The Affairs of Mortals

Appendix: The War of the Bastards

An excerpt from A Brief Medieval History of Velois 2nd edition by Master of Historical Divination Salvador Devalance. Published by University of Whitegate Press, 1549 ME.

The War of the Bastards was a conflict between the Duc Philippe de Flan-Gothe - on behalf of his nephew, Louis VII - and the Comte Louis the Iron-Hearted, who served as the guardian for the underage king Henri IV.

The previous king, Henri III, came to power following a series of brutal dynastic struggles, an on again off again civil conflict which had lasted for decades, partially motivated by religion and partially by politics.  Furthermore, he came to the throne by accident rather than by anyone's intention. His uncle and elder brother had each coalesced a faction around themselves, and each worked to execute anyone who could form a threat to their power. Finally, they met each other in battle and - by happenstance - each was killed within an hour of the other, although neither side was aware of the fact until it was all over.

The dynastic genocide had left only a single claimant behind, a shy terrified boy of fifteen who had never had a day's instruction of how to rule. He had been hidden in a monastery by his mother before she and both of his two sisters were murdered by unknown assailants. The boy was always quiet and introspective by nature, and the colossal familial bloodletting he had witnessed as a boy only exasperated these traits.

His reign was marked by a determined avoidance of conflict. If this had been represented as a strong policy in pursuit of peace he might have been more well regarded. However, his vassals quickly realized that it was actually the result of a weak and desultory executive force, and took advantage of the situation to increase their own power at the expense of the traditional rights of the crown.

During his reign, Henri III fathered bastards of both sexes, but only two of his natural sons survived past early childhood. Soon after his coronation, he had married the widow Margaret de Emmoi, who was almost twenty years his elder, but she gave him no legitimate children. She had also failed to produce heirs for her first husband, and so it is almost certain that she was barren, besides quickly passing beyond her years of childbearing.

Despite this failure, their marriage was, to all indications, a happy one, despite the king's frequent affairs. When Margaret was taken in an outbreak of plague the king was inconsolable. He fell into a deep despair and forewent even the pretense of trying to govern.

A few years later, he also fell ill and it seemed that he would soon die. His ministers insisted that he must name a definite heir and legitimize one of his two sons. The king relented - one may presume out of a desire to be left alone to die in peace - and called for the mother of his youngest surviving son, Henri IV, to be brought to him. Jeanne was a peasant servant girl living at the royal palace, and one can imagine her surprise at being brought to the king's room, only to be told that she was marrying him and would soon be queen, at least briefly.

They were married, her son was legitimized, and a writ of succession was signed and witnessed. Later that night, the king died. The eleven-year-old boy was crowned, and power came to rest with a low-born dowager queen and a regency council.

Whatever her nature before her brief marriage, the dowager queen quickly turned tyrant. Using her influence over her son, she shaped the regency council until, after only a few years, it consisted entirely of her own minions. She knew the precarious nature of her son's position as well as her own, and responded with vicious retaliation at the slightest trace of dissent, but this only sowed further seeds of rebellion.

Many landowners who might have been won over by careful diplomacy, were instead exiled from the king's court. Cast adrift, they quickly found themselves drawn to another locus of power. The Duc Philippe had been biding his time carefully for this moment. Rather than bend the knee to the boy king, he had retreated to his own land with the new king's elder half-brother Louis VII.