Women Make The Changes: Death of Charles VIII &Accession of Louis XII

For Europe, the death of French King Charles VIII was perhaps the largest and most far-reaching of the numerous shocks of 1498. At the ripe age of 27 while residing at his family's Orleans estate in Amboise, the place where he grew up, the King of France hit the top of a door with his head. Rushing off to a tennis match, he hit a door lintel, and then, continued on his way. After the match he fell into a coma and died nine hours later. He had no heirs.

Charles' young queen, now widow Anne of Brittany, as heir to the recovered state of Brittany, was suddenly left without a clear line to maintain her power at court, except through some new marriage.  Charles' dear older sister Anne de Beaujeu had been his regent when he was a minor, and she might have answers. But she had retreated to administer Bourbon lands since 1491, and could only suggest to Charles' widow that she had better find a Valois close enough in the lineage of that same illustrious family. And he better be close enough to Charles if she hoped to stay in orbit. The young widow was 21 years old.

Amazingly she did, and by August 19, of 1498, she agreed to marry this Valois, the Duke of Orleans, if he could get his prior engagement to Joan (the true sister of both Charles and Anne Beaujeu) annulled. This involved petitioning the pope, Roderigo de Borgia. And so it was. In the same month, letters went out to the various sovereigns including those of Spain and England looking for peace treaties. Spain and England had been working thru the intermediary, the protonotary Ayala and was securing greater and greater security with each other. Henry VII in England wanted assurances that France would not help Scotland, and from Scotland that they would not receive help from France. A peaceful region would be necessary if King Henry VII of England wanted to grow trade and the tarriffs found in that activity.

In Paris, this Louis d'Orleans was eight years older than the just deceased King, but had come from a lesser line of the Valois family. He himself had tried to unseat Charles VIII during his regency, an uprising harnessing energies of other notables which was later termed 'The Mad War'. But that had been quashed by Charles' big sister Anne Beaujeu. Louis was captured, 'tried' and imprisoned until his wife, Joan of Berry, sister to Anne, who, loyal to Louis and her vows to him, faithful in her Christian love of Christ and Mary, and well-educated, if physically deformed, pled her case to let Louis go. Here's a link to wikipedia links on these sisters. And so he was. In time, Louis later served well under Charles on his invasion to Italy, and among many things, had seen at close hand the weaknesses of the forces, if not the states of Italy. Their soldiers could die and get tired just like French ones.

Anne of Brittany and Louis d'Orleans would marry and have nine children. Only two of these would survive birth. The first one, Claude, became the wife of Francis I: she would become the next Queen consort for France. But Anne, despite leaving to pick the administrators who would take charge of Brittany in her absence, and despite all the other changes (she had lost six pregnancies while married to Charles, in less than six years), she would not be crowned with a ceremony to Louis as queen until 1504. Louis and Anne would be buried together at Basilique Saint-Denis.

Crucially, Louis d'Orleans, though of a 'lesser line', could rightly claim an inheritance of suzerainty over Milan through his grandmother Valentina Visconti.