Doomed Queens (22 page)

Were their aims true?

Blanche’s parents ignored the negative advertising and hoped for the best. In 1353, the princess dutifully traveled from France to Castile to wed the king. On her arrival, Pedro let Blanche cool her heels for several months; he was too busy canoodling with his mistress, Maria de Padilla, to welcome her. When the king finally did deign to make an appearance, he was less than cordial to Blanche—but he married her anyway.

Pedro’s strong aversion to Blanche puzzled his contemporaries, for the princess was no slouch in the charm department. The only explanation they could devise was that Maria had bewitched Pedro with evil spells. Yet Voltaire writes that the teenage princess “had fallen in love with the grand master of St. Jago, one of those very bastards who had waged war against him.” If this was true—frankly it seems out of character for Blanche—it reveals that she was more romantic than she was savvy. Fooling around with her fiancé’s half brother wasn’t the best way to encourage nuptial bliss.

In either case, Pedro overreacted by imprisoning his new wife in the famously fortified castle of Arevalo. Though Queen Blanche won much sympathy for her cruel plight, no one was able to rescue her. Eight years later, Pedro arranged for her death.

How was Blanche murdered? One story relates that Blanche was poisoned; another claims that Pedro sent a crossbowman to assassinate her. In either case, the queen’s reign was over. At the time of her demise, Blanche was twenty-two years old and had been trapped in that tower for more than a third of her life.

As for Pedro the Cruel, his end reflected the violence of his life. After reigning acrimoniously for twenty years, he was beheaded by one of his illegitimate half brothers.

CAUTIONARY MORAL

Truth and advertising aren’t always strangers.

1382

pousal murder, aka mariticide, wasn’t just for morally corrupt kings. By the time Blanche had been sentenced to death by wedlock, her distant cousin Joan had already bumped off her starter husband to better claim the throne of Naples. It was an ignominious start to a reign that would ultimately include exile, plague, and even a brothel.

The rule of Queen Joan initially held great promise—both Boccaccio and Petrarch praised her beauty, intelligence, and politesse. Joan was born in Anjou in 1328 bearing an illustrious pedigree: She was the niece of Phillip VI, the king of France, and the granddaughter of the king of Naples, better known as Robert the Wise. Robert made the girl his sole heir when her father died soon after her birth. To keep it in the family, Joan was betrothed at seven to her second cousin Andrew, a six-year-old Hungarian prince.

Nine years later on his deathbed, Robert the Wise bequeathed the throne of Naples to Andrew, a move that turned out not to be so wise. In doing so, he seriously misread the desires of the populace, who rioted to make Joan their monarch. Voltaire wrote that Andrew “disgusted the Neapolitans by his gross manners, intemperance, and drunkenness.” Within two years’ time, the king was garroted with a silk cord in the palace.

Joan was accused of her husband’s murder. One account claimed that Joan overheard the murder but did not call for help or exhibit distress, which was considered damning evidence of her culpability. In his recounting of her trial, Alexandre Dumas wrote, “An angel soiled by crime, she lied like Satan himself….” The queen got off scot-free. Nevertheless, the damage was done—Andrew’s death aroused the ire of his older brother, Louis I of Hungary, which would have fatal repercussions.

As queen, Joan was known for such accomplishments as establishing a large brothel in Avignon for use by the nobility; she was also the countess of Provence by birth. Despite the stench of hellfire lingering about her skirts, Joan tempted fate by marrying another cousin. To gain the pope’s approval for the consanguineous union, Joan sold Avignon to the church, plunging area prostitutes into unemployment.

Papal favor or no, Joan and her new hubby were forced to flee Naples after King Louis sent his army marching in. The couple lived as expats in Provence until the Black Death arrived in Naples, persuading the Hungarians to leave town. Joan’s triumphant return and coronation were celebrated within L’Incoronata, a cathedral built for the occasion and decorated with frescoes by a student of Giotto. Nonetheless, the queen’s crown was unstable—King Louis continued threatening Naples for another three decades.

In 1381, Hungarian forces finally deposed Joan. A year later, karma paid a visit to Joan in prison. She was strangled, suffering the same fate as her first husband.

CAUTIONARY MORAL

If you tarry with crime, you may become a victim.

LIFE AFTER DEATH

Alexandre Dumas, the nineteenth-century author of such swashbucklers as
The Three Musketeers
, purloined the life of Joan for an entry in his
Celebrated Crimes
series. Dumas romanticized the murderous monarch as a beautiful but tortured victim of others’ Machiavellian machinations. Other historical figures presented in
Celebrated Crimes
included Lucretia Borgia—Joan was in good company.

Joan, from a period manuscript.

1395

y kicking Joan off her throne, King Louis of Hungary enlarged his considerable holdings to include Naples. This made a tidy inheritance for his eldest daughter, Maria. Alas, it also encouraged her premature demise.

To be fair, Louis had only the best intentions for Maria. He was an older father—the king was forty-five, a veritable medieval-era geriatric when Maria was born—so he did not dally to settle her future, especially since he had no male heir. Louis betrothed Maria as a child to the teenaged Sigismund of Luxemburg. Sigismund was in line to become the Holy Roman Emperor; the union would settle the long-term tension that sizzled between the two families, hopefully granting Maria a peaceful reign. Louis intended that Maria would rule Hungary with Sigismund’s help. However, the young’un had ambitions of his own. By age thirteen, Sigismund had already been called on the carpet for scheming in foreign lands.