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Birth:          1221 St. Maime, Forcalquier, Bourgogne
Death:          21 Dec 1295 Paris, France
Burial:         St. Denis, Ile de France, France

Notes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_of_Provence
Margaret of Provence (1221 – 20 December 1295) was Queen of France as the wife of 
King Louis IX.
Family[edit]

Margaret was born in the spring of 1221 in Forcalquier.[1] She was the eldest of four 
daughters of Ramon Berenguer IV, Count of Provence, and Beatrice of Savoy. Her 
younger sisters were Queen Eleanor of England, Queen Sanchia of Germany, and 
Queen Beatrice of Sicily. She was especially close to Eleanor, to whom she was close 
in age, and with whom she sustained friendly relationships until they grew old.[2]

Marriage[edit]

In 1233, Blanche of Castile sent one of her knights to Provence, partly to offset the 
troublesome Raymond VII, Count of Toulouse, and partly to meet Margaret, whose 
grace and beauty were widely reported. Margaret and her father entertained the knight 
well, and soon Blanche was negotiating with the count of Provence, so that his 
daughter might marry the king. Margaret was chosen as a good match for the king 
more for her religious devotion and courtly manner than her beauty. She was escorted 
to Lyon by her parents for the marriage treaty to be signed. From there, she was 
escorted to her wedding in Sens by her uncles from Savoy, William and Thomas. On 
27 May 1234 at the age of thirteen, Margaret became wife of Louis IX of France and 
queen consort of France.[3] She was crowned the following day.[1] The wedding and 
her coronation as queen were celebrated at the cathedral of Sens.[3]

The marriage was a difficult one in numerous aspects.[3] Blanche still wielded strong 
influence over her son, and would throughout her life.[4] As a sign of her authority, 
shortly after the wedding Blanche dismissed Margaret's uncles and all of the servants 
she had brought with her from her childhood. Margaret resented Blanche and vice 
versa from the beginning.[3]

Margaret, like her sisters, was noted for her beauty, she was said to be "pretty with 
dark hair and fine eyes",[5] and in the early years of their marriage she and Louis 
enjoyed a warm relationship. Her Franciscan confessor, William de St. Pathus, related 
that on cold nights Margaret would place a robe around Louis' shoulders, when her 
deeply religious husband rose to pray. Another anecdote recorded by St. Pathus 
related that Margaret felt that Louis' plain clothing was unbecoming to his royal 
dignity, to which Louis replied that he would dress as she wished, if she dressed as he 
wished.

They enjoyed riding together, reading, and listening to music. The attentions of the 
king and court being drawn to the new queen only made Blanche more jealous, and 
she worked to keep the king and queen apart as much as possible.

During the Seventh Crusade[edit]

Margaret accompanied Louis on Seventh Crusade (their first). Her sister Beatrice also 
joined. Though initially the crusade met with some success, like the capture of 
Damietta in 1249, it became a disaster after the king's brother was killed and the king 
then captured.

Queen Margaret was responsible for negotiations and gathering enough silver for his 
ransom. She was thus for a brief time the only woman ever to lead a crusade. In 1250, 
while in Damietta, where she earlier in the same year successfully maintained order,[3] 
she gave birth to her son Jean Tristan.[6][7]

The chronicler Jean de Joinville, who was not a priest, reports incidents demonstrating 
Margaret's bravery after Louis was made prisoner in Egypt: she decisively acted to 
assure a food supply for the Christians in Damietta, and went so far as to ask the 
knight who guarded her bedchamber to kill her and her newborn son if the city should 
fall to the Arabs. She also convinced some of those who had been about to leave to 
remain in Damietta and defend it. Joinville also recounts incidents that demonstrate 
Margaret's good humor, as on one occasion when Joinville sent her some fine cloth 
and, when the queen saw his messenger arrive carrying them, she mistakenly knelt 
down thinking that he was bringing her holy relics. When she realized her mistake, she 
burst into laughter and ordered the messenger, "Tell your master evil days await him, 
for he has made me kneel to his camelines!"

However, Joinville also remarked with noticeable disapproval that Louis rarely asked 
after his wife and children. In a moment of extreme danger during a terrible storm on 
the sea voyage back to France from the Crusade, Margaret begged Joinville to do 
something to help; he told her to pray for deliverance, and to vow that when they 
reached France she would go on a pilgrimage and offer a golden ship with images of 
the king, herself and her children in thanks for their escape from the storm. Margaret 
could only reply that she dared not make such a vow without the king's permission, 
because when he discovered that she had done so, he would never let her make the 
pilgrimage. In the end, Joinville promised her that if she made the vow he would make 
the pilgrimage for her, and when they reached France he did so.[8][9]

Political significance[edit]

Her leadership during the crusade had brought her international prestige and after she 
returned to France, Margaret was often asked to mediate disputes. She feared the 
ambitions of her husband's brother Charles though, and strengthened the bond with 
her sister Eleanor and her husband Henry III of England as a counterweight. In 1254, 
she and her husband invited them to spend Christmas in Paris.

Then, in 1259, the Treaty of Paris came about since the relationship between Louis 
and Henry III of England had improved. Margaret was present during the negotiations, 
along with all her sisters and her mother.

In later years Louis became vexed with Margaret's ambition. It seems that when it 
came to politics or diplomacy she was indeed ambitious, but somewhat inept. An 
English envoy at Paris in the 1250s reported to England, evidently in some disgust, 
that "the queen of France is tedious in word and deed," and it is clear from the 
envoy's report of his conversation with the queen that she was trying to create an 
opportunity for herself to engage in affairs of state even though the envoy was not 
impressed with her efforts. After the death of her eldest son Louis in 1260, Margaret 
induced the next son, Philip, to swear an oath that no matter at what age he 
succeeded to the throne, he would remain under her tutelage until the age of thirty. 
When Louis found out about the oath, he immediately asked the pope to excuse Philip 
from the vow on the grounds that he himself had not authorized it, and the pope 
immediately obliged, ending Margaret's attempt to make herself a second Blanche of 
Castile. Margaret subsequently failed as well to influence her nephew Edward I of 
England to avoid a marriage project for one of his daughters that would promote the 
interests in her native Provence of her brother-in-law, Charles of Anjou, who had 
married her youngest sister Beatrice.

Later years[edit]

After the death of Louis on his second crusade in 1270,[3] during which she remained 
in France, she returned to Provence. She became a more politically active figure after 
his death.[3] As Emmerson notes, she was particularly exigent - to the point of raising 
troops - in defending her rights in Provence, where her husband's brother, Charles of 
Anjou, maintained his political authority and control of property after his wife's (her 
sister's) death, contrary to the intentions of the old count, who had died in 1245.[3] 
She was devoted to her sister Queen Eleanor of England, and they stayed in contact 
until Eleanor's death in 1291. Her last years were spent doing pious work, including 
the founding of the Franciscan nunnery of Lourcines in 1289.[3] Margaret herself died 
in Paris, at the Poor Clares monastery she had founded,[10] on 20 December 1295, at 
the age of seventy-four. She was buried near (but not beside) her husband in the 
Basilica of St-Denis outside Paris. Her grave, beneath the altar steps, was never 
marked by a monument, so its location is unknown; probably for this reason, it was the 
only royal grave in the basilica that was not ransacked during the French Revolution, 
and it probably remains intact today.

Issue[edit]

iconKingdom of France portal

With Louis IX of France eleven children[3] were born:
1.Blanche (1240 – 29 April 1243)
2.Isabella (2 March 1241 – 28 January 1271), married Theobald II of Navarre
3.Louis (25 February 1244 – January 1260)
4.Philip III of France (1 May 1245 – 5 October 1285), married firstly Isabella of Aragon, 
by whom he had issue, including Philip IV of France and Charles, Count of Valois; he 
married secondly Maria of Brabant, by whom he had issue, including Margaret of 
France.
5.John (born and died in 1248)
6.John Tristan (1250 – 3 August 1270), born in Egypt on his father's first Crusade and 
died in Tunisia on his second
7.Peter (1251–1284)
8.Blanche (1253–1323), married Ferdinand de la Cerda, Infante of Castile
9.Margaret (1254–1271), married John I, Duke of Brabant
10.Robert, Count of Clermont (1256 – 7 February 1317), married Beatrice of Burgundy, 
Lady of Bourbon, by whom he had issue. It is from him that the Bourbon kings of 
France descend in the male line.
11.Agnes (c. 1260 – 19 December 1327), married Robert II, Duke of Burgundy

Parents
BERENGER Raimund V (IV) (ABT 1195 - 19 Aug 1245)
DE SAVOY Beatrice (ABT 1198 - Dec 1266)

Siblings
DE PROVENCE Margaret (Marguerite) (1221 - 21 Dec 1295)
OF PROVENCE Eleonore (Leonor) (ABT 1222 - 25 Jun 1291)
DE PROVENCE (DE SAVOY) Beatrice (1234 - 23 Sep 1267)

Marriage To ____ Louis IX "Saint Louis" (25 Apr 1215 - 25 Aug 1270)
    m. 27 May 1234 Sens, France

Notes

Parents
____ Louis VIII "the Lion" (3 Sep 1187 - 8 Nov 1226)
DE CASTILE Blanche (Blanca) Alphonsa (BEF 4 Mar 1188 - 27 Nov 1252)

Children by ____ Louis IX "Saint Louis" 25 Apr 1215 - 25 Aug 1270
____ Philippe III "le Hardi" ("the Bold") (1 May 1245 - 5 Oct 1285)

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