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France. It was capable of housing an entire army and was composed of seventeen massive stone towers, each of which rose nearly one hundred feet in the air. The area enclosed by the outside walls was so expansive that Louis II’s father, Louis I, had been able to erect his own luxury palace within the fortress’s grounds—a castle within a castle—and to decorate its main hall with a magnificent tapestry that measured a full seventy-five feet in length depicting the Revelation of Saint John the Divine. Louis II and Yolande also owned an exquisite castle in Saumur, whose storybook looks and crenellated towers were immortalized in a famous illustration in
The Very Rich Hours of the Duke of Berry.
Additionally, they possessed several castles in Provence, including the strategically placed stronghold of Tarascon and a more elegant citadel in Aix.
    Naturally, the upkeep on all of these estates required a substantial investment. Adding no doubt to the felicity of the nuptial experience, Louis II generously allotted his wife an annual allowance of 10,000 gold francs, an immense sum. With this, Yolande paid the expenses of her numerous household: chamberlain, valets, kitchen staff, greengrocers, stablemen, riders, guards, kennel keepers (for her hunting dogs), tailor, furrier, shoemaker, chaplain, and secretary. She also kept ten maids of honor and three ladies-in-waiting, all of whom were chosen from among the most aristocratic families within their respective provinces. Further reconciling Yolande to the rigors of early married life was the need to dress in accordance with her husband’s royal status. The new queen of Sicily’s clothes were breathtaking—silks and velvets in brilliant hues of ruby, azure,emerald, and violet; cloth of gold trimmed in the rich fur of white ermine; tiaras and brooches encrusted with pearls, diamonds, and sapphires, and for official state occasions, a crown of gold. Extravagant cone-shaped hats called turrets and extra-wide sleeves were all the fashion in the fifteenth century, and no one’s turret rose higher or sleeves trailed longer than Yolande of Aragon’s. Her wardrobe was so splendid that she provoked a number of sermons by disapproving clergymen on the evils of earthly vanity.
    Many similarly happy marriages in the Middle Ages foundered when the wife failed to produce an heir quickly, but here too the king and queen of Sicily were blessed. Yolande’s first child, born in 1403, was a son, Louis III, followed quickly by a daughter, Marie, in 1404. Her second son, René, who would inherit his mother’s passion for literature, was born in 1409; then came another daughter, Yolande, in 1412; and, finally, a third son, Charles, in 1414. Although she did lose a third daughter in infancy, in general Yolande was spared her own mother’s terrible childbearing ordeal as her five remaining progeny all survived into adulthood. No wonder, then, that the king and queen of Sicily, surrounded by wealth and privilege, and with a hereditary line firmly established, were envied for their affectionate relationship, so much so that the chronicler Jehan de Bourdigné recorded that “it was joyful to see the warm, fervent love between these two young people.”
    But these advantages were accompanied by significant responsibilities. It was understood that Louis II’s primary task was to raise an army, return to Naples, and recapture the kingdom of Sicily. For all the titles, the clothes and the jewels, the great estates and deferential treatment, a king who could not control his realm was not really a king, and Louis II was determined to bend southern Italy to his rule.
    That meant that the administration of his other properties—the great French duchies of Anjou and Maine in the north and the independent county of Provence in the south—would have to be left to his wife. Yolande would be expected not only to collect customs and rents, but to sit on governing councils, settle disputes among the baronage,