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Looking for matches for the following people:
Catherine and Isabeau de Valois (sisters of TTL Charles VII). One of them is likely to be married in Castile, but that still leaves the other (OTL Catherine de Valois I'm considering as either wife of James I of Scotland or an alt-son of his older brother)
Maria of Navarre (sister to TTL Charles VII's wife)
Marie of Burgundy (sister of Jean sans Peur, OTL countess of Savoy, since her place has been taken by Jeanne de Valois)
Philippe the Good of Burgundy needs a second wife (Jacqueline of Holland is already spoken for, unfortunately), and his daughters need husbands
Showcasing the life and times of Charles VI's youngest daughter, Catherine de Valois:
Isobel Cooper: We're here with actress, Christina Sterling [4], who is playing Katherine of France in the upcoming series:
The Lily and the Lion, a story based on the French court at the start of the fifteenth century. Christina, hello and welcome to the show."
Christina: *in French-accented English* bonjour, and I'm very glad to be here.
Isobel: first of all, you're French, despite the very English sounding name, correct?
Christina: oui. I was born in Lyons and then raised in Toulouse since I was five.
Isobel: what drew you to the role of playing Katherine?
Christina: I think that this is
such a
turbulent period of history. Not only of France, but of England too. In France you have the king - Katherine's father, played by the fantastic Gabriel André [4] - going insane, you have her mother's - I really think Valentine Radoux [4] was
born to play this role - plotting and scheming, to say nothing of her love-affair with her brother-in-law, the duc d'Orléans. Then you have all the princes - Katherine's uncles - fighting it out. Henry V of England marching in to France to back up his nephew's throne, after the Navarrese and the Bretons and the Savoyards...all these people who are...to put it plainly...lying, cheating and killing one another just so they can come out on top.
Isobel: tell us about your character.
Christina: I play Katherine, as you said. And for a large portion of her life, the French royal court was at Toulouse (where I grew up. *makes an appropriately Toulouse-pride themed comment* rather than Paris. Paris was...chaotic...at the time, and when she was little, her uncles came to this agreement that sort of...divided custody of the royal children. Originally, the plan was that custody of Katherine would be awarded to the duc d'Orléans, and, that, eventually she would marry his son, Charles-
Isobel: Charles was quite a bit older than her, was he not?
Christina: well, we don't know
exactly how much older he was than her[1] because his father had two sons named Charles. One of them
obviously died in infancy, but the other was murdered in 1407. But while the show portrays Charles - Anton Czerny [4] - as nearly a decade older than Katherine, it's more likely that they were far closer in age than that.
Isobel: so she would've been six-years-old when her husband was murdered?
Christina: yes. And the show's taken some liberties with Katherine. No, Charles d'Orléans wasn't, as far as we can tell, murdered in front of her either. We actually
don't know all that much about Katherine's childhood after she gets removed from Paris. And there's not really much
said about her during the first decade of her life. But such an upbringing - bouncing from one place to another, the murder of your fiancé-
Isobel: that was by the duke of Burgundy, correct?
Christina: *blushes* the duc de Bourgogne - Simon Corneille [4] *fans herself dramatically - what can we say about the man. He was ruthless, ambitious and didn't let
anyone stand in his way. We
know that after he murdered Charles - which was an accident, he was actually trying to kill Charles' dad and things got...mixed up. It's fascinating to think how different things might have gone if
he had murdered Orléans instead of his son. - he tried to
stop Orléans from marrying his next son, Philippe, to Katherine, and offered a Burgundian princess [2] to Orléans instead.
Isobel: did he really think Orléans would accept?
Christina: he probably
knew Orléans
wouldn't, but I think he was trying to
buy time so that he could get to Katherine. His second son, Jean [3] was three years
younger than Katherine, and, while Burgundy already had
two matches to the royal family, his daughter, Marguerite (Marianne Theodore) [4] was the duchesse de Guienne and his heir was engaged to Katherine's sister (Eleanor Chant) [4], so he might've wished to tip the scales in favour of the Burgundian party at court. We
do know that he couldn't get his hands on Katherine but as I say, the next time we can pinpoint her with any accuracy is at her brother, the dauphin's funeral in 1412, because we have the accounts for mourning robes ordered for her, documenting that she
was still staying with her mother.
Isobel: do you think the real cause of her decidedly odd marriage to the duc de Bourbon was to hide a pregnancy from a steamy affair like on the show
Christina: well, Katherine
did have an impulsive nature, and she was a romantic - her marriages tell us this - but she was also fourteen at the time.
Isobel: so the sex aspect of the show is-
Christina: I think a lot of us were actually surprised by how much sex and scandal there was. Katherine's mother and the duc d'Orléans, Philippe de Vertus and the duchesse de Guienne, and so on for the simple reason that you look at the portraits of these people and you can't think of them as "sexy".
Isobel: back to the duc de Bourbon...what was the reason for the marriage?
Christina: again. This is one of those things we can't know what drove it. We know the Bourbons were wealthy and the duc was the grandson of the great duc de Berri, who was heavily involved both in screwing the Burgundians over
and backing the royalist party. But no records of how this "match" came about survive. It could've been a love match, or it could've been coldly calculated (as portrayed in the show). We also know that it was around this time that the king of Castile came looking for a match with Katherine, the problem is that
both Katherine and her niece with the same name are "Katherine, daughter of Charles", which makes it difficult to ascertain
which Katherine he was looking to wed. The show has used that...ambiguity to portray her having an affair when the king of Castile - played by Georges Barath [4] - comes to France to find a wife. The truth is that the king of Castile wouldn't have come to France at all, and even if he had, it's
highly doubtful that she would've behaved in such a manner.
Isobel: So, the season
ends with her marrying the duc de Bourbon in front of the whole court. She's
clearly pregnant, the baby's made out to be his, but in the trailer we meet a new character...
Christina: ah, the king in exile. James of Scotland., Andrew Kern [4], yes...he's going to be rather important to the plot going forward...that's all I can say. *smiles enigmatically*
Isobel: thank you once again, Christina. For those of you at home, I'm Isobel Cooper, with Christina Sterling on the set of season 3 of
The Lily and the Lion, starts next Thursday at nine p.m. Don't miss it.
[1] this is roughly OTL: The
Chronique de Saint-Denis records that the duchess of Orléans gave birth 26 May 1391 “
dans l’hôtel royal de Saint-Paul de Paris” to “
un fils...Charles”, whose godfather was “
monseigneur le duc de Bourbon”. Père Anselme states that “
[le] 20. compte de Jean Perdrier” records that “
Charles” died “
l’année suivante en l’hôtel de S. Paul” and was buried “
en l’église des Celestins de Paris le lundi 27 septembre”. Anselme links this latter entry to Charles who was born 24 Nov 1394 (see below), meaning that “
l’année suivante” would be 1395. He assumes that Charles born 26 May 1391 was the duke’s son who succeeded his father in 1407. Without seeing the original entry in the “
Perdrier” account, it is impossible to assess the true position, although it seems unlikely that two sons of Louis Duke of Orléans would have been given the same name as only exceptional cases of duplicate names can be observed in the Valois/Capet family. His godfather being Louis II Duc de Bourbon, as recorded in the
Chronique de Saint-Denis as noted above, suggests that his name “
Charles” in the same source was an error and that his actual name was Louis.
[2] OTL. Burgundy's second daughter, Catherine, was betrothed to Philippe d'Orléans, Comte de Vertus in 1410
[3] Anne of Burgundy, OTL duchess of Bedford, is born male
[4] all fictional characters, but imagine something (appearance wise) of
The Tudors crossed with
Game of Thrones crossed with your average soap-opera