Blanche of Castile - Infinite Women

Born: 4 March 1188, Spain
Died: 27 November 1252
Country most active: France
Also known as: Blanca de Castilla

This biography, written by Louise Gay, is shared with permission from Team Queens, an educational history blog run by a collective of historical scholars. All rights reserved; this material may not be republished without the author’s consent.

Daughter of Alfonso VIII of Castile and Leonor of Plantagenet, Blanche married the future Louis VIII of France in 1200 as part of a peace treaty concluded between the kings John “Lackland” of England and Philip “August” of France.
As princess then Capetian queen consort she supported the military operations of her husband, especially the invasion of England (1216-1217) justified through her alleged rights as a granddaughter of Eleanor of Aquitaine.
After the death of Louis VIII in 1226, she assumed the first female regency of the realm and successfully fought against the great vassals of the kingdom to support the rights of her son Louis IX but also to defend her own position.
As dowager queen, she managed to establish a form of co-rulership with her son for whom she acted as a main diplomat and advisor, using her kinship and information networks, before being appointed regent for the second time during the Seventh crusade until her death in 1252.
These political and military successes earned her an ambiguous yet particularly lasting reputation in both medieval and modern accounts, making her one of the most well-known medieval French queens.
Portrayed as a virtuous virago and celebrated for her motherhood by royal partisans throughout centuries, Blanche has been simultaneously presented on the contrary as a wicked foreign woman trying to supplant men by many of her contemporary opponents and their successors.
Indeed, the hostile pamphleteer campaign launched against her first regency is considered to be one of the first known manifestations of public opinion in France.

Recommended Reading
Elie Berger, Histoire de Blanche de Castille : reine de France (Paris, 1895)
Gérard Sivéry, Blanche de Castille (Paris: Fayard, 1990)
Lindy Grant, Blanche of Castile, Queen of France (London: Yale University Press, 2017)
Ursula Vones-Liebenstein, “Une femme gardienne du royaume ? Régentes en temps de guerre (France-Castille, XIIIe siècle),” in La guerre, la violence et les gens au Moyen Âge, vol. 2: La violence et les gens, eds., Philippe Contamine and Olivier Guyotjeannin (Amiens: CTH Editions, 1996), 9-22.

The following is excerpted from “”Female Warriors: Memorials of Female Valour and Heroism, from the Mythological Ages to the Present Era,”” by Ellen C. Clayton (Mrs. Needham), published in 1879 and shared online by Project Gutenberg.

Turn which way we will, we see nothing but civil wars and struggles for supremacy between crowned heads and nobles. Crossing to France, some nine or ten years later, we find the great vassals of the throne conspiring to deprive Queen Blanche of the regency. However, Blanche of Castille was not a woman easily intimidated. At the head of a large army, she went with the young king (her son) to Brittany, the seat of the conspiracy. The malcontent nobles, not being prepared to meet the royal forces in the field, submitted for a time.
In the following year, 1227, the royal troops defeated and captured Raymond, Count of Toulouse, leader of the Albigeois, and the queen treated her noble captive so harshly that the French lords again took up arms, led by the Duke of Brittany. Despite the severity of the winter, the queen-regent and her son marched into Brittany; and after surmounting terrible obstacles from the cold, and from the snow and ice, which stopped both roads and rivers, laid siege to the stronghold of Bellesme. This fortress which from the thickness of its walls, was supposed to be impregnable, had a garrison of Bretons, supported by a body of English auxiliaries. The besieged were in hopes that the royal army, horribly decimated by the severe weather, would be compelled soon to retire. But the queen was not the one to yield when she had once resolved on anything. To preserve her soldiers, hundreds of whom perished from the bitter cold, she caused immense fires to be kept constantly blazing, and offered high rewards to all who brought wood into camp. To encourage the men she slept in the open air by the bivouac fires, conversed with the troops, and encouraged officers and privates alike by her affability and condescension.
Queen Blanche pressed the siege with unyielding determination. After two assaults had been made the great tower was dismantled, and the garrison surrendered. The Duke of Brittany was made prisoner, though, through motives of policy, he was speedily set at liberty. The queen next took Nantes and Acenis; and the revolt was brought to a close in 1230 by the surrender of the Count de Marche.
From the courage and military tact displayed by the queen during the siege of Bellesmes, she received the complimentary title of “”the Great Captain.””
The regency of Blanche ended in 1235, and Louis IX. took the government into his own hands; but she again took up the regency in 1248, when her son set forth on his crusade. She died in 1252, before St. Louis came home from his ill-starred expedition.
So deep was the respect entertained for the memory of Blanche of Castille, that many of the queen-dowagers of France assumed the surname of Blanche, as the Roman emperors took the title of Augustus.

The following is excerpted from Famous Women: An Outline of Feminine Achievement Through the Ages With Life Stories of Five Hundred Noted Women, written by Joseph Adelman, published 1926 by Ellis M Lonow Company.

Blanche of Castile (1187-1252), Queen of France. She was the daughter of Alfonso IX, King of Castile, and became the wife of Louis VIII, of France. She was the inspriing genius of that king and on his death assumed the regency during the minority of their son Louis IX. When in 1236 she resigned her power, the kingdom was in a flourishing condition, and had received many important territorial accessions. The young king retained her near him as his best adviser, and when she died she was universally mourned, and has always been regarded as one of the ablest rulers of France during troublous times. St. Louis of France, through the ingenuity of his mother, Queen Blanche of Castile, wore the first wig that ever graced the head of man or woman. The story goes that when King Louis returned from a crusade to the Holy Land his mother was shocked at seeing that the hardships of the journey, together with the hot climate of Palestine, had robbed her son of all his hair. But, besides being a most devoted mother, Queen Blanche was an ingenious woman, who soon found a way out of her difficulty. Each knight at court, the color of whose hair had even the slightest resemblance to her son’s, was bereft of one lock, which, deftly joined, became an ornamental covering for her son’s bald head. Thus, though women have been denied the power of invention, even at the dawn of the Middle Ages, a woman founded an industry that became very important in later centuries, and survives to this day.

The following is excerpted from A Cyclopædia of Female Biography, published 1857 by Groomsbridge and Sons and edited by Henry Gardiner Adams.

BLANCHE, Of Castile, Queen of France, was the daughter of Alphonso the Ninth, King of Castile, and of Eleanor, daughter of Henry the First of England. In 1200, she was married to Louis the Eighth of France; and became the mother of nine sons and two daughters, whom she educated with great care, and in such sentiments of piety, that two of them, Louis the Ninth, and Elizabeth, have been beatified by the church of Rome.
On the death of her husband, in 1266, he showed his esteem for her by leaving her sole regent during the minority of his son, Louis the Ninth, then only twelve years old; and Blanche justified by her conduct in the trying circumstances in which she was placed, the confidence of her husband. The princes and nobles, pretending that the regency was unjustly granted to a woman, confederated against her; but by her prudence and courage, opposing some in arms, and gaining over others with presents and condescension, Blanche finally triumphed. She made use of the romantic passion of the young Count of Champagne; to obtain information of the projects of the malcontents; but her reputation was endangered by the favour she showed him, as well as by the familiar intercourse to which she admitted the gallant Cardinal Romani.
In educating Louis, she was charged with putting him too much in the hands of the clergy; but she proved an excellent guardian of his virtue, and inspired him with a lasting respect for herself. In 1234, she married him to Margaret, daughter of the Count de Provence; and in 1285, Louis haying reached the age of twenty-one, Blanche surrendered to him the sovereign authority. But even after this she retained great ascendency over the young king, of which she sometimes made an improper use. Becoming jealous of Margaret, wife of Louis, she endeavoured to sow dissensions between them, and, failing in this, to separate them; and these disturbances caused Louis great uneasiness.
When, in 1248, Louis undertook a crusade to the Holy Land, he determined to take his queen with him, and leave his mother regent; and in this second regency she showed the same vigour and prudence as in the first. The kingdom was suffering so much from the domination of the priesthood, that vigorous measures had become necessary; and notwithstanding her strong religious feelings, she exerted her utmost power against the tyranny of the priests and in favour of the people: and as usual, Blanche was successful. The unfortunate defeat and imprisonment of her son in the East so affected her spirits, that she died, in 1252, to his great grief, and the regret of the whole kingdom. She was buried in the abbey of Maubisson. She was one of the most illustrious characters of her time, being equally distinguished for her personal and mental endowments.