In chapter 1, I suggested that contemporary chronicle accounts of the Affaire de la Tour de Nesle should be read as scapegoat or persecution texts.
In this chapter I consider another exilee, Valentina Visconti, Duchess of Orleans (1368—1408), who was forced to leave the royal court in 1396, accused of bewitching her intermittently insane brother-in-law, King Charles VI.
Strictly speaking, the chronicles recording the story of Valentina cannot be understood as persecution texts, because their authors are not innocents who believe in Valentina’s guilt. However, they tell a story of scapegoating, an attempt by the king’s battling relatives to restore peace by blaming Valentina and sending her into exile.Different from the tragedy of the Burgundian princesses, Valentina’s expulsion is generally believed to have been unjustified. Still, the episode has not been much contextualized. This essay aims less to recalibrate readings of primary sources than to shed light on the episode by fleshing it out, considering the primary sources in a broad context. Valentina’s status as scapegoat becomes clear when her ejection from the court is examined as part of the larger struggle for power between Valentina’s husband, Louis Duke of Orleans (1472-1407),1 and [208]
the royal brothers’ uncle, Philip Duke of Burgundy (1342—1404). Philip appears to have begun accusing Louis of casting spells on the king shortly after the king’s first episode of madness, around the time that Charles VI first took measures to ensure the peaceful transfer of power in the case of his premature death by naming Louis regent of the realm. As part of a strategy to discredit Louis, Philip’s accusations of witchcraft incited a vigorous response from his nephew. Reciprocal charges of sorcery soon came fast and furious. And yet, it was Valentina who was eventually made into the culprit and forced to flee.
In addition to being entangled in her husband’s conflict with his uncle, Valentina was also caught up during those same years in a preexisting and overlapping rivalry with Queen Isabeau of Bavaria.
Representing competing branches of the Visconti family, each woman lobbied for her family’s causes, and the descent of the star of Valentina’s branch of the family in the mid-1390s gave Isabeau the chance to promote her family’s interests. Nineteenth and early twentieth-century biographers regarded the queen as a spiteful tormentor who, jealous of the king’s preference for Valentina during his bouts of insanity, planted rumors that the duchess was poisoning the king.[209] More recently, with the rehabilitation of the once-notorious Isabeau, the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction, to the extent that the conflict between the women has tended to be ignored or denied.[210]In this essay I suggest that, based on an examination of the women’s activity in 1395—96, Isabeau was almost certainly involved in Valentina’s departure, but that her motivation, based on the dynastic rivalry within the Visconti family, was political rather than romantic jealousy. While Valentina was being targeted as a scapegoat for the disruptive rivalry between the dukes of Orleans and Burgundy, Isabeau was taking advantage of the situation to damage her political rival as part of a larger plan to promote an alliance favored by her own branch of the Visconti. Valentina’s exile from court can fruitfully be read as scapegoating episode, but the story as a whole shows how thoroughly the women were invested in carrying out dynastic obligations.