Joan of England

Drunk Friday History and for a long time now I’ve been thinking about Joan of England, daughter of Edward III and Philippa of Hainault. This girl has been actively living in the back of my mind for months and passively there for years, almost like she was just waiting for the right time. So here we go.

So Edward III has a daughter and her name is Joan. And in 1348 he sends her off to marry Whoever the Whatever of Castile. Who cares, he’s not the point. Joan is at most 15 years old, okay? Beloved of her parents. She likes to sew. When her mama sends her off, certain she’ll never see her again because that’s how it is for princesses, she sends her with thread to practice with. You know the shit you help your kiddo to learn? That’s what her mommy does.

Of course that’s not all she goes with. She’s a princess after all. There’s a red velvet outfit. Corsets, embroidered with gold diamonds and stars and crescent moons. Fancy ass buttons, because why not. And her wedding dress, made of rakematiz, which was heavy silk embroidered all over with gold thread. The amount of silk here is the equivalent of Princess Diana’s iconic veil – 450 feet. $$$$$

So Joan sails off, and eventually lands in Bordeaux. The folks there, they come out and they’re like welcome! But also? Do not get off your fucking ship. We got plague here, and it’s real bad. Everybody is dying. And Joan’s people, they’re like first of all, what the fuck is plague? And second, not sure you noticed, we’re English? This sounds like a you problem, we’re good. Land, ho!

1348, if you don’t know, is the year the Black Death finally reaches England.

Anyway, Joan and Co. come ashore in Bordeaux, and pretty quickly her retinue catches the plague and starts dying. Turns out, plague doesn’t give a fuck about your nationality or your money or anything else. Plague don’t care. They move Joan to Loremo, a tiny village, but ultimately it doesn’t matter. She gets sick, and in July or August 1348, there are two different dates floating around out there, in the summer of 1348 she dies a horrible, painful death. (If you’re unfamiliar, I really don’t recommend that you google it. It’s bad.) She never gets to wear the wedding dress, or use up the practice thread her mama sent with her. She never sees her 16th birthday.

Joan was young. Rich. A princess. Her father was hella respected; a contemporary chronicler compared him to the mythical King Arthur. So many advantages. But she died anyway.

Don’t be sad. Or be sad, that’s okay, but stick with me because that’s not entirely my point.

See, historically speaking, Joan doesn’t matter. She never married Whoever The Fuck of Castile, so the alliance she was meant to create never hinged on her; instead two of her brothers would do it. She was never a queen or a regent; she never wielded power. She never birthed children to further her father’s dynasty. She never founded an abbey or became a saint or had visions or whatever shit women have to do to make it into the records. The Black Death killed her before any of that could happen.

And yet. She DID matter.

There’s this conception of medieval folks. I bet you know it. They didn’t care about their children, is the line, unless it was to further the family. “The heir and the spare,” goes the joke. They had a bunch of kids because they knew some would die, and it was all very ‘c’est la vie.’ But Edward III had 13 children, including a whole mess of sons, and yet. When he wrote to the king of Castile, to explain why shit had fallen apart, he wrote thus:

“No fellow human being could be surprised if we were inwardly desolated by the sting of this bitter grief, for we are humans too.”

Edward knew. He knew how people saw him, how his daughter’s death would be interpreted, this girl he had sent with her wedding dress and her mama’s thread, and he said no. He said, Actually, she was loved. I want you to know that. I’m sorry that the alliance didn’t work out but also, this girl, this child of mine, mattered to me. I wear a crown but I am, after all, only human.

When he died, Edward, 29 years later, Joan’s image was carved onto his tomb. It’s the only image we have of her. Think about that, just for a second. Sit with it. Nearly 30 years after her death, Edward or the artist who had final say over his tomb, it really doesn’t matter, a choice was made – 29 years later, there she was, cast in bronze, like the rest of her siblings.

Half the figures on the tomb are gone now, destroyed over time, but not Joan. Joan is still there.

And the other thing is, you know, we know who she was. What she took with her. The things she carried, if you please. (You might not like that reference but honestly, with the shit girls have been told to endure for centuries? Deal with it.) We don’t know her exact date of birth, or what happened to her body after she died, but we know about the thread, and the wedding dress. We know about the hopes her parents had for her. We know that she was loved.

And we know those things because yes, they were written down, a long long time ago, but also because someone, several someones, over the intervening centuries, took an interest. Read about Joan and thought hey, other people should hear about this. And yeah, that’s probably because she was a royal who got taken out by the Black Death. But I also think Joan serves as a symbol for us.

The plague killed millions of people around  the world. Joan’s parents loved her; the nameless children who died of plague were also loved. Joan’s family remembered her long after she was gone; the survivors who lost partners, siblings, friends, they remembered too. Joan mattered. So did all the others.

It is easy, I think, to be cynical about history. We mostly know about the rich, the royal, the famous and the infamous, the people who were “important” enough to be recorded. But I really do believe that most of us take what was recorded and think about all the people who never made it into the records. We care. That’s ultimately the human condition: wanting to know about those who are gone, wanting them to be remembered, wanting them to matter.

I wish I could remember where I read about the thread. I can’t. But I remember Joan, and through her so many others. I wanted you to know about her too.