"Holy Father," she adds demurely, "I then married the Lord Otho of Brunswick."
The Sieur de Bouche, always methodical, arranges Queen Jeanne's husbands in a list according to priority (not alphabetical).
It is as difficult to arrive at the real story of this famous lady as at that of Mary Queen of Scots. Both were renowned for beauty, but both must have possessed a quality of charm less easy to define or they could not have exerted so powerful a hold on the imagination of their contemporaries. Both were accused, if not convicted, of great crimes, and both came to a tragic end; Queen Jeanne dying in prison in her own kingdom of Naples.
King René, the kind, merry, artistic, unpractical monarch, who is said to have been able to do all things except govern a kingdom, is remembered with real love by his people. There is a romance attached to his name. His first marriage was merely one of State policy and during his wife's lifetime he is said to have loved Jeanne de la Val, to whom he gave the "celebrated and illustrious barony of Baux," in 1458.
On the death of the Queen Isabel, he married the lady of his heart, and there appears good reason to believe that this love-match was a deeply happy one, King and Queen though the lovers were.
René the Good seems to have been made of that sort of fibre that radiates happiness as the sun radiates warmth.
During this reign the town of Orange gave birth to an institution which seems curiously out of keeping with the spirit of the time and place, viz., the Provençal Parliament, the creation of Count William of Orange.
It was regarded popularly as one of the scourges of the country,
"Parlemant, Mistral et Durance
Sont les trois fléaux de Provence";