Joan
Joan was born in 1368 in Navarre, in what is now modern-day Spain, to royal parents. Her mother, Jeanne de Valois, was the daughter of the King of France, and her father was Charles II, King of Navarre.
Little is known about Joan’s childhood, but, like many royal children, she was used to create alliances through marriage. By the time she was 12, Joan’s father had arranged for her betrothal to the heir to the Kingdom of Castile, which shared a border with Navarre. This betrothal, however, broke down. Instead, she married John, Duke of Brittany, in 1382, becoming his third wife. Together, they had nine children:
Joan
Isabelle
John
Marie
Margaret
Arthur
Gilles
Richard
Blanche
John died on November 1, 1399, and was succeeded by their son, also John. As he was a minor, Joan was made his guardian and the regent of Brittany during his minority. Not long after, King Henry IV of England proposed to her. The marriage proposal was given out of mutual personal preference rather than a dynastic marriage. According to reports of the time, an affection developed between Joan and Henry while he resided at the Breton court during his banishment from England. Joan agreed to the marriage but stated that she could not go through with it until she had set the affairs of Brittany in order and arranged for the security of the duchy and her children.
Joan knew that it would not be possible for her to continue as regent of Brittany after having married the King of England, nor would she be able to take her sons with her to England. She negotiated with the Duke of Burgundy to make him guardian of her sons and regent of Brittany. Finally, she surrendered the custody of her sons and her power as regent of Brittany to the Duke of Burgundy, who swore to respect Breton rights and law, and departed for England with her daughters.
Queen Joan was described as beautiful, gracious, and majestic, but also as greedy and stingy, and she was accused of accepting bribes. Reportedly, she did not have a good impression of England and the English. She preferred the company of her Breton entourage, which caused offence to such a degree that her Breton courtiers were exiled by order of Parliament. King Henry gave Joan 10,000 marks a year to support herself. It was a massive amount, more than had been given to any previous Queen of England. Henry had six children from his first marriage, and Joan got along well with her new stepchildren, often taking the side of the future Henry V in his quarrels with his father. The marriage produced no living children; she is said to have given birth to stillborn twins. Such was her relationship with her stepchildren that even after Henry IV died in 1413, rather than returning to Brittany, she chose to remain in England.
This good relationship with her stepson would soon suffer when, upon his return from France, he brought her son Arthur of Brittany with him as a prisoner. Joan unsuccessfully tried to have him released.
Things deteriorated further when, in 1419, the goods of her personal confessor, Friar Randolph, were confiscated; the objects actually belonged to Joan. The following month, Randolph came before Parliament and claimed that Joan had "plotted and schemed for the death and destruction of our said lord the King in the most evil and terrible manner imaginable". Her large fortune was confiscated, and she was imprisoned at Pevensey Castle in Sussex and later at Leeds Castle in Kent. She was released on the order of Henry V in 1422, six weeks before he died.
After her release, her fortune was returned to her, and she lived the rest of her life quietly and comfortably with her own court at Nottingham Castle. She died in 1437 and was buried in Canterbury Cathedral next to Henry IV.
The effigy of Queen Joan next to that of her husband
Sources:
Lives of the Queens of England from the Norman Conquest, Agnes Strickland
Blood Royal: Issue of the Kings and Queens of Medieval England, 1066–1399, Thelma Anna Leese
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