The king and queen of France keep separate accounts : Marguerite de Provence, finance and the separation of royal households (1261)

Résumé 0

“The king and queen of France keep separate accounts”: if the separation of the king and the queen as the usual mode of life of a princely couple is well recorded in the Late Middle Ages, what was it like in the thirteenth century, at the time of the emergence of the hôtel réginal (the queen’s household)? The issue of royal institutions and entourage has received renewed attention in recent years, but little note has been taken of the hôtel réginal. The appearance of the queen’s household in the French kingdom should perhaps be situated in a much more political context than historians have led us to think. Indeed, the study of the personality of Marguerite of Provence (1221-1295) suggests that some interesting reflections can be raised in this connection. This article will also explore the chronology of the institutional appearance of Marguerite de Provence’s household independently of that of the king, and will show that she was probably the first queen in western Europe to have one.