Isabeau's parents were Duke Stephen III of Bavaria-Ingolstadt and Taddea Visconti, whom he married for a 100,000 ducat dowry. She was most likely born in Munich where she was baptized as Elisabeth[note 1] at the Church of Our Lady.[1] Hers was the ancient and well-established Wittelsbach family, descended from Charlemagne, and she was great-granddaughter to the Wittelsbach Holy Roman Emperor Louis IV.[2][note 2] At that period Bavaria was the most powerful of the German states and divided between members of the House of Wittelsbach,[1] who confusingly all used the title Duke of Bavaria.

Isabeau's uncle, Duke Frederick of Bavaria-Landshut, suggested in 1383 that she be considered as a bride to King Charles VI of France. The match was proposed again at the lavish Burgundian double wedding in Cambrai in April 1385—John the Fearless and his sister Margaret of Burgundy married Margaret and William of Bavaria-Straubing respectively. Charles, then 17, rode in the tourneys at the wedding. He was an attractive, physically fit young man, who enjoyed jousting and hunting and was excited to be married.[3]

Miniature showing King Charles VI at the hunt. Queen Isabeau and her retinue are shown riding palfreys. From Enguerrand de Monstrelet's Chronique.
Charles VI's uncle, Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, thought the proposed marriage ideal to build an alliance with the Holy Roman Empire and against the English.[4] Isabeau's father agreed reluctantly and sent her to France with his brother, her uncle, on the pretext of taking a pilgrimage to Amiens.[2] He was adamant that she was not to know she was being sent to France to be examined as a prospective bride for Charles,[4] and refused permission for her to be examined in the nude, customary at the time.[1] According to the contemporary chronicler Jean Froissart, Isabeau was 13 or 14 when the match was proposed and about 16 at the time of the marriage in 1385, suggesting a birth date of around 1370.[2]

Before her presentation to Charles, Isabeau visited Hainaut for about a month, staying with her granduncle Duke Albert I, ruler of some of Bavaria-Straubing and Count of Holland. Albert's wife, Margaret of Brieg, replaced Isabeau's Bavarian style of dress, deemed unsuitable as French courtly attire, and taught her etiquette suitable to the French court. She learned quickly, suggestive of an intelligent and quick-witted character.[5] On 13 July 1385 she traveled to Amiens to be presented to Charles.[6]

Froissart writes of the meeting in his Chronicles, saying that Isabeau stood motionless while being inspected, exhibiting perfect behavior by the standards of her time. Arrangements were made for the two to be married in Arras, but on the first meeting Charles felt "happiness and love enter his heart, for he saw that she was beautiful and young, and thus he greatly desired to gaze at her and possess her".[7] She did not yet speak French and may not have reflected the idealized beauty of the period, perhaps inheriting her mother's dark Italian features, then unfashionable, but Charles most certainly approved of her because the couple were married three days later.[6] Froissart documented the royal wedding, joking about the lascivious guests at the feast and the "hot young couple".[8]

Charles seemingly loved his young wife, lavishing gifts on her. On the occasion of their first New Year in 1386, he gave her a red velvet palfrey saddle, trimmed with copper and decorated with an intertwined K and E (for Karol and Elisabeth), and he continued to give her gifts of rings, tableware and clothing.[6] The uncles too, apparently, were pleased with the match, which contemporary chroniclers, notably Froissart and Michel Pintoin (the Monk of St. Denis), describe similarly as a match rooted in desire and based on her beauty. The day after the wedding, Charles went on a military campaign against the English, and Isabeau went to Creil to live with his great-aunt Blanche, Duchess of Orléans, who taught her courtly traditions. In September she took up residence at the Château de Vincennes, where in the early years of their marriage Charles frequently joined her, and which became her favorite home.[5]

Coronation[edit]
Isabeau's coronation was celebrated on 23 August 1389 with a lavish ceremonial entry into Paris. Her second cousin and sister-in-law Valentina Visconti, who had married her own cousin Louis of Orléans (Charles' younger brother) two years earlier by proxy and papal dispensation, arrived in style, escorted across the Alps from Milan by 1,300 knights carrying personal luxuries such as books and a harp.[9] The noblewomen in the coronation procession were dressed in lavish costumes with thread-of-gold embroidery, and rode in litters escorted by knights. Philip the Bold wore a doublet embroidered with 40 sheep and 40 swans, each decorated with a bell made of pearls.[9]

Miniature from Froissart's Chronicles, showing entertainers and acrobats at Isabeau's coronation

Miniature showing Isabeau's entry in Paris on 23 August 1389
The procession lasted from morning to night. The streets were lined with tableaux vivants displaying scenes from the Crusades, Deësis and the Gates of Paradise. More than a thousand burghers stood along the route; those on one side were dressed in green facing, those on the opposite in red. The procession began at the Porte de St. Denis and passed under a canopy of sky-blue cloth beneath which children dressed as angels sang, winding into the Rue Saint-Denis before arriving at the Notre Dame for the coronation ceremony.[9] As Tuchman describes the event, "So many wonders were to be seen and admired that it was evening before the procession crossed the bridge leading to Notre Dame and the climactic display."[10]

As Isabeau crossed the Grand Pont to Notre Dame, a person dressed as an angel descended from the church by mechanical means and "passed through an opening of the blue taffeta with golden fleurs-des-lis, which covered the bridge, and put a crown on her head." The angel was then pulled back up into the church.[11] An acrobat carrying two candles walked along a rope suspended from the spires of the cathedral to the tallest house in the city.[9]

After Isabeau's crowning, the procession made its way back from the cathedral along a route lit by 500 candles. They were greeted by a royal feast, and a progression of narrative pageants complete with a depiction of the Fall of Troy. Isabeau, seven months pregnant, nearly fainted from heat on the first of the five days of festivities. To pay for the extravagant event, taxes were raised in Paris two months later.[9]

Charles' illness[edit]