Marie of France: Countess of Champagne, 1145–1198 by Theodore Evergates (review)

Although primarily remembered today as the literary patron of Chrétien de Troyes, Marie of France, the first child of Eleanor of Aquitaine and King Louis VII of France, also held an important political position in late twelfth-century France. In addition to her role as cultural patron, Marie ruled for almost twenty years as Countess of Champagne, while Count Henry participated in the Second Crusade and during the regency of their son, Henry II. Marie briefly "retired" from ruling once Henry II turned twenty-one, but then shared the countship with him while he lived overseas during and after the Third Crusade. An important contribution of Evergates's work is to highlight Marie's critical role as ruling countess: "Historians of Capetian France have yet to appreciate the frequency and significance of wives acting in the absence of their husbands and during the minority of inheriting sons" (vii). Evergates acknowledges that there is little information about Marie before her marriage to Count Henry or during their life together prior to Marie's rule. However, drawing from Marie's own letters patent, as well as "chancery-produced records and brief mentions by chroniclers, prelates, and poets" (viii), Evergates builds on his previous studies, The Aristocracy in the County of Champagne, 1100–1300 (2007) and Henry the Liberal: Count of Champagne, 1127–1181 (2015), to create a fascinating and highly readable study of Marie and of Northern France in the late twelfth century. At times, Evergates must make informed conjectures about details in Marie's life, especially her early life: "It seems unlikely that she ever saw her mother again" (5); "Just where she spent the next eleven years is not entirely clear" (5); "We have no information about the date and place of Marie's marriage, if a formal wedding was celebrated at all" (11). Evergates describes Marie's close relationships with her powerful extended family: her royal halfsiblings from her parents' subsequent marriages, and Count Henry's prominent siblings. He also relates what we know of Marie and Henry's four children, Henry II, Marie, Scholastique, and Thibaut, and describes life in twelfth-century Champagne, including the presence of key historical figures of the time, such as Thomas Beckett. Evergates further discusses Marie's role as literary patron and notes that although Chrétien de Troyes mentions her directly only in the prologue to Lancelot, this single reference has "established Marie's reputation as patron of the arts, and, by extension, the repute of a 'court of Champagne'" (34). Whereas Evergates disputes analyses that portray Marie as "channeling" Eleanor of Aquitaine to bring the lyric to Champagne, he notes that Marie did also commission two vernacular works and appears in several literary works. This suggests to Evergates that Marie may have had "a wider involvement in the cultural life of her time than can be documented today" (101), yet he underscores that her key documented achievement is her successful rule of the county of Champagne.