13 February, 2015

Children of Charles of Valois and Louis of Evreux

A continuation of my last post about Edward II's second cousins and uncles-in-law, Charles of Valois and Louis of Evreux.  Here, I'm looking at their children (the ones who survived into adulthood), who were Isabella of France's first cousins.

Children of Louis, count of Evreux (1276-1319) and Marguerite of Artois (c. 1285-1311):

1) Philip of Evreux, king of Navarre and count of Evreux, c. 1306-1343

Elder son and heir of Louis and Marguerite; married his first cousin once removed Joan II, queen of Navarre in her own right (1312-1349), the only child of Queen Isabella's eldest brother Louis X of France and Navarre (d. 1316) and his first wife Marguerite (d. 1315), daughter of Duke Robert II of Normandy.  Joan II inherited Navarre on the death of her uncle Charles IV in 1328.  Among the many children of Philip of Evreux and Joan of Navarre were Charles 'the Bad', king of Navarre (whose daughter Joan, duchess of Brittany, married Henry IV of England as his second wife), and Blanche, queen of France, who married Philip VI of France as his second wife (he was about forty years her senior).

2) Marie of Evreux, duchess of Brabant, c. 1303-1335

Marie married Duke John III of Brabant (1300-1355), who was Edward II's nephew, only child of Edward's sister Margaret and Duke John II.  Marie and John III had three sons who all died before their father, and three daughters; the eldest, Johanna, who was born in 1322 and died at a ripe old age in 1406, succeeded her father as duchess of Brabant in her own right.  Johanna married firstly William, count of Hainault and Holland, brother of Edward III's queen Philippa, who died childless in 1345, and secondly Wenceslas, son of John the Blind, king of Bohemia.

3) Charles of Evreux, count of Etampes, died 1336

Charles married Marie de la Cerda, granddaughter of Alfonso X of Castile's eldest son Fernando de la Cerda, which means 'of the bristle' (1255-1275).  Fernando died before his father, and his two sons Alfonso and Fernando (Marie's father) were disinherited by their uncle Sancho IV and later settled in France.

4) Joan of Evreux, queen of France, c. 1310-1371

When she was only about fourteen, Joan married her widowed first cousin Charles IV of France (son of her father's older half-brother Philip IV) at Annet-sur-Marne on Thursday 5 July 1324, only some months after the death of his second wife Marie of Luxembourg in childbirth.  Joan was crowned queen on 11 May 1326, the ceremony attended by her sister-in-law Isabella, queen of England and nephew Edward of Windsor, the future Edward III.  (Roger Mortimer was not invited but attended anyway, and carried Edward of Windsor's train, to his father Edward II's fury.)  Joan and Charles had two daughters Joan, who died as a baby, and Marie, who died in 1341 aged fourteen.  When Charles died on 1 March 1328, he left Queen Joan pregnant; she gave birth exactly two months later to another daughter, Blanche, and thus the throne passed to Charles' Valois cousin Philip VI.  Blanche later married Philip VI's son Philip, duke of Orleans.  Queen Joan outlived her husband by more than forty years, and died in March 1371.

Children of Charles, count of Valois (1270-1325) and his first wife Marguerite of Anjou-Naples, countess of Anjou, sister of the kings of Hungary, Naples and Albania (1273-1299):

1) Isabella of Valois, 1292-1309

Isabella married John, son and heir of Duke Arthur II of Brittany and a great-grandson of Henry III of England.  She never became duchess of Brittany, as she died in the lifetime of her father-in-law, aged only seventeen, before her husband succeeded as Duke John III in 1312.  John later married Isabel of Castile, daughter of Sancho IV, and thirdly Joan of Savoy, but had no children with any of his wives.  This led to the War of the Breton Succession in which John's younger half-brother, also John, and his full brother Guy's daughter Joan of Penthièvre, both claimed the duchy.

2) Philip VI, king of France, 1293-1250

Philip succeeded his first cousin Charles IV as king of France in 1328 and became the first of the long line of Valois kings, after enduring an anxious two-month wait to see if Charles' widow Joan of Evreux would give birth to a boy (who would have immediately become king of France).  Philip married Joan 'the Lame' of Burgundy, one of the daughters of Duke Robert II of Burgundy and sister of Marguerite, first wife of Louis X of France; another of their sisters married Edward II's nephew Edouard I, count of Bar.  Philip and Joan were the parents of Philip's successor King John II 'the Good' and of Philip, duke of Orleans, who married Charles IV's posthumous daughter Blanche of France.  Philip married secondly Blanche of Navarre and Evreux, his first cousin once removed and forty years his junior.

3) Joan of Valois, countess of Hainault and Holland, c. 1294-1352

Joan married William III, count of Hainault and Holland; their second daughter Philippa married her second cousin Edward III of England in January 1328.  Their eldest daughter Margaret married Louis or Ludwig of Bavaria, Holy Roman Emperor.

4) Marguerite of Valois, countess of Blois, c. 1295-1342

Marguerite married Guy de Châtillon, count of Blois, first cousin of her father's third wife Mahaut de Châtillon.  Their elder son Louis, count of Blois, was killed at the battle of Crécy in 1346; their second son Charles married Joan of Penthièvre, above, and claimed the duchy of Brittany in her right.

5) Charles of Valois, count of Alençon, c. 1297-1346

Also killed at the battle of Crécy, like his nephew Louis of Blois.  He married firstly Joan, countess of Joigny, and secondly Marie de la Cerda, above, the widow of his cousin Charles of Evreux.  Charles and Marie had four sons: two archbishops, of Lyon and Rouen, and two counts, of Alençon and Perche.

Children of Charles of Valois and his second wife Catherine de Courtenay (1274-1307), titular empress of Constantinople, daughter of Philip de Courtenay and Beatrice of Anjou; first cousin of Charles of Valois's first wife:

1) Catherine of Valois, titular empress of Constantinople, c. 1303-1346

Catherine de Courtenay left no surviving sons, and so her eldest daughter Catherine was her heir to Constantinople.  Betrothed as a child to Duke Hugh V of Burgundy, brother of Marguerite (first wife of Louis X) and Joan (first wife of Philip VI), but in 1313 when she was barely twelve, Catherine of Valois married Philip of Taranto, king of Albania, prince of Achaea and Taranto, despot of Epirus, the brother of her father's first wife Marguerite of Anjou-Naples and the uncle of her older Valois half-siblings.  They had three sons and a daughter.

2) Joan of Valois, c. 1304-1363

Joan married Robert of Artois (1287-1342), younger brother of Louis of Evreux's wife Marguerite of Artois.  Robert was famously involved in a long struggle with his aunt Mahaut over control of the county of Artois, which he felt should have come to him.  He never gained it, however, and when Mahaut died in 1329 the county passed briefly to her daughter Joan of Burgundy, dowager queen of France (widow of Philip V) and then to Joan's eldest daughter Joan II, duchess of Burgundy by marriage, countess of Burgundy and Artois in her own right.  Robert moved to England and supported Edward III in the Hundred Years War.  He and Joan of Valois had five children, including John, count of Eu.

3) Elisabeth of Valois, abbess of Fontevrault, c. 1305-1349

Children of Charles of Valois and his third wife Mahaut of Châtillon (1293-1358), daughter of the count of St Pol and sister of Marie, countess of Pembroke

1) Louis of Valois, count of Chartres, ? - 1328

Charles of Valois offered his youngest son Louis in marriage to one of Edward II's daughters in 1324, when he asked his nephew Charles IV for permission to send Amaury de Craon to England to meet Edward, "to discuss and negotiate the marriages of my ladies your two daughters, that is, one for the son of the said Sir Charles who is of the issue of his last wife, and the other for one of the sons of his son from his first marriage."  That means Louis and his nephew John (born 1319), the future John II of France, son of Philip of Valois and Joan of Burgundy.  The marriage never went ahead, and Louis of Valois died in 1328, still a child.

2) Marie of Valois, duchess of Calabria, c. 1309-1332

Marie married Charles, duke of Calabria, eldest son and heir of Robert 'the Wise', king of Naples, titular king of Sicily and Jerusalem, count of Provence and Forcalquier.  Robert was the brother of Marguerite of Anjou-Naples (the first wife of Charles of Valois) and of Philip of Taranto, who married Marie of Valois's older half-sister Catherine of Valois.  Charles of Calabria died in 1328, fifteen years before his father, leaving his teenaged widow Marie with their young daughter Joan or Joanna and a posthumous daughter, also Marie, later countess of Alba and duchess of Durazzo.  Charles and Marie's elder daughter Joan (1326-1382) was the heir of her paternal grandfather King Robert, and is notorious as the queen of Naples who married four times and who was accused of the murder of her first husband and many years later was herself murdered.

3) Isabella of Valois, duchess of Bourbon, c. 1313-1383

The last surviving of Charles of Valois's many children.  Isabella married Pierre or Peter I, duke of Bourbon, a great-grandson of Louis IX of France and her second cousin.  Peter was killed at the battle of Poitiers in 1356.  He and Isabella were the direct male-line ancestors of Henry of Bourbon, king of Navarre, who became the first Bourbon king of France in 1589.  They also had seven daughters.  One was Blanche, who had the misfortune to marry King Pedro the Cruel of Castile in 1353 and be imprisoned by him for eight years until her death in 1361.  Another was Jeanne or Joan, who married Charles V of France (son of John II, grandson of Philip VI) and was the mother of Charles VI and Louis, duke of Orleans, assassinated in 1407.

4) Blanche or Marguerite of Valois, Holy Roman Empress, queen of Germany and Bohemia, c. 1316/17-1348

Probably the youngest of Charles of Valois's many children, unless her brother Louis of Chartres was born in 1318.  In 1329, Blanche married Charles of Bohemia, eldest son and heir of the blind King John of Bohemia, who was killed at the battle of Crécy in 1346.  In 1346, Charles was elected Holy Roman Emperor, and was also king of Bohemia, Germany, Italy and Burgundy.  Blanche of Valois was the first of his four wives, and they had two daughters, Margaret, queen of Hungary and Croatia, and Katherine, duchess of Bavaria.  Blanche died in 1348, only in her early thirties; her widower Charles married three more times and had numerous more children, including Anne of Bohemia, queen of Richard II of England, and Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor and king of Hungary and Bohemia.

5 comments:

Anerje said...

Excellent research. Particularly interesting was Joan of Evreux's story.

Gabriele Campbell said...

Why am I not surprised that Roger Mortimer attended the wedding anyway? :-)

Katarzyna Ogrodnik-Fujcik said...

The last two wives of Emperor Charles IV were both the great-granddaughters of our king Władysław Łokietek [the Elbow-high]. The last one Elżbieta Pomorska [Elizabeth of Pomerania] was the mother of Anne of Bohemia :-)

Was Blanche and Charles's first daughter Margaret crowned queen of Hungary? I know she died young, but already at the Hungarian court. She and Louis [the Great] were married, but can't recall now whether she was crowned... Accidenataly, she met her father's future third wife at the Hungarian court - Anna Świdnicka [Anne von Schweidnitz] was raised there too :-)

Kathryn Warner said...

Thanks, Anerje!

Gabriele, my thoughts exactly ;)

Kasia, sorry, I'm not sure about that without checking. I thought of you and the Polish connection when writing about Charles IV's later wives ;)

Katarzyna Ogrodnik-Fujcik said...

As it happens, both Anna and Elżbieta hold a special place in my heart :-) I posted about Anna on 9 February, being the date of her coronation at Aachen in 1354 and will post again on 26 Feb. being the day when in 1361 she gave Charles the best present ever, the much-awaited male heir :-)