Hello. In The Crown of Aragon, 639 years ago,
it was January 20th, 1387. My name is Jonathan
Seyfried. I'm a PhD candidate in history at the
University of New Mexico. And this is the Historian's
Notebook, a podcast about how history gets made.
Season one is titled Molt Cara Companyona. We're
looking at a document from each day of the first
year of the reign of King Joan I of Aragon and
Queen Violant de Bar. Let's begin today's
document. Today's document is the first instance,
according to the historian Jaumet Riera i Sans,
that we see Jaume, the son of Joan and Violant,
referred to as the Dauphin. and this is something
that I've spoken about a couple different times
on the podcast already the introduction of the
term dauphin into the crown of aragon that is
carried out that introduction is carried out
by Joan and Violant when they are at the
outset of their reign one of the first things
they do as they're getting the government together
on January 16th in Granollers, they formally
name the heir to the throne after Joan, which
is the three -year -old boy, Jaume. They formally
name him a Dauphin, and they adjust that into
Catalan as a Dalfi, D -A -L -F -I. This move
is one that I think is an illustrative example
of the enthusiasm with which Joan imported
French culture into the Crown of Aragon. This
is something that I myself have written about
in an article that is available on the website
for the journal Quidditas. And in that article,
which I titled Medieval Hypebeast, The Conspicuous
Consumption of Joan the First of Aragon, I go
through and look at all these different ways
that throughout his time as Duke of Girona and
during his reign as King of the Crown of Aragon,
Joan, as a cooperative project with Violant,
they brought in whatever kind of hot cultural
trends they could from France into the Crown
of Aragon. And in a previous episode, I mentioned
how French culture was kind of like the at the
level of what we would think of as Hollywood
cultural production in our world in the 21st
century, where it's just seen as the cutting
edge in terms of what is really popular and also
artistically supported. with a lot of resources
so that you're you're kind of in this sort of
self perpetuating cycle where it's seen as the
place to go to make great cultural products.
I'm talking about movies and TV series not the
only place to go, but it just has that power
of having built up. a reputation as the source
for cultural production. And so it's not like
it's the only place where great culture is made.
It's just that it has that kind of attraction,
that kind of cachet. And so same deal with Southern
France at this time. There was a culture of troubadour
performance in Toulouse that was extremely innovative,
and then spread throughout all of Provence and
southern France, and a lot of those troubadours
interacted with troubadours who would travel
around the Crown of Aragon. And so Joan, at
a very young age, he heard about what they were
doing. And basically, this started a lifelong
project of wanting to be in on the latest fashions,
which is where kind of the hype beast connection
comes from, like really going after what's trendy
is what I see the behavior as here. And having
a real craving for getting the stuff that has
the best reputation for being cutting edge fashion.
And so we see this a lot with the literature
and the music. We see a bunch of letters that
a lot of scholars have already written about
where Joan and Violant are trying to get the
latest copy of the Guillaume Machaut manuscripts,
for example. So that is all to explain the presence
of the phrase Mon car fil lo dalfi de Girona in
the fourth line of this letter from Violant.
But who is this letter to? Well, the letter starts
Molt car Cosi. Got all the Molt cars happening
again. Who's the cousin? The cousin is the brand
new King of Navarre. Navarre is the kingdom to
the north of the Crown of Aragon. And in a remarkable
coincidence, Charles III ascended to the throne,
inherited the throne. On January 1st of 1387,
Charles II had died. And so in this really remarkable
coincidence, both Violante and Joan and Charles
III of Navarre, they all become the rulers of
their kingdoms like right around the same time.
And this really plays into this concept that
I've toyed around with a little bit since starting
this project, that there's a team next -gen.
happening here, a real sense of the next generation
is now coming into its own, and some of the stuff,
especially like the warmongering that was going
on, both from Charles II of Navarre and also
Pere the Ceremonious and the Crown of Aragon
and Pedro the Cruel and Castile, that That generation
has concluded and now team next -gen is coming
in and they want to do a bit of a reset it's
one that is a cooperative project between the
ruler of Navarre Prince or used to be Prince
King Charles III and Violant and Joan because
These folks are buddies, and I have a theory.
It's not something I can substantiate in any
of the literature yet, but I have a theory that
Violant and Charles, they knew each other and
hung out in the years 1378 and 1379 in Paris,
because as Prince, the future Charles III had
been sent by his father to go do some diplomacy
with France, but then his father did some kind
of like shady move and like did an attack somewhere
and the King of France was like mad. Charles
V was like, what are you doing? Like you're basically
like trying to trick me. And so he made Charles
the Prince a hostage. So the future King of Navarre
was a hostage in Paris at the time that Violant
was there, and in the months that Violant was
finding out that she was going to be marrying
into the royal family of the Crown of Aragon
and heading to Iberia. And so she might have
sought out Charles to kind of get the lowdown
on what it's like to be on the other side of
the Pyrenees. And I have a feeling they knew
each other in France. Eventually, Prince Charles
gets released from captivity in Paris and goes
back to Navarre. And then in the time that Charles
is waiting for his father to die so he can become
Charles III, and in the time that Joan is waiting
for Père to die so that he can become King of
the Crown of Aragon, there were regular visits
between the Prince of Navarre and Joan and
Violant. And we know that they were buddies
because of an extraordinary letter from May of
1386. This letter has surfaced earlier in the
scholarship, but Dawn Branch Prince has written
about it in a way that I think really brings
it out a lot more in its meanings. This letter
is one that Violant wrote to, at the time, Prince
Charles of Navarre, and she says, and I'm doing
a faithful paraphrase here, but once you hear
this, you're just gonna have to, like, rewind
to be like, what? Violante writes to Charles,
and this is what she says, danced so hard that
I had a miscarriage. Not only that, but the child
that I had in my womb was one that I was going
to name after you. Okay, so there's just a lot
to, like, really figure out what's going on there.
First of all, they had a great time dancing together,
that's for sure, to the extent that Violant
can come to the conclusion that it was the hard
dancing that led to her miscarriage. So we know
that they were getting along, having a good time.
That was a real Molt car cosi there. But then
there's this statement about the miscarriage.
It's a tremendous, tremendous problem as a royal
family member for a woman to have a miscarriage.
I mean, it would be in... all kinds of cases,
not to minimize the miscarriage experience at
all. But for women who were in these elite positions,
the potential of having a child, especially a
male child, was very tied to the opportunity
to increase their own power, their own stature,
the stature of their husband, because so much
was invested in producing an heir. And so to
have miscarriage is something that is a very,
very sensitive, even beyond whatever you could
put as the baseline of like sensitivity and trauma
of having a miscarriage. And so when Violant
says, I was going to name that baby after you,
is she trying to make Charles feel bad for like
how hard he was dancing with her? Or is this
actually like a level of irony that Violante
is sending off to Charles as a kind of like,
you know, I'm not gonna hold it against you even
though I'm saying that I'm holding it against
you. Yeah, it's really hard to untangle the meaning
behind that letter of 1386. But look at what
we have here in the following year. A letter
that is really gushing with affection. She's
writing to the King of Navarre with just Molt car,
Molt car, car cosi, car cosi all throughout. I
mean, this is one of the most gushy letters that
I've ever seen. And so the affection that Violant
has for Charles III, King of Navarre, is, I think,
pretty much confirmed in this letter. So what
to make of the kind of message that appeared,
you know, in the prior year, May of the prior
year, about about their interaction. That is
something that actually I hope I'm going to be
able to talk about in a bonus episode of the
podcast when I get to have an interview with
one of my classmates here in the graduate program
at the University of New Mexico, Katie Despeaux,
who specializes in studying medieval pregnancy
in the late Middle Ages. So we'll see if we get
to have that happen. I hope so. All right, that
is today's document and just a whole lot of background
information about it. Oh, one last detail. I
wanted to specify how Charles III King of Navarre
and Violant are related, because they are cousins.
So Charles is the son of Violante's mother's
sister. So that is how they're related, because
Charles III's father, Charles II, married a daughter
of the French king, and that's how they're cousins.
Because same thing with Violante. Her father,
Robert de Barre, married another daughter of
the French king. Okay, hopefully that isn't super
confusing. I think it might be time for, like,
a family tree, if I can try to find one and put
it on the website. Alright, that does it for
today's episode. Thanks for listening to this
latest installment of the Historian's Notebook,
Season 1, Molt cara Companyona. If you are leaving
with more questions than you arrived with, I
have done my job. Remember, the motto of the
Historian's Notebook is dissatisfaction guaranteed.
Visit the website to see an image of today's
document and additional show notes. And listen
again tomorrow to hear about the next day in
the first year of the reign of King Joan I of
Aragon and Queen Violant de Bar. In the meantime,
take care.