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MARIE D’ANJOU, WIFE OF CHARLES VII.
CHARLOTTE DE SAVOIE, WIFE OF LOUIS XI.
1413
Round Marie d’Anjou and Charlotte de Savoie, wives of Charles VII. and Louis XI., partly from their own personality and partly from the circumstances amidst which they were placed, so much less interest gathers than around the two Queens who precede or the one who follows them, that I have preferred to pass over their reigns, and to conclude this volume with a sketch of the more interesting character and eventful life of Anne de Bretagne, whose death closes the annals of the early Queens of the house of Valois.
Marie d’Anjou.
Marie was the granddaughter of Louis, Duc d’Anjou, the second, handsomest, and perhaps worst of the sons of King Jean. Although she was exceedingly beautiful, and in many ways gifted, she had no influence with Charles VII., whom she had married as a child, when, his elder brothers being alive, there appeared no prospect of his becoming King. After his accession he constantly neglected her for Agnes Sorel and other mistresses. She seems not to have been wanting in judgment or capacity, and under different circumstances might have made an excellent queen; but her idea of duty was the submission of a slave, and her gentle, saintly character was more fitted for the cloister than the throne. She was the only human being her son, Louis XI., really loved,[277] and would never oppose, and her death soon after his accession to the throne was considered a public calamity. She had twelve children, of whom seven died young.