The Bewitched Events at the Tour de Nesle

fourteen was an exceptionally dramatic year for France. At this time, the country was ruled by Philip the Fourth, a member of the Compecian dynasty, which had occupied the throne since nine hundred and eighty seven. The king was commonly known as Philip LaBelle or Philip the Fair after his striking good looks, but his less appealing qualities also inspired several

less flattering nicknames. For his ruthlessness, self righteousness, and moral absoluteness, some called him the roy de Fair or the Iron King. Dante Alighary took it even further, referring to Philip in his Inferno as the Plague of France. As you might have guessed, Philip's twenty nine year reign was filled with controversy. He battled with the Pope the Flemish, the English, and the Jews of France, among others. But a few years of his reign would be as eventful as thirteen fourteen.

Thirteen fourteen was the year that Philip finally won his war against the Knights Templar, a religious order heavily involved in banking and trading. Philip had begun arresting the Templars in thirteen oh seven, alleging that they were hair atics. His motives here weren't entirely pure. Philip was heavily indebted to the Templars, and while destroying the order's offices, the king found a way to also transfer their asset to

his treasury. By thirteen fourteen, nearly all of the French Templars had been exiled or executed, and Philip sealed his victory with a gruesome public celebration in which he had the last grand Master of the Templars burned at the state. Thirteen fourteen would also be the final year of Philip's reign. He died that year, aged only forty six. He had been in good health, according to observers, but suffered a stroke while hunting. The king held on for several weeks

before finally dying November twenty nine, thirteen fourteen. Some say that the king's sudden death was the result of a curse laid on him by the Templars, but others suspected something far more personal. The King, they said, had died of shame. Not shame over his persecution of the Templars, or his expulsion of the Jews in thirteen oh six, or his wars with the Church. No, it was whispered that the king had been humiliated by something even worse,

betrayal within his own family. They were speaking, those whisperers, of one of the greatest adultery scandals of the Middle Ages, a scandal that would lead to the brutal execution of several noblemen, the imprisonment of princesses, and eventually the collapse of the kap Had dynasty itself. History would remember it as the Tordonell Affair, and of all the bewitched events of thirteen fourteen, it was perhaps the worst. I'm Dana Schwartz,

and this is noble blood. Our story begins with Philip the Fair, not to be confused with the Castilian king Philip the Handsome, who lived almost a hundred years later. Philip the Fair had seven children with his wife, Queen Joan of Navarre, four of whom would survive to adulthood. Three of the four surviving children were boys, Louis, Philip, and Charles. The fourth was a girl, Isabella, born in twelve or twelve nine. Arranging good marriages for his children

was crucial for Philip. Strategic marriages could secure a strong future for his kingdom, and so he began looking for potential spouses while his children were still toddlers. Don't worry, he wouldn't marry any of them off until at least the ripe old age. Often Philip was especially interested in creating marital ties with the ruling families of Burgundy. The territory of Burgundy was culturally rich and strategically important, lying

like a bulwark between France and the Holy Roman Empire. Remember, at this point, the Kingdom of France was much smaller than the Country of France today. During Philip's reign, Burgundy was split in two, with the Duchy of Burgundy lying to the east and the County of Burgundy lying to

the west. The dukes of the Duchy of Burgundy were allegiance to the King of France, though their land did not belong to the king, while the counts of the county were allegiant to the Holy Roman Emperor Philip, through shrewd marriage, negotiations began to formulate a plan that would bring all of Burgundy under his control. His first overture

was to Count Otto of Burgundy. In addition to Burgundy, Otto was also heir to the County of Artois, a region to the northwest of France, via his marriage to the Countess of Artois. Like Burgundy, Artois was strategically important. Otto and his wife had a daughter, Jean, who was only a few years older than Philip's sons Louis and Philip. The negotiations were protracted. The king wanted to keep his options open and so he wouldn't declare which of his

sons would marry Joan. While the count and Countess wanted to ensure financial security for their family, they wanted to close the deal. Otto, who was verging on bankruptcy, made a desperate move, handing over the County of Burgundy to King Philip in exchange for a generous income for life. Philip could hardly refuse, but there was one more obstacle before the marriage question was settled. Any engagement would also require special dispensation from the pope. Since John and the

boys shared great great grandparents. Church law at the time prohibited marriage between anyone who was so closely related, but the pope could make an exception. Philip was a powerful king and no stranger to fighting the Church to get what he wanted. It seemed a wedding was inevitable, and indeed letters from the time indicate that Prince Louis and John had become engaged. However, by thirteen hundred, the always opportunistic king had found an even better potential match for

Prince Louis. This prospective bride, Marguerite, came from the Duchy of Burgundy. Her father, Robert the Second of Burgundy, had been causing trouble in the region ever since Otto had given the County of Burgundy to Philip, and so the king hoped to secure his control over Burgundy and also appeased Robert by tying their families together in marriage. Marguerite had another advantage over Jean. As a granddaughter of King

Louis the ninth, her lineage was more noble. Yes, this did technically make her an even closer relative of the prince. They were first cousins once removed, but it was a royal connection which makes it all worth it. A papal dispensation could take care of the awkward issue of interrelatedness, and so in thirteen oh five Philip turned to Pope Clement the fifth for his blessing for the marriage of Marguerite and Crown Prince Louis. Pope Clement was hesitant to

grant a dispensation. It was well known that Louis had been previously engaged to Jean, but King Philip had a trick up his sleeve. He revealed to Clement that Marguerite and Louie were in fact already married. The two had wed in a simple ceremony sometime in the first half of thirteen o five. If Clement refused to issue the bull, he would be declaring that the Crown Prince of France's

marriage was illegitimate, and King Philip didn't stop there. He also reminded Clement that he had been responsible for Clement's election as pope earlier that year. Clement bowed to the pressure, granting papal dispensation for the marriage. In August of thirteen o five. Marguerite and Louie were remarried in a more formal ceremony on September twenty three of that year. Both bride and groom were fifteen. In the meantime, Philip had

not forgotten about Jean, daughter of the Count. Rumors circulated that the king himself planned to marry the young heiress. However, he ultimately decided that John should marry his second son, Prince Philip, after again getting a papal dispensation from Clement, who made it clear that he was irritated to have to constantly be granting the French royal family exemptions from the law. The couple was married in an extravagant ceremony.

Philip was sixteen, Jean was nineteen or twenty. Now the king began to plan matches for his two remaining children, Prince Charles and Princess Isabella. Philip considered a number of potential brides for Charles, including princesses from Spain, Bohemia, and Hungary, daughters of the Count of Saint pol and the Duke of Brittany, But the most attractive proposal came from an unexpected source, Mayor of Artois, the now widow of the

Count of Burgundy, mother of Prince Philip's bride Jean. She wasn't offering herself in marriage, though she was in fact a widow, but instead proposed her daughter Blanche. The union would be enormously helpful for Mouth, a powerful and ambitious woman who longed for even closer ties to the royal family, and she wanted the King's support for her claim to her hereditary land. In our Toy along with her daughter's hand, Mayo proposed to give the king a fortune in cash

and land. These deal sweeteners were crucial in convincing King Philip because the pairing had its problems. As the historian Elizabeth A. R. Brown writes, the marriage quote raised problems of legality as well as taste and propriety end quote, which of course is how any engaged couple would love to be described. After all, it would be two of Philip's sons marrying two sisters. Besides being siblings in law, and besides sharing great grandparents, Charles and Blanche had even

closer tie. Maha was charles godmother in the eyes of the church. This spiritual relationship between Mao and Charles made them literal relatives furthering the taboo between Charles and Blanche. Marriage between two people with this kind of connection were not unheard of. King Philip himself had married his godmother's daughter, but it was still troubling. And then there was the issue of age. Charles was thirteen and Blanche was barely twelve.

A physician would later claim that neither child had reached puberty at the time of their marriage, but the money and land that Mao offered was too great for King Philip to resist. Blanche and Charles were married on January thirteen, o eight at mau Chateau in Hesdin. Their wedding, however, was overshadowed by another. Just a week later, King philip daughter Isabella secured the most powerful marriage of any of them.

She married King Edward the Second of England. As you may know, Isabella and edwards marriage was a notoriously unhappy one. For more on the tragic consequences of their union, listen to the episode Piers Gaveston, The King's Favorite. But it's the outcome of her brother's marriages that concern us this week, and like that of Isabella and Edward, the marriages of the new royal couples would soon be troubled by betrayal, infamy, and death. It was common knowledge that not all of

the royal couples were especially happy together. Louie, it said, preferred playing tennis to spending time with Marguerite. Less is known about Charles and Blanche's relationship, but we do know that contemporary He's found at Charles to be stiff and stand offish. Neither couple had many children. They both just had one each. Jean and Philip were much better suited. Philip would later declare that from the day of their wedding, he and Jean quote lived in peace, concord, and love

without dissension, rancorps or hatred end quote. In the spring of thirteen fourteen, the couple had at least four living daughters. Now in April, the public heard the rumors of the princess's arrest and wondered what they had done to merit such treatment. Mere marital discord wasn't enough to justify and arrest, and besides, Philip and John seemed happy. It was only in the coming weeks that the full story, or at least the full allegations, would come to lay. At the

same time that the princesses were seized. Two brothers were arrested in the nearby city of Pontois. They were knights minor nobles named Philippe and Gautier del Nay. Their father was a lord in a small region in north central France. Gautier was the elder brother, aged somewhere between twenty three and twenty six in thirteen fourteen and unmarried. Philippe, somewhere between twenty two and twenty four at the time, was married to a woman named Agnes, with whom he had

had several children. We don't know much else about their lives before thirteen fourteen, but at some point they must have crossed paths with the princesses, for the stunned public was soon to learn Marguerite and Blanche had been arrested for committing adultery with the Dolnay brothers. The two princesses. These two were the ones who were just sisters in law and not also actually sisters, were alleged to have

carried on a years long affair with the knights. The group was said to have met regularly in the Tour d'annelle, a stone guard tower that stood on the left bank of the Seine in the center of Paris. John was also arrested, but she was not accused of infidelity, only of knowing about the affairs and helping conceal them. How exactly the alleged affair was uncovered is unknown. Some contemporary chroniclers write that it was Isabella, King Philip's daughter and

Queen of England, who had sniffed it out. The story goes that Isabella had given her sisters in law beaded pouches, and then, at a banquet months later, had been shocked to see those same pouches in the possession of the Dolnigh brothers. She brought her suspicions to her father, who put the group under surveillance and caught them in the act. Others sight the king's notoriously cunning minister as having revealed the affair. But whatever the source of the accusations, King

Philip was not slow to act. The Domnae brothers were arrested and then subjected to three days of torture, after which one of them confessed to the affair. The Dolna's suffering did not end there, though, having been found guilty of treason, given that they had interfered with royal marriages. They were sentenced to a gory end. Different chroniclers give different descriptions of their executions, but what we know was

that they were violent, painful, and public. The brothers were most likely castrated, then flogged or flayed or broken on the wheel before being beheaded or hanged. The princesses, though, were not subject to the same physical ordeals, though they did undergo a public humiliation of their own. They were brought to trial by the Paris Parliament. Blanche and Marguerite were both found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment. Before they were sent off, they were forced to kneel and

have their heads shaved in front of the jeering crowd. John, because she wasn't guilty of adultery, was more fortunate, thanks in part to the intervention of her husband, Philip, who stood by her. She was found fully innocent of adultery, but for being an accomplice to the affair, she was sentenced to house arrest. Philip campaigned constantly for her release, and she would soon be freed to return to his side. There are two theories as to i Philip supported John

so staunchly. The first theory is the more cynical one, and it suggests that he supported his wife because she had the most personal wealth of all three of the wives. But I prefer the second theory, which seems to be supported by the written record. Philip just really really loved her. Blanche and Marguerite were not so lucky, without large dowries or lands under their own control, and with husbands who were at best apathetic towards them to begin with, their

fate was sealed. The women were sent to Chateau Gaillard, an imposing castle in Normandy built two centuries before Richard the Lionheart. Conditions there were harsh, conflicting reports have Marguerite and Blanche being kept either underground in daint chambers with no natural light, or else in the highest rooms of the castle, where they were exposed completely to the elements.

One of them would never walk free again. In November thirteen, fourteen, seven months after the Tordonel affair began, King Philip the Fair died. His eldest son Louis succeeded him, becoming King Louis the Tenth. Louis was nicknamed the quarrel Sum, although this had more to do with the circumstances he inherited as king, not necessarily his inherent personality, which was described by a contemporary chronicler as quote childlike, credulous, and ill

prepared for rulership and quote. The issue he seemed to care most about was annulling his marriage to the imprisoned adulteress Marguerite. This was mainly because he wanted another heir. Though Marguerite and Louis had a daughter, Joan, her paternity was now in question because of the scandal. Unfortunately for Louis, Pope clement the fifth died just as the scandal broke, and no new pope had been selected yet, and so there was just no one who could annull his marriage.

Conveniently enough, Marguerite, who was still in prison but technically Queen of France, soon died. Her cause of death was either illness brought on by the harsh prison conditions or some alleged strangulation murdered by an ally of the king's Louis went on to marry Clementia of Hungary, who quickly became pregnant. He wouldn't live to see his second child's birth.

Louis the tenth died in June thirteen sixteen, having exhausted himself playing tennis, the very pastime he had preferred to Marguerite, leaving her time for her own extra curricular activities. Clementia gave birth to a son in November, who became King John the First of France, but the baby died after only five days. Technically, at this point the throne should have gone to Louis and marguerite daughter Joan, and indeed Louis had finally recognized Joan as his own shortly before

his death. But Louie's younger brother Philip, had his own plans, and he seized the crown in January thirteen seventeen. At his side was his wife, John, who had been formally exonerated and returned to court. Protests broke out across France, but Philip was quick to solidify his power, establishing a new rule of succession that barred women from inheriting the throne,

which would soon become a formal French law. This same principle eventually prevented any of Philip's children from inheriting, because by the time he died in thirteen twenty two, he had no surviving sons, only daughters. After Philip's death, the throne went to the youngest brother, Charles. Like Louis, Charles was eager to annul his marriage, and lucky for him by this point he had a pope who could do so.

Funly enough, his marriage to Blanche was annulled on the ground that they were too closely related, not because of their blood ties, which they had received a papal dispensation for, but because of their spiritual relationship based on Blanche's mother being Charles's godmother. King Philip the Fair had somehow neglected to get a special dispensation for that. Once charles marriage

was annulled, Blanche's remaining life is a mystery. Some say that she was allowed to move to a remote castle, while others say that she became a nun serving at the same abbey she had been arrested for for adultery eight years earlier, but there's no clear evidence of that. The only thing we know for sure is she died some time before April five, thirty six. Charles was the last Cape king, though he married twice following the annulment

of his marriage to Blanche, he had no sons. Had Philip the Fair been told in thirteen that his sons would mark the end of his dynasty. Surely he would have scoffed. He had three healthy adult sons, all of

whom were married, but the Tordonell affair changed everything. Charles was succeeded by his cousin Philip Vlois, But nine years later Philip's right to rule was challenged by Edward, the third son of Isabella, who argued, possibly correctly, that he was the closest male relative of the last king, even if he descended from the female line. This is the claim that would spark one of medieval Europe's greatest conflicts, the Hundred Years War. For all of that impact act,

the actual truth of the Tordonelle affair is murky. We don't even know if a literal affair occurred. Historians are split on the matter. Many historians who believe that the queens were unfaithful argue that King Philip would not have undergone such a public humiliation unless the case was concrete. However, the historian Tracy Adams notes that none of the princesses had sons by thirteen fourteen, which was a relatively common

reason to want to dispose of royal wives. Others speculate that the affair was a political distraction, orchestrated by either Philip the Fairs advisers, or by his enemies. Still others say that it was all a manipulation by Queen Isabella of England, part of a grand plan to get her son on the throne, although that seems, at least to me, very far fetched. There is no way she could have known that none of her brothers would go on to have some, especially if she helped dispose of their lives.

The uncertainty around the facts of the case did not stop contemporaries or even modern historians from casting aspirations on the women. In her two thousand six biography of Queen Isabella, Alison Weir calls the princesses quote stupid promiscuous girls end quote where isn't wrong about one thing. At the time of their arrests, the princesses were barely more than girls. Sean was twenty six or twenty seven, Marguerite was twenty four,

and Blanche was only seventeen. They had spent their entire lives as bargaining chips, bartered away by their parents for money and power, sent off to be the wives of men who they barely knew, stripped of their agency and their independence. It's the kind of situation in which it might be easy for a young woman to be tempted

to rebel, not to mention hypocrisy. Louis and Charles were both known to have had illegitimate children of their own, but Blanche, Marguerite and Jean were women, and different rules applied to them. Ironically, it was that very treatment of women, dismissing women, first through the imprisonment of the princesses and then introducing the law of bearing women from inheriting the throne, that would ultimately doom the Cape line only fourteen years

after the Tordonelle affair allegedly occurred. Of all the princesses, Jean got off the lightest. She had been exonerated and restored to her place at court. She had been queen, though unlike her sister and sister in law, who were queens in name only, she had actually served in the role. She had a loving marriage, she had four daughters, wealth

and land. But she never forgot the events of thirteen fourteen, and she never forgot her sister, Blanche, who had died in disgrace the year before the Tourdenell affair, Jean and Philip had had a daughter who they named after Blanche. Seven years later, after Jean had become queen, she made a dramatic decision. She would send her youngest daughter, her sister's namesake, into a nunnery, as a way to a tone on her sister's behalf. It was an enormously difficult decision.

Jean loved her children, and she knew she would be sending Little Blanche from a castle to a very hard life. But she was a deeply religious woman and she believed it was something that she had to do. However, Jean did use her power as a queen to ease the transition for herself and for her daughter. Blanche was given more worldly comforts than the average nun, and unlike most cloistered sisters, she would be allowed to see her mother

and father occasionally. We don't know what Little Blanche thought about the decision, but Jean was resolute, and so Blanche entered long Champ Abbey in thirteen twenty. The separation proved harder than John had expected. She and her husband Philip visited a little Blanche so often that they were reprimanded by the Pope. Besides her sacrifice of her daughter on her sister's spiritual behalf, Jean made one more attempt to

make up for the sins of the past. At some point during her husband's reign, Philip had given John a special property, the Tour Donnell, the location of so much shame, sadness, and loss, must have been a difficult legacy for John, and so she decided to enact a transformation in her will, revealed after her death, in Jean left the building to the University of Paris to serve as a new college, the College of Burgundy. There, students from her home territory

could board while they studied at the university. What had once been a site of infamy became one of learning and companionship, a place where young people could grow, experiment, and perhaps even make mistakes of their own with less dire consequences. Noble Blood is a production of I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Manky. Noble Blood is hosted by Me Danish for additional writing and researching done by Hannah Johnston, hannah's Wick, Miura Hayward, Courtney Sunder

and Laurie Goodman. The show is produced by rema Il Kali, with supervising producer Josh Thayne and executive producers Aaron Manky, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.