The legacy of Loire women
Influential queens and courtiers and their historic chateaux
The chateaux of the Loire are in the centre of France and also at the centre of Frenchness. Rising from a soft, prosperous landscape, their monumental elegance betokens power and fragility but comes with a flipside of violence, skulduggery and debauchery.
Everyone knows the Loire Valley was the stomping ground of late medieval and Renaissance kings. But their women — mothers, wives, mistresses and a lone virgin — also had vital roles, and not just as producers of babies (though, the virgin aside, they managed that at an alarming rate, too).
Almost all the women were associated with several properties. It was the court’s habit to move around. For simplicity, we have linked each protagonist to the château with which she had the most visible, or dramatic, connection.
Joan of Arc (1412-31): Chinon
In 1429, a young woman rode from Lorraine to this vast, ridge-topping castle overlooking the Vienne river. She had come to tell King Charles VII that if he was (a paraphrase) too much of a drip to boot the English out of France, she’d do the job for him. Celestial voices had so bidden her. All she needed was his army. She was 17. The real surprise was that Charles VII agreed.
Shortly afterward, the French were relieving Orleans, clearing the region of Englishmen and giving them a fearful pasting at the battle of Patay. Some see it as the beginning of the end of the Hundred Years War.
These days Chinon remains a battered but utterly imposing veteran, which you would still not want to besiege. There is not much left inside, but what survives is good — and all the better for a recent $23.4-million makeover. And you may still stand where Joan stood, for that room remains.
Agnes Sorel (1422-50): Loches
Agnes was assuredly the temptress of the Loire Valley saga. She pioneered naked shoulders and a plunging neckline — and was famously portrayed with one breast exposed. Little wonder that she entwined Charles VII. She thus became the first official mistress to a French king (while also lady-in-waiting to his wife, the queen).
Charles was certainly besotted, bestowing upon her the Logis Royal at Loches. Within the citadel topping the town, this was a good and safe place to be. The citadel had a fortress at one end with a 36-metre keep that still looks like a fist raised at the sky.
At the other end, Agnes’s Logis Royal was among the first Loire chateaux built for leisure. It is posh, decorative and has the topless portrait of Sorel and lovely views over the valley.
Anne de Bretagne (1477-1514): Langeais
Anne was 11 when she was plunged into the snake pit of diplomacy. As the marriageable duchess of a mainly independent Brittany, she was a prize catch — and the Austrians thought they had landed her on her betrothal to the Habsburg Maximilian I. The French were appalled. Thus the French King Charles VIII attacked Rennes, unilaterally annulled her marriage to Max and bade her follow him to Langeais, for the wedding in 1491.
Diane de Poitiers (14991566): Chenonceau
Diane was the Loire’s second-sexiest woman, and evidently remained so into middle age. She was governess to the future Henry II when he was 11 and she 31. Before too long, they were lovers.
Henry was obliged to marry Catherine de Medicis when both were 15 but he remained bewitched by Diane, who was amply rewarded — not least with Chenonceau, the loveliest of all “Loire chateaux” (though it is actually on the River Indre).
When Henry was killed in a jousting tournament, Catherine took her revenge, expelling Diane from Chenonceau and taking it as hers.
Today the château retains a feminine grandeur and Diane’s bedchamber remains seductive.
Catherine de Medicis (1519-89): Blois
Catherine was stout, spoke with an Italian accent and, on marriage to the future Henry II, was dismissed as a “Florentine shopkeeper” by French courtiers who considered the Medicis decidedly newcomers. She also had to tolerate her husband’s preference for Diane de Poitiers. But as queen, then mother and regent to three subsequent kings, she was among the most powerful women in French history.
As such, she was all over the Loire Valley — but the Blois château remained a key royal base. Built around a courtyard, its four sides cover four distinct eras of Loire architecture — late medieval, through early Renaissance, then later Renaissance (when Francis I put up the see-and-be-seen outside staircase) and on to Neoclassical.
Now restored to Renaissance splendour, Blois is heavy with colour and hangings.
Mary Stuart (1542-87): Amboise
Amboise bills itself as the nursery of royals. Louis XI’s children, including the future Charles VIII, grew up there, as did Francis I — and all the offspring of Henry II and Catherine de Medicis who survived. It was for their eldest son, the future Francis II, that Mary Stuart was shipped across from Scotland at the age of five.
In France, young Mary was considered pretty, tall and gifted at music, poetry, riding, falconry and languages. She married Francis — short and sickly — in 1558, when she was 15, he 14. They were based at Amboise. When Francis took the throne just over a year later, the couple were king and queen of both France and Scotland, with a decent claim, too, to the English crown.
Amboise’s eminence ensured it benefited from the very finest Renaissance attention on the part of Italian artists and architects, most notably Leonardo da Vinci.