for her to have lessons with the scholar Antoine de la Salle, who taught her brothers. In childhood Margaret was known as ‘la petite créature’.
René of Anjou has been described as a man of many crowns but no kingdoms. Born in 1408, his early political career had been chequered. He inherited the duchy of Anjou in 1434, but it was then occupied by the English. In 1435 he had claimed the kingdom of Naples, but had to cede his title to Alfonso of Aragon. René nevertheless continued to call himself King of Naples and Sicily, though it was as empty a pretence as were his claims to be King of Jerusalem and Hungary.
In 1441 René returned to France where, thanks to the marriage of his sister Marie to Charles VII, he built up a sphere of influence at the French court. The friendship between Charles and René dated back to their childhood, when both had been as brothers at the court of René’s father at Angers. Now he found himself a member of the King’s council and an honoured courtier, who was constantly at Charles’s side at tournaments, courtly ceremonies and banquets. He also campaigned on the French king’s behalf in Normandy and Lorraine. By 1444 René, despite his landless status, was a considerable power at the French court, and the Milanese ambassador observed that he was ‘the one who governs this entire realm’.
René lived in some style, surrounded by luxuries such as silks and porcelain imported from as far away as China. He was a highly cultivated and talented man, a gifted artist and poet, whose illuminated manuscripts are arguably the best-executed of the period. He was also a musician of some renown. His small but brilliant court attracted all kinds of talented people seeking patronage. Most of all it was famed for its tournaments, which René raised to an art form, and for its artificial creation of a pastoral idyll inspired by the new humanism sweeping across Europe from Italy.
René had five children, including his heir, John of Calabria, Yolande, who was married to a Burgundian nobleman, and Margaret, whom the Burgundian chronicler Enguerrand de Monstrelet describes as one of the younger daughters. During her childhood her father had considered several possible husbands for her, including the Emperor Frederick III. In 1443 he sent her to live with her aunt, Queen Marie, at the French court, and early in 1444 was considering a match for her with Burgundy’s son, Charles, Count of Charolais. But René’s ancestral territories of Maine and Anjou were still in the hands of the English, and when he learned of Henry VI’s interest in his daughter he saw a means of getting them back.
Margaret spent a year at the French court, where she won golden opinions for her beauty and character. The Burgundian chronicler Barante wrote: ‘There was no princess in Christendom more accomplished than my lady Margaret of