King René d'Anjou and His Seven Queens — A Closer Reading

A King Who Painted and Jousted

The first chapter inventories René's many roles: artist, author, craftsman, agriculturalist. Staley lists his works—Le Livre des Tournois, Regnault et Jehanneton, La Conquête de la Doulce Mercy—and notes his motto, "Fides Vitat Servata" (Faith Preserves Life). The catalog subject "René I, King of Naples and Jerusalem" suggests a political biography, but Staley dwells on the king's creative output: his illuminated manuscripts, his "Pas d'Armes" (knightly challenges), and his workshops. The excerpts show a man who "intercourse with his people" as a "troubadour King," more interested in art and ceremony than in statecraft. This framing shapes the entire book, making it as much a cultural history as a royal biography.

Queens, Mistresses, and the Court of Love

The chapters on Yolanda d'Aragona and Agnes Sorel reveal Staley's method: he juxtaposes official queens with unofficial ones. Yolanda, René's mother, is portrayed as a "constitutional Sovereign" who governed Anjou during English invasions. The excerpts describe her as "Lieutenant-General of Anjou," a rare role for a woman. In contrast, Agnes Sorel, mistress of Charles VII, is called the "Queen of Hearts." Staley notes that she "exercised no influence whatever upon the affairs of state," yet he devotes pages to her jewelry, her castles, and her daughters' marriages. The catalog subject "France -- Court and courtiers" barely captures this tension between formal power and informal influence. Staley's voice is often moralizing: he calls the code that legitimized royal bastards "the existent code of morals" with evident irony.

Anecdote as Evidence

Staley relies heavily on anecdote, sometimes at the expense of documentation. The excerpts include a story about a soothsayer telling a "little girl" she would be "the plaything of a King," and a tale of a rabbit with a medallion. These are vivid but unverified. The catalog subject "Court and courtiers" might lead a reader to expect systematic analysis, but Staley's method is associative: he moves from a tournament to a queen's dowry to a murder (the stabbing of Catherine de France in 1477). The text's structure—14 chapters, each focused on a woman—imposes order, but the narrative digresses freely. Readers should treat the anecdotes as period flavor rather than established fact. Staley's sources, listed in the front matter, include "Le Livre des Tournois" and "Les Comptes de Roy René," but he rarely cites them in the excerpts.

Staley's book is best approached as a series of character sketches held together by the figure of René. The catalog subjects are accurate but reductive: the work is less about kingship than about the women who surrounded a king. Readers interested in courtly culture, artistic patronage, or the role of royal mistresses will find rich material, though they should verify Staley's claims against more recent scholarship. The prose is engaging, the illustrations (including a colored frontispiece) are well-chosen, and the index is thorough. For a vivid, if sometimes credulous, portrait of fifteenth-century court life, this remains a useful source.

That rainy afternoon, King René’s gilded courts felt almost suffocating—so much ceremony, so many queens orbiting his favor. I closed the book, and my gaze drifted to the shelf. There, dusty and forgotten, sat a sturdier spine. I pulled it down, half-consciously. Alfred the Great — A Closer Reading offered no pageantry, just quiet resolve. The contrast was a comfort, like stepping from candlelit noise into a cold, honest room.