The Royal Succession

by Maurice Druon

  The pastrycooks had for days been building their almond-paste castles in the colours of France.

  And the mustard! The mustard had not arrived! They needed sixty-two gallons. And then of course the guests couldn’t eat out of the palms of their hands! They had made a mistake in selling off so cheaply the fifty thousand wooden bowls from the preceding coronation; it would have been more profitable to wash them and keep them. As for the four thousand pitchers, they’d either been broken or stolen. The seamstresses were hastily hemming two thousand six hundred ells of cloths, and it could be calculated that the total expense would amount to near ten thousand livres.33

  But in fact the inhabitants of Rheims would get their money back, because the coronation had attracted great numbers of Lombard and Jewish merchants who paid tax on their sales.

  The coronation, like all royal ceremonies, took place in a fairlike atmosphere. A continual spectacle was offered to the populace during these days, and people came from far to see it. The women dressed in new dresses; the gallants did not look glum at the sight of a jeweller’s shop; brocades, fine stuffs and furs sold without difficulty. The clever made fortunes, and the shopkeepers who served their customers competently could make in a single week enough to keep them for five years.

  The new King was lodged in the Archiepiscopal Palace, before which a crowd was permanently gathered to watch for the appearance of the Sovereign or marvel at the Queen’s coach which was covered in brilliant scarlet.

  Queen Jeanne, surrounded by her ladies-in-waiting, supervised, with a woman’s delighted excitement, the unpacking of the twelve trunks and four chests, the coffer containing shoes and the coffer containing spices. Her wardrobe was certainly the finest that any woman in France had ever had. There was a special dress for every day and almost every hour of this triumphal journey.

  The Queen had made her solemn entry into the town dressed in a coat of cloth of gold lined with ermine, while shows, mystery plays and entertainments were taking place all along the streets for the benefit of the royal couple. For the supper on coronation eve, which was to take place shortly, the Queen would wear a dress of violet velvet trimmed with miniver. For the morning of the coronation she had a dress of turkey cloth of gold, a scarlet cloak and a vermilion cape; for dinner a dress embroidered with the arms of France; for supper a dress of cloth of gold and two different mantles of ermine.

  The following day she was to wear a dress of green velvet, and later another of azure camocas with a squirrel cape. She would never appear in public wearing the same dress, nor even the same jewels.

  These marvels were laid out in a room whose decorations had also been brought from Paris: white silk hangings embroidered with thirteen hundred and twenty-one golden parrots, and in the centre the great arms of the Counts of Burgundy showing a lion gules; the baldaquin, counterpane and cushions were decorated with seven thousand silver trefoils. On the floor had been placed carpets with the arms of France and of the county of Burgundy.

  Jeanne went several times into Philippe’s room to show him the beauty of some stuff or the perfection of some creation.

  ‘My dear Sire, my well-beloved,’ she cried, ‘how happy you are making me!’

  Though little inclined to be emotionally demonstrative, she could not help tears coming to her eyes. She was dazzled by her own fate, particularly when she remembered that she had but recently been in prison at Dourdan. What an astounding reversal of fortune in less than eighteen months! She thought of the dead Marguerite, she thought of her sister Blanche of Burgundy, who was still shut up in Château-Gaillard. ‘Poor Blanche, who loved finery so much. What pleasure today would have given her!’ she thought, as she tried on a golden belt encrusted with rubies and emeralds.

  Philippe was anxious, and his wife’s enthusiasm tended to depress him; he was examining the accounts with his Bursar.

  ‘I am delighted, my dear, that all this pleases you,’ he ended by saying. ‘You see, I am following the example of my father, who, as you know, was very careful in his expenditure though he was never stingy when it was a matter of the royal majesty. You must show off these beautiful clothes well, because they are for the people who provide them by their labour, as much as they are for you; and take great care of them, for you will not be able to have others for some time. After the coronation we shall have to economize.’

  ‘Philippe,’ Jeanne asked, ‘won’t you do something for my sister Blanche on this day?’

  ‘I have, I have. She is being treated as a princess again, but with the reservation that she does not go outside the walls of her prison. A difference must be made between Blanche who sinned, and you, Jeanne, who were always pure though falsely accused.’

  As he said these last words, he looked at his wife with a gaze which revealed more anxiety for the royal honour than any certainty of her love.

  ‘Besides,’ he added, ‘her husband is far from pleasing me at the moment. He is a bad brother to me!’

  Jeanne realized that it would be useless to insist and that it would be to her advantage never to open the subject again. As long as Philippe was King, he refused to free Blanche.

  Jeanne withdrew and Philippe returned to the examination of the long sheets of figures Geoffroy de Fleury was presenting for his inspection.

  The expenses were not limited merely to the clothes of the King and Queen. Philippe had, indeed, received a few presents. For instance, the grey robe he was wearing that day had been given him by his grandmother, Marie of Brabant, the widow of Philippe III; and Mahaut had given the figured cloth for the dresses of the little Princesses and the young Louis-Philippe. But it was little among so much.

  The King had had to provide new clothes for his fifty-four sergeants-at-arms and their commander, Pierre de Galard, the Master of the Crossbowmen. Adam Héron, Robert de Gamaches, Guillaume de Seriz, the chamberlains, had each received ten ells of striped cloth from Douai to make themselves stylish coats. Henry de Meudon, Furant de la Fouaillie and Jeannot Malgeneste, the huntsmen, had been given new liveries, as had all the archers. And as twenty knights were to be armed after the coronation, there were another twenty robes to give! These presents of clothes were customary gifts; and precedent also demanded that the King should add to the shrine of Saint-Denis a golden lily set with emeralds and rubies.

  ‘What’s the total?’ Philippe asked.

  ‘Eight thousand five hundred and forty-eight livres, thirteen sols, and eleven deniers, Sire,’ replied the Bursar. ‘Perhaps you might ask for the dues normally paid at a happy accession?’

  ‘My accession will be all the happier if I impose no new taxes. We’ll manage some other way,’ said the King.

  At this moment the Count of Valois was announced. Philippe raised his hands towards the ceiling: ‘That’s what we’ve forgotten in our calculations. You’ll see, Geoffroy, you’ll see! That uncle will cost me more by himself than ten coronations! He’s come to do a deal with me. Leave me alone with him.’

  How splendid Monseigneur of Valois was! Embroidered, bedizened, doubled in size by his furs which opened on a robe sewn with precious stones! If the inhabitants of Rheims had not known that the new King was young and thin, they might have taken him for the King himself.

  ‘My dear Nephew,’ he began, ‘you see me much distressed, much distressed on your account. Your brother-in-law of England is not coming.’

  ‘For a long while now, Uncle, the King of England has not attended our coronations,’ Philippe replied.

  ‘Of course; but they send a representative, some relation or great lord of their Court to occupy their place as Duke of Guyenne. But Edward has sent no one; he thereby confirms the fact that he does not recognize you. The Count of Flanders, whom you thought you had won over with your treaty last September, is not here either, nor is the Duke of Brittany.’

  ‘I know, Uncle, I know.’

  ‘As for the Duke of Burgundy, don’t let’s mention him; we knew very well that he would let you down. But, on the other hand, his m
other, our Aunt Agnès, entered the town a while ago, but I do not think that she has come with the purpose of giving you her support.’

  ‘I know, Uncle, I know,’ Philippe repeated.

  The unexpected arrival of the last daughter of Saint Louis worried Philippe more than he liked to say. At first he had thought that the Duchess Agnès had come to negotiate. But she showed no haste to put in an appearance, and he had determined not to take the first step himself. ‘If the people, who acclaim me when I appear, and who believe that I am to be envied, only knew of the hostility and danger around me!’ he thought.

  ‘Indeed,’ went on Valois, ‘out of the six lay peers who should hold your crown tomorrow, you have precisely none.’34

  ‘But I have, Uncle; you’re forgetting the Countess of Artois and yourself.’

  Valois violently shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘The Countess of Artois!’ he cried. ‘A woman holding your crown when you yourself, Philippe, you yourself, have only reached your position by excluding women!’

  ‘Holding the crown is not wearing it,’ said Philippe.

  ‘Did Mahaut help you to become King that you should increase her importance in this way! You’ll but lend more credit to all the lies that are going about. Don’t let’s bring up the past, Philippe, but is it not really Robert who should occupy the peer’s seat for Artois?’

  Philippe pretended not to have heard his uncle’s last words.

  ‘At all events the ecclesiastical peers are here,’ he said.

  ‘They’re here, they’re here,’ said Valois, shaking his rings. ‘But there are only five out of the six who should be here. And what do you think they’ll do, those peers of the Church, when they see that on the side of the kingdom there is but one hand – and what a hand! – raised to crown you?’

  ‘But, Uncle, do you count for nothing?’

  It was Valois’s turn to ignore the question.

  ‘Even your own brother is cool towards you,’ he said.

  ‘It’s no doubt because Charles’, replied Philippe softly, ‘does not fully realize, my dear Uncle, on what good terms we are, and he may think that he is serving you by doing me an ill-office. But you may be reassured; his arrival is announced for tomorrow.’

  ‘Why don’t you give him a peerage at once? Your father did it for me, and your brother Louis for you; I should feel less alone in supporting you.’

  ‘Or less alone in betraying me,’ thought Philippe, who went on: ‘Is it for Robert, or for Charles, that you have come to plead, or did you want to talk to me of yourself?’

  Valois fell silent for a moment, lolled back in his chair, and contemplated the diamond glittering on his forefinger.

  ‘Fifty or a hundred thousand?’ Philippe wondered. ‘I don’t care a damn about the others. But I need him, and he knows it. If he refuses and makes a scandal, I may have to postpone my coronation.’

  ‘Nephew,’ said Valois at last, ‘you can see that I have not stood aloof and that I have even spent a lot of money on my clothes and my suite to do you honour. But if the other peers are absent, I think I shall have to withdraw. What would be said, if I were seen alone at your side? That you had bought me, precisely that.’

  ‘I should deplore that, Uncle, I should deplore it very much. But there it is; I cannot oblige you to do something which displeases you. Perhaps the time has come to give up the custom by which the peers raise their hands to the crown.’

  ‘Nephew! Nephew!’ cried Valois.

  ‘And if there must be consent by election,’ Philippe went on, ‘perhaps it should be asked, not of the six great barons, but of the people, Uncle, who provide men for the armies and money for the Treasury. It will become the duty of the Estates, whom I shall summon.’

  Valois could not contain himself; leaping from his chair, he began shouting: ‘You’re blaspheming, Philippe, or you’ve gone mad! Has there ever been a king elected by his subjects? Your Estates are a splendid innovation! These ideas come straight from Marigny, who was born of the lower orders and did your father so much injury. I am telling you that, if you begin like this, in fifty years’ time the people will manage without us; they’ll choose some rich burgess for king, some doctor of parliament, some grocer who has made a fortune by thieving. No, Nephew, no; this time I’ve made up my mind; I shall not hold up the crown of a king who is only of his own making, and who is prepared to act in such a way that the crown must soon become the perquisite of clodhoppers!’

  Purple in the face, he was striding up and down the room.

  ‘A hundred thousand or fifty thousand?’ Philippe was still wondering. ‘What sum must he be bribed with?’

  ‘Very well, Uncle, don’t hold it,’ he said. ‘But let me send for my Bursar at once.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To get him to alter the lists of donations I am to seal tomorrow, in celebration of my happy accession; you head that list for a hundred thousand livres.’

  The thrust told. Valois stood there flabbergasted, his arms outstretched.

  Philippe realized he had won and, though the victory had cost him dear, he had to make an effort not to smile at the sight of his uncle’s face. The latter quickly managed, however, to cover his embarrassment. He had been cut off in the middle of his rage; he continued with it. Anger was with him a method of trying to confuse other people’s reasoning, when his own arguments were weak.

  ‘To begin with, Eudes is at the bottom of all the harm,’ he said. ‘I blame him very much for it and I shall write to him! And what right had the Count of Flanders and the Duke of Brittany to take his part and refuse your summons? When the King summons you to hold his crown, you come to do so! Am I not here myself? The barons, indeed, are overstepping their rights. And there lies the danger of authority passing to the little vassals and the burgesses. As for Edward of England, what faith can be placed in a man who behaves like a woman? I shall therefore be at your side to set them an example. And what you contemplated giving me I shall accept out of a sense of justice. For it is only just that those who are loyal to the King should be treated in a different manner from those who betray him. You govern well. As to this gift which marks your esteem for me, when are you going to sign it?’

  ‘At once, Uncle, if you so wish. But it will bear tomorrow’s date,’ replied King Philippe V.

  For the third time, and always by means of money, he had silenced the Count of Valois.

  ‘It is certainly time I was crowned,’ said Philippe to his Bursar, when Valois had left. ‘If I had to do any more negotiating I think next time I should have to sell the kingdom.’

  And when Fleury showed surprise at the enormous sum promised, the King added: ‘Don’t worry, don’t worry, Geoffroy, I have given no date as to when the donation is to be paid. He’ll only get it a little at a time. But he’ll be able to borrow on it. Now let’s go to supper.’

  The ceremonial demanded that after the evening meal the King, surrounded by his officers and the chapter, should go to the cathedral to meditate and pray. The church was already prepared, the tapestries hung, the hundreds of candles in their places, and the great dais raised in the choir. Philippe’s prayers were short; nevertheless, he spent a considerable time in being instructed for the last time on the sequence of the ritual and the gestures he would have to make. He verified that the side doors were locked, inquired into the security arrangements, and asked where everyone was sitting.

  ‘The lay peers, the members of the royal family and the great officers of State are on the dais,’ it was explained to him. ‘The Constable remains at your side. The Chancellor stays at the Queen’s side. The throne, opposite yours, is that of the Archbishop of Rheims, and the seats placed about the high altar are for the ecclesiastical peers.’

  Philippe wandered slowly about the dais, and turned down the corner of a carpet with his foot.

  ‘How strange it is,’ he thought. ‘I was here only last year for my brother’s coronation. And I paid no attention to all these details.’

 
; He sat down for a moment, but not on the royal throne; a superstitious fear prevented his occupying it yet. ‘Tomorrow I shall really be King.’ He thought of his father, of the line of his ancestors, who had preceded him in this church; he thought of his brother, killed by a crime of which he was innocent but by which he was now profiting; he thought of the other crime, the murder of the child, which he equally had not ordered but of which he was the silent accomplice, almost the inspirer. He thought of death, his own death, and of the millions of men who were his subjects, of the millions of fathers, sons, brothers whom he would govern until then.

  ‘Are they all like me,’ he wondered, ‘criminals if they had the opportunity, innocent only because they are powerless, and ready to make use of evil to accomplish their ambitions? And yet, when I was at Lyons, my only desire was for justice. But is that certain? Is human nature really so detestable, or is it royalty which makes us like this? Is the discovery that one is so impure and so besmirched the tribute one must pay to rule? Why did God make us mortal, since it is death that makes us so detestable, through the fear we have of it, and through the use we make of it? Perhaps someone will try to kill me tonight.’

  He watched the great shadows wavering in the high windows between the pillars. He felt no repentance, only a lack of happiness at being King.

  ‘This no doubt is what is called an orison, and why we are counselled to come to the church the night before the coronation.’

  He judged himself clearly for what he was: a bad man, with the gifts of a very great king.

  He was not sleepy; he would gladly have stayed there much longer meditating on himself, human destiny, the origins of human actions, and asking himself the greatest questions in the world, those that can never be answered.