The New Murrey and Blue blog

Viscountessw, it is a lengthy thesis, her PhD thesis from University College of London (2002). This poses a real problem for me! From childhood I’ve been a (cultural) Francophile so I should be highly biased towards Warwick, but I find him loathsome (and yet I can understand how Warwick and Louis XI very likely connected politically and on a very deep level in ways Edward only presumed he was capable of doing)! My problem is I can’t stop splitting French hairs!

I understand why, Visser Fuchs begins with the murder of Jean sans Peur, referring to it as “ill advised” – as her focus is on Burgundian-French relations, but my goodness – and I am no apologist for the weasely Charles VII, still dauphin at the time of his men took out the odious Jean – but Charles did not start that wretched feud between two branches of the same French royal family (ie. Valois), it was Jean sans Peur, who offed in spectacular fashion a son of Charles V of France on the streets of Paris in 1407 (Louis I d’Orleans)
This blood feud was so intense INSIDE the royal family that it continued through Richard’s own lifetime, heck, it is a very big reason Louis XI was terrified of his (mentally delicate?) son (another Charles) succeeding him while Edward and Richard lived! I could say alot more on all this, suffice it to say Warwick was preferable to Edward and ‘Burgundian’ side of the Valois family, and had Edward married Bona of Savoy the entire reign of Edward and Louis Xi would have been vastly different.
Here’s a thought for you, Louis XI, like all French kings, had relationships with the Scots, (usually as spies inside Edward’s court, and likely Richard’s as well) and more traditionally, since the ‘Hundred Years War,’ some Scottish noblemen, often a younger son, who had served France well, was honored in France with an heiress and her lands, a title, and more or less became both Scots and French, a perfect emissary on diplomatic and military missions- there was even a Scottish cavalry/ men-at-arms division led by these ex-pat Scots, one group handled the diplomatic arrangements with James as well as the clandestine espionage for Charles VIII recruiting for Henry before Bosworth – HAD Edward simply married Bona of Savoy and produced his flock of royal children his trade with France would have flourished throughout France and the Mediterranean, a tight union of France + England would have forced the Low Countries to make trade and commerce accommodations or go bankrupt – as for Warwick, Louis XI would have made him an Anglo-French seigneur akin to what French kings had been doing with the Scots: a string of lovely chateaux, maybe in the Pas de Calais or the Sologne; just keep him out of England and Edward’s hair, let him strut ‘large’ in France, marry his daughters to Continental princes since Edward was against his baby brothers marrying his daughters, who knows?
No matter how I look at it the Wydville marriage was an unqualified disaster, the ruin of Edward’s reign, before it really had a chance to know it was a reign! Like his so-called French campaign!

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