Isabeau de Bavière
Queen · 1385-1422 · born in 1370, died on 24 September 1435
Daughter of Duke Stephen III of Bavaria, Isabeau married King Charles VI in 1385, at the age of twelve, to seal the Franco-Bavarian alliance. Queen of France for forty years, she gave birth to twelve children, including the future Charles VII.
From 1392, the king’s fits of madness placed power in the hands of the king’s uncles, the Armagnacs and the Burgundians. Isabeau, alternately sidelined and solicited, strove to preserve her children and the crown amid the civil war and the Hundred Years’ War.
Her signature was affixed to the Treaty of Troyes (1420), which disinherited her son Charles VII in favour of Henry V of England — an act that earned her a reputation as an intriguing queen, long exaggerated by the black legend. She died in 1435, as the French reconquest was beginning.
In the tree of power
- Spouse: Charles VI le Fou (1380-1422)