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of its legs. But it was a peaceful arrangement; Joan and Philip of Navarre remained most docile, Joan still under the cloud of her mother’s reputation, Philip by virtue of a dignified and thoughtful nature bequeathed him by his father, Louis of Évreux. They seemed to be happy with their rich Norman county and their small Pyrenean kingdom. Things would change when their son Charles, a boisterous young man of eighteen years, began to cast about vindictive looks, filled with condemnation for the failures evident in his family’s past, filled with ambition for his own future. ‘If my grandmother hadn’t been such a brazen whore, if my mother had been born a man, I would be King of France by now.’ I heard him say these things with my own ears. It was therefore considered advisable to show some interest in Navarre, the position of which, to the south of the kingdom, had secured the region even more importance since the English had conquered all of Aquitaine. So, as always in such circumstances, a marriage was to be arranged.
    Duke John would have happily refrained from contracting a new marital union. But he was destined to be king, and the royal image required him to have a wife at his side, particularly in his case. A wife would prevent him appearing to walk too openly on the arm of Monsieur of Spain. Moreover, how could he better pander to the boisterous Charles of Évreux-Navarre, and how better tie his hands, than by choosing the future Queen of France from amongst his sisters? The eldest, Blanche, was sixteen years old. She was beautiful, and blessed with a sharp wit. Plans were coming along well, the pope’s permission had been secured and the wedding was practically announced, even though during the terrible period we were living through, we were all wondering who would still be alive the next week.
    Because death continued to knock on every door. At the beginning of December the plague took the Queen of France herself, Madame Joan of Burgundy, the lame one, the bad queen. For her, decorum was scarcely enough to contain the cries of joy, and the people set to dancing in the streets. She was despised; your father must have told you so. She would steal her husband’s seal to have people thrown into prison; she would prepare poisoned baths for those guests she took a dislike to. She very nearly killed a bishop that way … The king occasionally beat her black and blue with torches; but he failed to mend her behaviour. I was most wary of the bad queen. Her suspicious nature filled the court with imaginary enemies. She was quick-tempered, a liar, a horrible person; she was a murderess. Her death seemed to be a delayed manifestation of heavenly justice. What’s more, immediately after her demise the scourge began to subside, as if this carnage, come from so far away, had had no other goal but to reach, at last, this harpy.
    Of all the men in France, it was the king himself who was the most relieved by the news of her death. One month less one day later, in the cold of January, he remarried. Even as the widower of a universally hated woman, such haste was setting little store by social convention. But the worst was not in the timing. To whom was he wed? To his own son’s fiancée, Blanche of Navarre, the slip of a girl with whom he had fallen madly in love upon her first appearance at court. Although the French are happy to turn a blind eye to bawdiness, they hate to see their sovereign let himself be ruled by it in such fashion.
    Philip VI was forty years older than the beauty he had snatched so brutally from the hand of his heir. And he couldn’t invoke a tradition of poorly matched princely couples, or the greater good of empires. He was setting a stone of scandal in his own crown, while inflicting upon his successor wounds of ridicule that would assuredly leave terrible scars. Philip and Blanche married in haste near Saint-Germain-en-Laye. John of Normandy of course did not attend. He had never been particularly