Yolande of Aragon

Yolande of Aragon (1381–1442) was a daughter of John I of Aragon and became duchess of Anjou and countess of Provence through her marriage to Louis II of Anjou. Their children included Louis III of Anjou, René of Anjou and Marie of Anjou, the future wife of Charles VII of France. After her husband’s death in 1417, Yolande managed extensive Angevin interests in France and Provence and emerged as one of the most capable dynastic politicians on the Valois side during the crisis of the Hundred Years’ War.

Yolande gave crucial support to the dauphin Charles when his position was threatened by English conquest and the Armagnac–Burgundian civil conflict. Charles spent part of his youth within the Angevin sphere, married Yolande’s daughter Marie and benefited from the financial, political and military resources of her network. Yolande also participated in the political environment that enabled Joan of Arc to reach Charles in 1429, although popular accounts sometimes turn her influence into a single hidden direction of events that the evidence cannot sustain. Her importance rests more securely on sustained dynastic management, patronage and alliance-building.

Deryn Lake’s The King’s Women presents Yolande as a formidable and politically astute influence on Charles VII, in deliberate contrast with the novel’s darker treatment of Isabeau of Bavaria. That emphasis reflects Yolande’s genuine importance to the Angevin-Valois alliance, while private conversations, motives and the extent of her control over particular events are necessarily dramatized.