Marie de Coucy (Queen)

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Marie de Coucy († 1284 ) was a French noblewoman. As the second wife of the Scottish King Alexander II , she was Queen of Scotland from 1239 .

origin

Marie de Coucy came from the French noble family Boves . She was the eldest daughter of Enguerrand III. de Coucy and his third wife Marie de Montmirail . Her father was an influential nobleman from Picardy , through him she was a great-great-granddaughter of the French King Louis VI.

Marriage to the Scottish King

Joan of England , the first wife of Alexander II, died in 1238, so that the previously childless king urgently had to remarry for dynastic reasons. Apparently he renewed his contacts with France, with which Scotland had been allied at the beginning of his rule from 1216 to 1217. During this time, Scotland and a French army had supported the English barons who had rebelled against King John Ohneland in the Barons' First War . Presumably Alexander II met Marie's father, who had belonged to the French army in England. The young Marie was now brought to Scotland as the bride of the then forty-year-old Alexander II, where the wedding took place on May 15, 1239 in Roxburgh . The marriage of the Scottish king with a member of the French aristocracy brought back memories of the former Franco-Scottish alliance and thus affirmed Scotland's independence from England. But it also increased the tensions between England and Scotland, which ultimately led to almost a new Anglo-Scottish war in 1244.

Queen of Scotland

The English chronicler Matthew Paris praised Marie for her beauty. Little is known about their cultural influence on the Scottish royal court. Your chancellor Master Richard Vairement came probably from the near Coucy located Vermand , and her nephew Enguerrand de Guines , who in 1311 inherited her brother, married in 1280 Christiana de Lindsay , which he become an influential Scottish magnate rose. The most important result of the marriage, however, was the birth of the heir to the throne Alexander in 1241, who however remained the only child of the marriage.

The coronation of Marie's son Alexander III.

Role as Queen Mother during her son's reign

Immediately after her husband's death in 1249, Marie's young son was named Alexander III. Raised King of Scotland. In the politically troubled time of his minority Marie obviously did not try to exert political influence. According to Matthew Paris, as Queen Mother, she was entitled to a third of the income of the Scottish Crown, with which she had an annual income of between 4,000 and 7,000 marks . On June 19, 1250 she took part in the transfer of the relics of St. Margaret at Dunfermline Abbey . In October 1250 she traveled to France, but at the end of 1251 she returned to Scotland with a large entourage. In York she attended the wedding of her son Alexander III on December 26th. with the English princess Margarete . In the next few years she obviously lived mainly in France again. No doubt the Comyn family , the ruling Scottish aristocracy during the king's minority, welcomed their absence, as it gave the family greater control over the young king. However, Marie's help was also needed in France after Marie's younger brother Enguerrand IV. De Coucy inherited the family estates in 1250. As a boisterous and careless landlord, he had executed, without due process, three young nobles who had hunted in his forests without permission. Then King Ludwig IX let him . Capture 1256. Probably to appease the French king, Marie married Jean de Brienne , the grand cupbearer of France , in early 1257 . The couple made a brief visit to Scotland in 1257, and in September 1258 they were both appointed members of the Scottish Regency Council that ruled on behalf of the underage king. However, this was only of formal significance, because Marie and her husband were politically insignificant in Scotland, especially since they probably continued to live mainly in France. In 1268 Marie separated from Jean de Brienne and returned to Scotland. Her son allowed her to live freely in Scotland, while Jeanne de Brienne received a severance payment and an annual pension of 500 marks. Little is known of Marie's further life. In 1276 the English government gave her safe conduct to go on a pilgrimage to Canterbury . Her exact date of death is unknown, she did not die in Scotland, but probably in France. Her second husband, Jeanne de Brienne, survived and did not die until 1296.

progeny

From her marriage to Alexander II of Scotland, Marie had a son:

  • Alexander III (1241-1286)

Her second marriage to Jeanne de Brienne was childless.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Archibald AM Duncan: Scotland. The Making of the Kingdom (The Edinburgh History of Scotland; Vol. I ). Oliver & Boyd, Edinburgh 1975. ISBN 0-05-00203-7-4 , p. 535.
  2. ^ Archibald AM Duncan: Scotland. The Making of the Kingdom (The Edinburgh History of Scotland; Vol. I ). Oliver & Boyd, Edinburgh 1975. ISBN 0-05-00203-7-4 , p. 534.
  3. ↑ DER Watt: The minority of Alexander III of Scotland . In: Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Vol. 21 (1971), p. 6.
  4. ^ Archibald AM Duncan: Scotland. The Making of the Kingdom (The Edinburgh History of Scotland; Vol. I ). Oliver & Boyd, Edinburgh 1975. ISBN 0-05-00203-7-4 , p. 559.
  5. ^ Archibald AM Duncan: Scotland. The Making of the Kingdom (The Edinburgh History of Scotland; Vol. I ). Oliver & Boyd, Edinburgh 1975. ISBN 0-05-00203-7-4 , p. 573.
predecessor Office Successor
Johanna Queen Consort of Scotland
1239–1249 		Margarete
personal data
SURNAME Coucy, Marie de
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Royal Consort of King Alexander II of Scotland
DATE OF BIRTH 13th Century
DATE OF DEATH 1284