Above, Queen Matilda of Flanders, who is of an older generation and different from the Empress Maud of the Anarchy so well chronicled in the Cadfael series. Interesting, the succession challenges that even a royal system can bring. Human ego, I guess, eh? Last shots from my stroll around the Jardins du Luxembourg, final morning in Paris before heading off to Zermatt last October.
And we’ll wrap up this week of bridges with two posts from Paris, where we began it all. This one’s all from Chateau de Vincennes. Its 700-year-old keep (above, with protective drawbridge) was built here well outside the city limits, at a time when France’s kings were feeling a bit vulnerable after a capture by the English and some demonstrations by angry peasants – most likely about the tendency of France’s wealthy dictatorial hereditary rulers’ tendency to underestimate the difficulty average people faced in feeding their families – near their city palaces.
First of several posts we’ll share from the Chateau de Vincennes, abutting Bois de Vincennes to the east of Paris. What you see here is the keep in the foreground – completed in the 1300s under Charles V, when French kings were feeling vulnerable after one of them had been captured by the English, and others made uncomfortable by public demonstrations and protests too close for comfort to their palace in the heart of the city. In the background you see parts of the Sainte-Chapelle de Vincennes, completed in the 1500s under Henri II but begun under Charles V in the 1300s. Lots of interruptions due to wars, money troubles and even a brief occupation by the English Henry V after his troops won the battle of Agincourt – and in fact it seems he died here at Vincennes, another “who knew” moment. Below you see some of the classical palaces built later: more on that later :-).
(so much world, so little time....) 