Foregrounding the proactive careers and gendered agencies of Anne de France’s “French” foremothers and political antecedents, this chapter also examines aspects of Aragonese court and political culture translated from the crown of Aragon to the kingdom of France by Yolande d’Aragon when she married her first cousin once removed, Louis II d’Anjou, on 2 December 1400. It tracks Yolande d’Aragon’s refashioning of Aragonese court and political culture in a non-Iberian setting to suit her changing situational demands against the turbulent backdrop of the closing stages of the Hundred Years War. Above and beyond that, Marion Chaigne-Legouy’s research demonstrates that, during the period 1360–1381, there is also the very singular history of the second house of Anjou to consider wherein each successive generation was characterized by periods of political rupture during which its duchesses found themselves in charge of running the state. By turn, they assumed the functions of regent, lieutenant and, in the case of Yolande, vice-roy. Family and family ties and backgrounds, including the princesses’ dynastic and social functions such as maternity and piety, extended auctoritas to them and with it the personal prestige and moral authority and dignity to command by right. Nonetheless, within the frameworks of their respective regencies and lieutenancies, the duchesses of the second house of Anjou were well-versed in the operations of constraint as well as the power to exercise the official authorities they commanded. In the kingdom of France, Anjou participated in and designed a flexible template for the maturation of a field of experimentation of the power exercised by women at a princely or royal level by providing a link between its discrete manifestation in the thirteenth century with Blanche de Castille to its solidification in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries with the regencies of Anne de France and Louise de Savoie. Like the ratified institution of queen-lieutenancy in her natal house of Aragon-Catalonia, whose consorts were not as encumbered by the tension between gendered constraint and the power to command, Yolande’s marital house provides an additional frame of reference by which to describe and explain a phenomenon that was developing in law and precedence during the late Middle Ages; the exercise of political power by women who were not expected to govern. These two phenomena, Aragonese queenship norms and the very singular history of the second house of Anjou, were put to good use by Yolande to meet the political and diplomatic challenges she faced. More compellingly still, with Yolande’s marriage the second house of Anjou served as a bridge, a medium of translation, between the crown of Aragon (where female lieutenancy accorded to members of the royal house had existed since the fourteenth century with Blanca d’Anjou) and the French crown. It is this particular “translation” that constitutes a significant part of Anne de France’s intergenerational inheritance of “feminine” power. She did not invent it, rather she benefitted from the example of its intertwined past exercise by members of her Aragonese and Angevine matrilines. Her father Louis XI was well aware of the pragmatic praxes of the duchesses of the second house of Anjou of which his grandmother Yolande and her daughter-in-law, Isabelle de Lorraine, were its most immediate and visible exponents. Moreover, Yolande’s initial lieutenancy for her husband Louis II, defined in terms quite similar to those of her mother Violant de Bar, echoed the Aragonese-Catalonian model in respect of their shared geopolitical impediments; distance and the lack of stable internal cohesion. Yolande’s later lieutenancies, and in particular the vice-royalty granted to her by her twenty-year-old son Louis III d’Anjou on 1 July 1423 (as he was about to attain his ducal majority aged twenty-one), established her authority beyond the framework of the soon-to-expire regency she had held in his interests since the death of his father in 1417. Stipulating that each Angevin officer pledge their allegiance to her, Louis III’s letter of commission lays bare his intention to make it known that while ever Yolande lived she detained the power not only to administer his officers and servants during his absences but also his possessions and territories (Chart 5.1).

Found in Translation

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发表日期：

2025年

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Zita Eva Rohr

摘要

Foregrounding the proactive careers and gendered agencies of Anne de France’s “French” foremothers and political antecedents, this chapter also examines aspects of Aragonese court and political culture translated from the crown of Aragon to the kingdom of France by Yolande d’Aragon when she married her first cousin once removed, Louis II d’Anjou, on 2 December 1400. It tracks Yolande d’Aragon’s refashioning of Aragonese court and political culture in a non-Iberian setting to suit her changing situational demands against the turbulent backdrop of the closing stages of the Hundred Years War. Above and beyond that, Marion Chaigne-Legouy’s research demonstrates that, during the period 1360–1381, there is also the very singular history of the second house of Anjou to consider wherein each successive generation was characterized by periods of political rupture during which its duchesses found themselves in charge of running the state. By turn, they assumed the functions of regent, lieutenant and, in the case of Yolande, vice-roy. Family and family ties and backgrounds, including the princesses’ dynastic and social functions such as maternity and piety, extended auctoritas to them and with it the personal prestige and moral authority and dignity to command by right. Nonetheless, within the frameworks of their respective regencies and lieutenancies, the duchesses of the second house of Anjou were well-versed in the operations of constraint as well as the power to exercise the official authorities they commanded. In the kingdom of France, Anjou participated in and designed a flexible template for the maturation of a field of experimentation of the power exercised by women at a princely or royal level by providing a link between its discrete manifestation in the thirteenth century with Blanche de Castille to its solidification in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries with the regencies of Anne de France and Louise de Savoie. Like the ratified institution of queen-lieutenancy in her natal house of Aragon-Catalonia, whose consorts were not as encumbered by the tension between gendered constraint and the power to command, Yolande’s marital house provides an additional frame of reference by which to describe and explain a phenomenon that was developing in law and precedence during the late Middle Ages; the exercise of political power by women who were not expected to govern. These two phenomena, Aragonese queenship norms and the very singular history of the second house of Anjou, were put to good use by Yolande to meet the political and diplomatic challenges she faced. More compellingly still, with Yolande’s marriage the second house of Anjou served as a bridge, a medium of translation, between the crown of Aragon (where female lieutenancy accorded to members of the royal house had existed since the fourteenth century with Blanca d’Anjou) and the French crown. It is this particular “translation” that constitutes a significant part of Anne de France’s intergenerational inheritance of “feminine” power. She did not invent it, rather she benefitted from the example of its intertwined past exercise by members of her Aragonese and Angevine matrilines. Her father Louis XI was well aware of the pragmatic praxes of the duchesses of the second house of Anjou of which his grandmother Yolande and her daughter-in-law, Isabelle de Lorraine, were its most immediate and visible exponents. Moreover, Yolande’s initial lieutenancy for her husband Louis II, defined in terms quite similar to those of her mother Violant de Bar, echoed the Aragonese-Catalonian model in respect of their shared geopolitical impediments; distance and the lack of stable internal cohesion. Yolande’s later lieutenancies, and in particular the vice-royalty granted to her by her twenty-year-old son Louis III d’Anjou on 1 July 1423 (as he was about to attain his ducal majority aged twenty-one), established her authority beyond the framework of the soon-to-expire regency she had held in his interests since the death of his father in 1417. Stipulating that each Angevin officer pledge their allegiance to her, Louis III’s letter of commission lays bare his intention to make it known that while ever Yolande lived she detained the power not only to administer his officers and servants during his absences but also his possessions and territories (Chart 5.1).