Round Marie d’Anjou and Charlotte de Savoie, wives of Charles VII. and Louis XI., partly from their own personality and partly from the circumstances amidst which they were placed, so much less interest gathers than around the two Queens who precede or the one who follows them, that I have preferred to pass over their reigns, and to conclude this volume with a sketch of the more interesting character and eventful life of Anne de Bretagne, whose death closes the annals of the early Queens of the house of Valois.
Marie was the granddaughter of Louis, Duc d’Anjou, the second, handsomest, and perhaps worst of the sons of King Jean. Although she was exceedingly beautiful, and in many ways gifted, she had no influence with Charles VII., whom she had married as a child, when, his elder brothers being alive, there appeared no prospect of his becoming King. After his accession he constantly neglected her for Agnes Sorel and other mistresses. She seems not to have been wanting in judgment or capacity, and under different circumstances might have made an excellent queen; but her idea of duty was the submission of a slave, and her gentle, saintly character was more fitted for the cloister than the throne. She was the only human being her son, Louis XI., really loved,277 and would never oppose, and her death soon after his accession to the throne was considered a public calamity. She had twelve children, of whom seven died young.
Charlotte de Savoie was much less gifted and more unfortunate than her predecessor. Charles VII., with all his faults, was neither cruel, avaricious, nor disagreeable, and his wife was free to amuse herself and direct her children and household as she pleased. But Louis XI. was a cruel, remorseless tyrant, and the only consolation of the unfortunate Charlotte de Savoie was that she seldom saw him. She lived in seclusion and with little state at Loches and Amboise, and when his death gave her freedom she was already in bad health, and only survived him for a few months. Of her six children only three lived to grow up: Charles VIII., Anne de Beaujeu, Regent of France, and Jeanne, the deformed wife of Louis XII.