External reasons to doubt the guilt
Of course, the fact that the Affaire de la Tour de Nesle looks like a persecution text does not necessarily mean that it is. To bolster the case, in this section I lay out reasons for doubting the princesses’ guilt independent of the texts in which their story has been transmitted.
None of these reasons is sufficient in itself to prove innocence, but, cumulatively, they cast doubt on the charge.The first of these has to do with the spatial layout of royal living quarters. As we have seen, two of the chronicle sources record contemporary belief that magic would have been required to make the affairs possible. Jean Favier explains that the household of Louis, the king’s oldest son, comprised about sixty members, while that of the middle son, Philip, counted about 150. Favier concludes that given that king and his sons lived in close physical proximity, sharing officers and other followers, a group of400 to 600 people gravitated around the family whenever they resided in Paris.[59] The young Philip the son presided over a household that included 10 chevaliers de bannerets, 11 bacheliers (among them the unfortunate Gautier of Aunay), 15 ecuyers, as well as numerous live-in musicians.[60] Could Gautier have lived beside Philip, dans son intimite, as Favier expresses it, carrying on an affair with his sister-in-law for three years before finally being noticed? As for the hotels of princesses, we know from Philip’s later accounts that the queen’s hotel included a lady, five demoiselles, and a femme de chambre, among the many officers, who also moved from household to household. Separate logis were not available for the queen’s staff.[61]
Another cause for doubt is that no one in a position of power, including the husbands, deployed the adultery charge once the affair had been disclosed and the alleged criminals had paid the price for their “misdeeds.” The reason that the alleged conspiracy mattered so much in the first place—the danger that the children of the sons of the king of France were illegitimate—was immediately forgotten by those affected.
Had it been believed that Marguerite had been involved in a three-year-long affair at the time of her arrest, the paternity of her only child, Jeanne, born in 1312, would have been in question. However, as we have seen, Louis X made a point of formally recognizing her as his own before he died. Nor did Louis’s brother, Philip V, Louis’s brother, raise Jeanne’s possible illegitimacy as an obstacle to the throne during his successful campaign to take it from her, using only the child’s youth and, eventually, gender against her.[62] Surely Philip V or the barons whom he was required to convince of the validity of his claim to the throne did not believe that Jeanne might be illegitimate or they would have raised the point to support her disqualification.[63] But the chronicle tells us simply that women were declared incapable of inheriting the throne of France.[64] The persecution of the princesses would not be evoked again during the reigns of Philip IV’s sons, and certainly the story had no effect on the bid for the throne of Jeanne’s son, Charles the Bad of Navarre, who challenged Charles V for the throne throughout much of that king’s reign.[65]A further reason for doubt is a transaction that took place between Philip IV’s brother, Charles Count of Valois, on the one hand, and Gautier V of Aunay and Gillette de Clary, father and stepmother of the brothers Aunay, on the other, not even two weeks after Philip IV drew his last breath. We have already seen that the count presided over the trial that exonerated Jeanne just after Philip IV’s death. In addition, he seems to have restored the lands of the executed brothers to their family. Laurent Nabias explains that the parents granted the count all rights to the seigneuries of Gondreville and Levignen,[66] suggesting that the transaction may represent a confiscation of the executed men’s lands, given that Charles of Valois took part in the trial that condemned the brothers.
And yet, Nabias continues, the same document recording the transaction states that as long as Gillette lived she was to enjoy usufruct of the lands and receive all rents from them in exchange for an annual rent of 160 livres parisis. Also, the document states that in exchange for a doubling of the rent Charles generously grants the couple, de grace especiale, hereditary rights over the seigneuries for their successors, should Gillette have a son. If Charles of Valois regretted the fate of the brothers Aunay, refusing to take advantage of their parents would have been one way of easing his conscience.It is perhaps significant as well that at the time of the arrests none of the daughters-in-law had produced a male heir. Marguerite, wife of Philip’s oldest son, Louis, had only one living child, Jeanne, to show for nearly ten years of marriage.[67] Louis could not have helped but worry about his line and hope to find a more fertile partner: he is reputed to have suffered from ill health, which may have affected his capacity to reproduce, and this would have made him all the more anxious to procreate.[68] Nor does the marriage between Philip’s youngest son, Charles, and Blanche seem to have produced a son.[69] Jeanne, wife of Philip’s middle son, had born several children, four of them living, at the time of the tragedy.[70] But all of the children were girls.
Also interesting is the fact that before Philip IV moved against the princesses, he had already taken care to insure that their loss would produce no serious repercussions. For one thing, he acted believing that he would be able to
Affaire de la Tour de Nesle in Contemporary Chronicles | 27 secure annulments for his sons’ marriages, allowing them to remarry. However, the Grandes chroniques obscures this bit of insurance on the part of Philip IV by misdating the pope’s death, placing it before the affaire episode. The arrests of the princesses, writes the narrator, took place on Tuesday of Easter Week, or 9 April, Easter falling on 7 April in 1314.[71] Pope Clement V died on 20 April,[72] and his seat remained vacant until John XXII assumed office on 7 August 1316, making annulments of the princes’ marriages impossible for well over a year after the affaire.
For this reason, Marguerite’s death in prison in April 1315, which cleared the way for Louis’s remarriage to Clemence of Hungary on 19 August 1315, has been viewed as suspicious. The marriage of the youngest prince Charles was annulled to allow him to marry Marie of Luxembourg when he took the throne in 1322.[73]Philip IV had guaranteed that the scandal would have no lasting effect in still one more way. On 2 April 1314, the brother of the Burgundian princess Jeanne, having reached the age of majority, reaffirmed his renunciation of his rights to the county of Burgundy in favor of his sister.[74] Just days before Philip had the princesses arrested, in other words, he had verified that the country of Burgundy was safely in the hands of his son, Philip.