Her 12-year-old grandson was shot to death in Atlanta. One year later, no suspect has been identified David Mack was shot six times in the woods near his home in Atlanta, and police are still working to find tipsters willing to help identify who killed him. ATLANTA — Wednesday marks one year in the baffling, Atlanta shooting death of a 12-year-old boy. On Feb. 9, 2021, David Mack disappeared, after saying he was going to visit a friend. The next day, his body was found at the edge of some woods near his home. One year later, Atlanta Police and David’s grieving family are sure there is someone out there who could come forward to help them find out who shot and killed him, and why. No one who knows is talking; there are no hints emerging of the secret. “We’re not even close to finding anyone,” David’s grandmother, Glenda Mack, said on Monday. Atlanta Police Homicide Detective Scott Demeester said on Tuesday, “We feel that there are people out there that know what happened.”  Who killed 12-year-old David Mack, along the woods a short walk from his home near John A. White Park in southwest Atlanta? Glenda Mack could only shrug her shoulders as she wept. “Who knows? Maybe I’ll never get an answer,” she said. Glenda reared David from a baby. She said she constantly re-lives that afternoon, "Thinking, thinking, thinking about what I could have done." She was driving home, and was a few minutes away, when David called her from their porch.

The family’s front-door video shows him calling her; it is the last-known video of him.

David told her he was going to go visit a friend, to play football.

He left the house, but he never arrived at his friend’s. “We do have hope that we will continue to move this case in the right direction,” Lt. Woolfolk said on Tuesday. “There are several items of evidentiary value that we think can help move the investigation forward. The team has been working just in a relentless capacity pertaining to this investigation.” Maj. Carlo Peek, the Major Crimes Commander, said the process involves "putting together events that happened once he disappeared, who was he with, who did he speak with. I think when we can put all of those pieces of the puzzle together, we possibly can come to some type of resolution in solving this case." Maj. Peek and Homicide Detective Scott Demeester--Det. Demeester recently helped solve the 1995 rape and murder of 14-year-old Nacole Smith--said it’s been tough getting people who might have information to come forward and talk about David’s case. People can contact Crime Stoppers on-line, or by calling 404-577-8477. They can leave tips anonymously and qualify for the reward.

Glenda filed a missing person report that evening with Atlanta Police. Members of David’s large, close-knit family searched for him all night and into the following afternoon.

Early in the afternoon of Feb. 10, 2021, they found his body face-down along the concrete slope of Utoy Creek, behind the large back-yards of homes on Shirley Street in southwest Atlanta. The Fulton County Medical Examiner later confirmed that someone had beaten David, and shot him six times.

In 2001, the movie The Princess Diaries was released about an American teenager named Amelia Mia" Thermopolis, who finds out she's the heiress to the throne of a small European monarchy. Although the story is fictional, 673 years earlier, a teenaged girl inherited a throne of a small European monarchy. Her name was Jeanne II of Navarre

Jeanne was the daughter of King Louis I of Navarre, Count of Champagne, and his wife Margaret, daughter of Robert II, Duke of Burgundy, by his wife Alice Princess of France. Louis was the son and heir of King Philip IV of France and his wife Queen Jeanne I of Navarre, Countess of Champagne. The kingdom of Navarre of roughly 100,000 people was a small kingdom that existed in now what's Northeastern Spain and southwestern France. It was one of the three Christian kingdoms of Spain, the others being Castile-Leon, and Aragon. The county of Champagne was a vassal country within France, whose rulers, the counts of Champagne paid homage to the kings of France. Queen Countess Jeanne I inherited the thrones of Champagne and Navarre as a child from her father King Henry I in 1273.

Louis I and Margaret became king and queen of Navarre and count and countess of Champagne after the death of his mother Queen Jeanne I in 1305. The couple spent two months in their new kingdom before returning to France. Their daughter, Jeanne II, was born in France in 1312.

The marriage between Louis and Margaret was unhappy and Louis had a child, Eudeline, by a mistress. Margaret also had affairs. She and her sister-in-law, Blanche of Burgundy (wife of Louis' brother Charles) had affairs with two brother knights Walter and Philip of Aunay. Louis and Charles' sister, Isabella, Queen of England, grew suspicious after she saw the brother knights wearing the purses she gave to Margaret and Blanche and she told her father, Philip IV, who had the princesses and the knights placed under surveillance. The affairs were exposed, and Margaret, Blanche, and Blanche's sister, Countess Jeanne II of Burgundy, wife of Louis and Charles' brother Philip, were arrested and charged with adultery. Margaret and Blanche were convicted and imprisoned in 1314, but Countess Jeanne II of Burgundy was acquitted of all charges. Philip IV died later that year, on November 29, and Louis succeeded him as King Louis X with Margaret as queen consort, but Margaret was still locked up.

Margaret died in 1315, officially of a cold, but some sources alleged she was murdered so Louis could marry his second wife, Clementia of Hungary. King Louis died on June 5, 1316 and since Clementia was pregnant, his brother Philip, who ruled the county of Burgundy because of his marriage to Countess Jeanne II of Burgundy, ruled France as regent. Clemetia gave birth to a son, who became King Jean I of France, Navarre, Count of Champagne, but he died four days later.

Jean I's death caused a succession crisis as it was the first time in the Capetian dynasty that a king died without children. The two contenders for the thrones of France, Navarre, and Champagne, were Louis' daughter Princess Jeanne, and her paternal uncle Count Philip. Princess Jeanne's candidacy was jeopardized by the fact that she was female, and France had never been ruled by a woman, and the fact that her mother had an affair and as there was no DNA testing back then, no one could be sure if she was Louis' daughter, though Louis did officially acknowledge her as his daughter.

In the end, On January 9, 1317, Count Philip arranged his coronation as King Philip V of France, Count of Champagne, and King Philip II of Navarre with his wife Countess Jeanne II of Burgundy becoming Queen Consort. Philip then assembled the Estates General of France, who ratified his decision by appealing to the Salic law and forever barring women from the throne of France. The succession to the thrones of Champagne and Navarre were more controversial, as Philip couldn't say that women couldn't rule those lands since his own mother Jeanne I, had succeeded her father as rightful ruler of those lands. But Philip remained king and count of all three realms.

Jeanne's maternal uncle, Duke Odo IV of Burgundy, and his mother, her grandmother, Dowager Duchess Alice, protested Philip's actions, claiming the thrones on Princess Jeanne's behalf, but Philip managed to convince Odo IV to abandon his niece, by promising Odo the hand of his daughter, another Jeanne, who was heiress to her mother's county of Burgundy and second in her maternal grandmother Mahaut's county of Artois. It may be confusing, but the county of Burgundy was a separate territory than the Duchy of Burgundy. The counts of Burgundy were vassal rulers to the Holy Roman Emperors/kings of Germany, whereas the dukes of Burgundy were vassals of the kings of France. This marriage would eventually lead to Duke Odo IV tripling the lands under his rule when his wife Duchess Jeanne eventually succeeded her mother Queen Jeanne II as reigning countess Jeanne III of Burgundy and Artois in 1330.

As for Princess Jeanne, King Louis' daughter, her uncle, King Philip V didn't want her to become a useful pawn in the hands of ambitious men, so he arranged her marriage to a distant cousin, Prince Philip, Count of Evreux and Longueville in 1318. Philip was 12 years old and Jeanne II was 6 years old. Philip was a member of the French royal Capetian dynasty, being a grandson of King Philip III of France. Jeanne, now Countess Consort of Evreux, was raised by Philip's grandmother, Queen Dowager Marie of Brabant.

King Philip V died in 1322, Since Philip only had daughters, the throne went to his younger brother Charles as King Charles IV of France and I of Navarre, Count of Champagne. Charles IV, who divorced his wife Blanche, and was married to Philip of Evreux's sister Jeanne of Evreux, died after his ruling for four years on February 1,1328. His death caused another succession crises since Queen Dowager Jeanne of Evreux was pregnant. Philip and Queen Jeanne of Evreux's paternal uncle, Count Philip of Valois, another grandson of King Philip III of France, was made regent of France. Count Philip of Valois was also an uncle in law of Countess Jeanne of Evreux, being married to her maternal aunt, another Jeanne of Burgundy, sister of Duke Odo IV and Queen Margaret.

Queen Jeanne of Evreux gave birth to a daughter named Blanche and as women were not allowed to inherit, this excluded the daughters of Kings Louis X, Philip V, and Charles IV. Another meeting of the Estates General was assembled, and they decreed that not only did the Salic ban female succession to the French throne but also the French throne could not pass through females. This excluded the son of Duchess/Countess Jeanne III of the two Burgundies and King Edward III of England, son of Isabella, daughter of King Philip IV and sister of Kings Louis X, Philip V, and Charles IV. Thus Count Philip of Valois became King Philip VI of France.

The succession to throne being settled, there was also the county of Champagne. Philip V had no claim to the county, but he wanted it to remain united with the French crown, so he persuaded Jeanne to exchange the rich county for two the counties of Mortain and Angouleme. Last there was still the issue of the kingdom of Navarre. Philp V was not of Navarrese royal blood and had no claim to Navarre, but Countess Jeanne of Evreux's cousins Duchess Countess Jeanne III of the Burgundies and Dowager Queen Jeanne of Evreux's daughters Marie and Blanche, had claims to the Navarrese throne. The nobles of Navarre met up at an assembly in May 1328 and declared Countess Jeanne of Evreux as rightful monarch, as Queen Jeanne II when she was sixteen years old. She was the second female to inherit the Navarre throne. The first being her grandmother, Queen Jeanne I.

A new controversy arose over the role of Queen Jeanne II's husband. Christian scriptures instructed that wives should obey husbands, and Philip claimed the right to rule his wife's kingdom, but the Navarre nobles were reluctant to accept the rule of a foreign prince with no Navarrese royal blood. They agreed to allow Philip some role in the administration as king consort. After months of negotiations, Philip and Jeanne arrived in the kingdom and were crowned as joint monarchs King Philip III and Queen Jeanne II on March 5 1329. They both swore an oath to respect the laws of the kingdom. Philip III was twenty-three and Jeanne II was seventeen. Jeanne was the only female ruler of an independent kingdom in Europe until 1343 when another Jeanne became Queen Jeanne II of Naples at age 15. She was one of only two females ruling kingdoms in their own right in the whole world! The other case was a woman ruling in Southeast Asia.

Philip III and Jeanne II governed jointly, although he was the dominant partner. Of the 85 edicts issued during their 15-year joint reign, 41 were issued under both their names, 38 were issued solely under Philip III's name and six were issued solely under Jeanne II's name. From the outset, Philip III expressed his intention to personally exercise royal power and direct the work of government. Jeanne II was, however, the natural ruler of the kingdom and as such accompanied her husband on his travels through Navarre after the proclamation, Philip of Evreux, always concerned with legitimizing his authority, tried to keep her at his side in the public manifestations of monarchical power in Navarre and to make her participate with him in the main orders of government, such as the regulation of succession (May 15, 1329), the granting or confirmation of privileges and the appointment of new governors. Prior to their election, anti-Jewish riots had erupted in 1328, and many Jews were killed and the new king and queen punished the ringleaders of the riots

After attending as witnesses the act of homage paid in Amiens by Jeanne's cousin King Edward III of England to the King of France (6-11 July 1329), the King and Queen returned to Navarre. Philip III and Jeanne II repaired royal fortresses and constructed irrigation systems of arid fields. They signed a peace deal with the neighboring kingdom of Castile on March 15, 1330. Philip III compiled and reformed the law codes of the kingdom. Their dedication to law and justice led them to them to be beloved and gain a reputation of being good monarchs to their subjects. On a personal level, the couple got along well and had 9 children, five daughters and four sons, though one of their sons Louis, died at age 4 in 1334.

After staying in Navarre for two years, Jeanne II and Philip III returned to France in autumn 1331, spending most of their time traveling back and forth between their French counties, which they ruled as vassals to the French king and in the palace of the kings of Navarre in Paris, at the court of their uncle and aunt King Philip VI and Queen Jeanne of Burgundy. They appointed a French noble, Henry IV of Sully, to rule as governor in their behalf. Philip III tried to get a crusade started against the sultanate of Granada in Southern Spain in 1331, but this attempt failed as the Pope advised against it and the king of Castile signed a truce with Granada.

In June 1335, war broke out with Castile after Henry De Sully, ordered the occupation of towns Fitero and Tudején (1335).The immediate and energetic Castilian counteroffensive threatened Tudela, devastated the lands south of the Ebro and the region of Sonsierra, and attacked the border from Guipúzcoa, taking the castle of Ausa. Only with the aid of Gaston II, Count of Foix and Viscount of Béarn, were the Navarrese able to stop the attack. Jeanne II returned to Navarre in the spring of 1336 to resolve the conflict with Castile. In the kingdom, she ratified the agreements reached with the representatives of King Alfonso XI (April 1336). In agreement with the pontifical recommendations, the new governor Saladin of Angleure and the Castilian delegates agreed to submit the differences to the arbitration of a joint commission or, in case of dissent, of Cardinal Giacomo Gaetani (Cuevas, February 28, 1336), conditions which were also confirmed by Philip III from Toulouse before arriving in Navarre. Determined in any case to end the conflict, in April 1336 he returned to Navarre, where they remained for only a few months confirming the agreements reached with Castile. Quickly and jointly, the King and Queen returned to France. Jeanne II would never return to her kingdom.

Philip III tried again to launch a crusade, this time against the Muslims of the Holy Land, but this was ended as a result of the tensions between Jeanne II's uncle King Philip V of France and cousin King Edward III of England, who in 1337 claimed the French throne through his mom Isabella of France, daughter of King Philip IV of France and Queen Jeanne I of Navarre, though if the Salic law were to repealed, his cousins Queen Jeanne II of Navarre and Countess Jeanne II of Burgundy, and their sons would have had the greater claims as the daughters of Isabella's brothers.

In 1338, Philip III and Jeanne II negotiated the marriage of their second oldest child, ten-year-old Maria of Navarre to twenty-one-year-old King Pedro IV of Aragon, thus making Maria Queen of Aragon. In 1338 Philip III seized the lands of Mixe and Ostabarret and attached them to the crown. These lands were held by the viscounts of Tartas who were ruled Tartas as vassals of the Duke of Guyenne(Edward III) but held Mixe and Ostabarret as vassals to Navarre. When Viscount Guitard d' Albret died, his heir Bernard Ezi refused to do homage to Navarre, so Philip III sent 200 soldiers and a royal official to govern those lands on the behalf of the crown.

Philip III sent three "reformers" from France (March 12, 1340) to examine the management of the kingdom and alleviate the shortage of cash. They dismissed and imposed fines on numerous officials, prosecuted fraud and regulated the use of their own and foreign currency, seeking new revenues and inspecting administrative deficits until they managed to improve the yield of real revenues and the stabilization of prices. In addition, the gradual expansion of royal powers caused friction between the bishop of Pamplona

Philip III returned to Navarre in 1342 and 1343 to help organize a Christian crusade against Granada with the kings of Castile and Aragon. His crusading adventure was received with lukewarm reception by the lords of Navarre and caused conflict with the bishop of Pamplona who refused to give his knights to the crusading effort. As a result, Philip III left Navarre with a small army of 100 knights and 300 infantry. Philip III died after being wounded in battle on September 16, 1343.

Jeanne III took sole control of Navarre as sole monarch and of her French counties of Mortain and Angouleme. Her sons Charles and Philip succeeded their father as counts of Evreux and Longueville respectively, but since they were aged eleven and seven, Jeanne held the rule of those counties as well.  

Jeanne II dismissed the royal governor Philip of Melun, who before the end of 1343 had been replaced by Guillaume de Brahe, lord of Servon (Brie), and resumed the precautionary measures that Philip III had already initiated against his management (March 29, 1344). Also from France, since she was unable to make the planned trip to Navarre in the spring of 1344, Jeanne II confiscated the lands of the bishop of Pamplona until she achieved the renewal of his commitment to the Crown (June 1344) and she appointed Juan de Conflans (7 November 1344), marshal of Champagne, as governor.

Jeanne was able resolve the outstanding payments of the dowry of her daughter Maria, married to King Pedro IV, thanks in large part to the income obtained from the seizure of the goods and revenues of the Jewish banker Ezmel de Ablitas (1344-1345), thus procuring the support of Aragon. In this way, she tried to compensate for the diplomatic offensive of Philip VI of France to attract Castilian loyalty by negotiating the marriage of Blanche of Navarre with the heir of Castile. However, the Valois finally restored to Jeanne II the authority over her children (12 December 1344), and although the French and Castilian monarchs reached an agreement on the terms of the marriage (1 July 1345), the diplomatic duplicity of Alfonso XI and the reluctance of the Queen of Navarre blocked the initiative.

In the meantime, and at the behest of Peter IV, the governor of Navarre consolidated the alliance with Aragon by sealing an agreement on mutual defense and delimitation of borders, which was ratified by Jeanne II in Pacy (22 July 1345), although all diplomatic efforts could not avoid friction with Aragonese and Castilian border populations.

In Navarre, the Queen ordered the arrest of the royal procurator Jacques Licras (5 July 1345). The former executor of Philip III's regalist policy was tried for venality and other abuses, and a year later executed in an exemplary manner in Pamplona. On May 19, 1346, a general injunction was issued to all those affected by the bad practices of the procurator to express their complaints. Roberto Lalose, advisor to the Queen, was commissioned to direct the process with the collaboration of the mayors of Cort Pedro Miguel de Sangüesa and Pedro Paisera and the royal lawyer Juan Jiménez de Echalecu. Meanwhile, on June 27, 1346, the bishop commissioned an investigation into the possible clerical condition of the defendant with the intention of judging him by the courts of the Church. According to the minutes of the trial, partially preserved, Jacques Licras incurred in usurpation of royal jurisdiction, prevarication and bribery. He did not hesitate to corrupt one of the highest offices of the kingdom to his advantage, falsely accused innocent people, and ordered without cause, and without the consent of the Sovereign, the application of torture and the most severe corporal punishment, including capital punishment.

In Pamplona, in the presence of the local authorities, the conviction was carried out by means of a careful penal staging that publicly exposed the misdeeds of the prosecutor and the repudiation of the Crown. Jacques Licras was whipped through the streets to the sound of the bugle carrying in his head the false judicial processes he had led against innocent people. He was placed in the pillory until noon for public ridicule and then taken to the Barañáin meadow, on the outskirts of the city, where his tongue was cut out and he was hanged on a scaffold erected for the occasion. It was also the case of Hugo de Brion, merino de la Ribera, among those of many other officers dismissed and prosecuted before the end of the reign of Jeanne II.

However, it was French affairs that focused the Queen's attention in her last years, marked by attempts to recover one of her main domains, Angoulême. Indeed, the strategic square on the Gascony front had been occupied by the English troops of the Earl of Derby (December 1345), putting an end to the efforts that Philip III had dedicated for decades to its protection. Recovered by the Duke of Normandy with the help of troops sent by Jeanne II under the command of Gil García de Yániz, the King of France retained it, however, in his possession as he considered it too valuable a position to return to its owner, whose fidelity he was suspicious of. In order to compensate for the loss and strengthen loyalties in the south of France, Philip VI asked for the hand of the Infanta Agnes of Navarre for Gaston III Phoebus, Count of Foix, assigning him an important additional dowry. Jeanne II, to whom this southern alliance could bring great benefits, then began negotiations with the mother of the little count (1347-1348) and approved the engagement of her daughter Blanche to John (1349), Duke of Normandy and eldest son of Philip VI, thus consolidating a willful rapprochement with the Valois monarch with which she undoubtedly intended to accelerate the return of Angoulême.

After attending her daughter's marriage to the Count of Foix in Paris (4 August 1349), Jeanne II moved to Conflans. From there she renewed his alliance with Pedro IV of Aragon (27 August 1349), while hoping to be able to resolve the pending issues with Philip VI quickly and definitively. However, she only managed to wrest from the Monarch the places of Pontoise, Beaumont-sur-Oise and Asnières in the Seine basin, as compensation for the loss of Angoulême (Vincennes, 2 October 1349), shortly before falling ill. The epidemic of the Black Death, which had been ravaging all of Europe for a year and affected the kingdom of Navarre with particular virulence, ended the Queen's life, leaving the agreement unfulfilled.

Her son Charles (II) then inherited not only the Navarrese throne and most of the family domains, but also the unresolved problem of territorial compensations and an important network of family and noble loyalties in France. Jeanne II was buried next to her father in the abbey of Saint-Denis, the royal pantheon of the Capetians, while her heart was deposited next to that of Philip III in the church of the great Dominican convent in Paris.

She had a large number of children, the result of her marriage to Philip of Evreux: Jeanne, firstborn, who, after the negotiations to unite her to the heir of Aragon (1331-1333) failed, entered the abbey of Longchamp as a nun (1338) and died in 1387; Maria (c. 1327), who was the one who finally married Pedro IV (1338) and died in 1347; Louis (1330), first male child, died at a young age in 1334; Blanche (c. 1331), betrothed to the Infante Peter of Castile (1345) and the heir of France (1349), but finally married to King Philip VI of Valois (1350), whose first wife Jeanne of Burgundy, was Blanche's grand aunt. Philip died a few months after the wedding, and Blanche enjoying a long widowhood, was a firm supporter of her brother Charles at the French Court until she died in 1398; Charles, born in 1332, became king of Navarre and died in 1387; Philip (1336), who received the county of Longueville and was a fervent supporter of his brother against the Valois and died in 1363; Agnes (c. 1337), married the Count of Foix (1349), who would repudiate her in 1362, died in 1396; a second Louis, the youngest of the sons, a close collaborator of his brother until his departure for Albania after his marriage to Joanna of Anjou, Duchess of Durazzo (1366), he passed away in 1372; and another Jeanne, born before 1343, passed away in 1403, who married definitively John I, Viscount of Rohan (1377).

I call Queen Jeanne II of Navarre "the real Princess Diaries" because like Mia Thermopolis, the fictional protagonist of the book and movies, she became heir to a kingdom when she was a teenager of high school age. The Mia's fictional European kingdom of Genovia is small kingdom between France and Spain. Jeanne II's kingdom was a small European nation comprised of parts of France and Spain. In the movies, but not the books, Mia is the heir to her deceased father and never visited her kingdom prior to becoming heir. Like Mia The real-life Jeanne II's claim to the crown also came through her father and she too never visited her kingdom prior to becoming heir. The fictional Mia and the real-life Jeanne II traveled from one country to a small country they never lived in to inherit its crown.

Jeanne II of Navarre is a fascinating story of a French princess denied the right to rule France because of sexism, becomes reigning queen of small mostly Spanish kingdom, which she rules successfully for 21 years, ruling jointly with her husband and six years alone as a widow, gets caught up in the Hundred Years War between her English cousin King Edward III and her French uncle King Philip VI, and dies during the Black Plaque. Jeanne II, Tainted Queen – History… the interesting bits!

Joan II of Navarre - Wikipedia

In 2001, the movie The Princess Diaries was released about an American teenager named Amelia Mia" Thermopolis, who finds out she's the heiress to the throne of a small European monarchy. Although the story is fictional, 673 years earlier, a teenaged girl inherited a throne of a small European monarchy. Her name was Jeanne II of Navarre

Jeanne was the daughter of King Louis I of Navarre, Count of Champagne, and his wife Margaret, daughter of Robert II, Duke of Burgundy, by his wife Alice Princess of France. Louis was the son and heir of King Philip IV of France and his wife Queen Jeanne I of Navarre, Countess of Champagne. The kingdom of Navarre of roughly 100,000 people was a small kingdom that existed in now what's Northeastern Spain and southwestern France. It was one of the three Christian kingdoms of Spain, the others being Castile-Leon, and Aragon. The county of Champagne was a vassal country within France, whose rulers, the counts of Champagne paid homage to the kings of France. Queen Countess Jeanne I inherited the thrones of Champagne and Navarre as a child from her father King Henry I in 1273.

Louis I and Margaret became king and queen of Navarre and count and countess of Champagne after the death of his mother Queen Jeanne I in 1305. The couple spent two months in their new kingdom before returning to France. Their daughter, Jeanne II, was born in France in 1312.

The marriage between Louis and Margaret was unhappy and Louis had a child, Eudeline, by a mistress. Margaret also had affairs. She and her sister-in-law, Blanche of Burgundy (wife of Louis' brother Charles) had affairs with two brother knights Walter and Philip of Aunay. Louis and Charles' sister, Isabella, Queen of England, grew suspicious after she saw the brother knights wearing the purses she gave to Margaret and Blanche and she told her father, Philip IV, who had the princesses and the knights placed under surveillance. The affairs were exposed, and Margaret, Blanche, and Blanche's sister, Countess Jeanne II of Burgundy, wife of Louis and Charles' brother Philip, were arrested and charged with adultery. Margaret and Blanche were convicted and imprisoned in 1314, but Countess Jeanne II of Burgundy was acquitted of all charges. Philip IV died later that year, on November 29, and Louis succeeded him as King Louis X with Margaret as queen consort, but Margaret was still locked up.

Margaret died in 1315, officially of a cold, but some sources alleged she was murdered so Louis could marry his second wife, Clementia of Hungary. King Louis died on June 5, 1316 and since Clementia was pregnant, his brother Philip, who ruled the county of Burgundy because of his marriage to Countess Jeanne II of Burgundy, ruled France as regent. Clemetia gave birth to a son, who became King Jean I of France, Navarre, Count of Champagne, but he died four days later.

Jean I's death caused a succession crisis as it was the first time in the Capetian dynasty that a king died without children. The two contenders for the thrones of France, Navarre, and Champagne, were Louis' daughter Princess Jeanne, and her paternal uncle Count Philip. Princess Jeanne's candidacy was jeopardized by the fact that she was female, and France had never been ruled by a woman, and the fact that her mother had an affair and as there was no DNA testing back then, no one could be sure if she was Louis' daughter, though Louis did officially acknowledge her as his daughter.

In the end, On January 9, 1317, Count Philip arranged his coronation as King Philip V of France, Count of Champagne, and King Philip II of Navarre with his wife Countess Jeanne II of Burgundy becoming Queen Consort. Philip then assembled the Estates General of France, who ratified his decision by appealing to the Salic law and forever barring women from the throne of France. The succession to the thrones of Champagne and Navarre were more controversial, as Philip couldn't say that women couldn't rule those lands since his own mother Jeanne I, had succeeded her father as rightful ruler of those lands. But Philip remained king and count of all three realms.

Jeanne's maternal uncle, Duke Odo IV of Burgundy, and his mother, her grandmother, Dowager Duchess Alice, protested Philip's actions, claiming the thrones on Princess Jeanne's behalf, but Philip managed to convince Odo IV to abandon his niece, by promising Odo the hand of his daughter, another Jeanne, who was heiress to her mother's county of Burgundy and second in her maternal grandmother Mahaut's county of Artois. It may be confusing, but the county of Burgundy was a separate territory than the Duchy of Burgundy. The counts of Burgundy were vassal rulers to the Holy Roman Emperors/kings of Germany, whereas the dukes of Burgundy were vassals of the kings of France. This marriage would eventually lead to Duke Odo IV tripling the lands under his rule when his wife Duchess Jeanne eventually succeeded her mother Queen Jeanne II as reigning countess Jeanne III of Burgundy and Artois in 1330.

As for Princess Jeanne, King Louis' daughter, her uncle, King Philip V didn't want her to become a useful pawn in the hands of ambitious men, so he arranged her marriage to a distant cousin, Prince Philip, Count of Evreux and Longueville in 1318. Philip was 12 years old and Jeanne II was 6 years old. Philip was a member of the French royal Capetian dynasty, being a grandson of King Philip III of France. Jeanne, now Countess Consort of Evreux, was raised by Philip's grandmother, Queen Dowager Marie of Brabant.

King Philip V died in 1322, Since Philip only had daughters, the throne went to his younger brother Charles as King Charles IV of France and I of Navarre, Count of Champagne. Charles IV, who divorced his wife Blanche, and was married to Philip of Evreux's sister Jeanne of Evreux, died after his ruling for four years on February 1,1328. His death caused another succession crises since Queen Dowager Jeanne of Evreux was pregnant. Philip and Queen Jeanne of Evreux's paternal uncle, Count Philip of Valois, another grandson of King Philip III of France, was made regent of France. Count Philip of Valois was also an uncle in law of Countess Jeanne of Evreux, being married to her maternal aunt, another Jeanne of Burgundy, sister of Duke Odo IV and Queen Margaret.

Queen Jeanne of Evreux gave birth to a daughter named Blanche and as women were not allowed to inherit, this excluded the daughters of Kings Louis X, Philip V, and Charles IV. Another meeting of the Estates General was assembled, and they decreed that not only did the Salic ban female succession to the French throne but also the French throne could not pass through females. This excluded the son of Duchess/Countess Jeanne III of the two Burgundies and King Edward III of England, son of Isabella, daughter of King Philip IV and sister of Kings Louis X, Philip V, and Charles IV. Thus Count Philip of Valois became King Philip VI of France.

The succession to throne being settled, there was also the county of Champagne. Philip V had no claim to the county, but he wanted it to remain united with the French crown, so he persuaded Jeanne to exchange the rich county for two the counties of Mortain and Angouleme. Last there was still the issue of the kingdom of Navarre. Philp V was not of Navarrese royal blood and had no claim to Navarre, but Countess Jeanne of Evreux's cousins Duchess Countess Jeanne III of the Burgundies and Dowager Queen Jeanne of Evreux's daughters Marie and Blanche, had claims to the Navarrese throne. The nobles of Navarre met up at an assembly in May 1328 and declared Countess Jeanne of Evreux as rightful monarch, as Queen Jeanne II when she was sixteen years old. She was the second female to inherit the Navarre throne. The first being her grandmother, Queen Jeanne I.

A new controversy arose over the role of Queen Jeanne II's husband. Christian scriptures instructed that wives should obey husbands, and Philip claimed the right to rule his wife's kingdom, but the Navarre nobles were reluctant to accept the rule of a foreign prince with no Navarrese royal blood. They agreed to allow Philip some role in the administration as king consort. After months of negotiations, Philip and Jeanne arrived in the kingdom and were crowned as joint monarchs King Philip III and Queen Jeanne II on March 5 1329. They both swore an oath to respect the laws of the kingdom. Philip III was twenty-three and Jeanne II was seventeen. Jeanne was the only female ruler of an independent kingdom in Europe until 1343 when another Jeanne became Queen Jeanne II of Naples at age 15. She was one of only two females ruling kingdoms in their own right in the whole world! The other case was a woman ruling in Southeast Asia.

Philip III and Jeanne II governed jointly, although he was the dominant partner. Of the 85 edicts issued during their 15-year joint reign, 41 were issued under both their names, 38 were issued solely under Philip III's name and six were issued solely under Jeanne II's name. From the outset, Philip III expressed his intention to personally exercise royal power and direct the work of government. Jeanne II was, however, the natural ruler of the kingdom and as such accompanied her husband on his travels through Navarre after the proclamation, Philip of Evreux, always concerned with legitimizing his authority, tried to keep her at his side in the public manifestations of monarchical power in Navarre and to make her participate with him in the main orders of government, such as the regulation of succession (May 15, 1329), the granting or confirmation of privileges and the appointment of new governors. Prior to their election, anti-Jewish riots had erupted in 1328, and many Jews were killed and the new king and queen punished the ringleaders of the riots

After attending as witnesses the act of homage paid in Amiens by Jeanne's cousin King Edward III of England to the King of France (6-11 July 1329), the King and Queen returned to Navarre. Philip III and Jeanne II repaired royal fortresses and constructed irrigation systems of arid fields. They signed a peace deal with the neighboring kingdom of Castile on March 15, 1330. Philip III compiled and reformed the law codes of the kingdom. Their dedication to law and justice led them to them to be beloved and gain a reputation of being good monarchs to their subjects. On a personal level, the couple got along well and had 9 children, five daughters and four sons, though one of their sons Louis, died at age 4 in 1334.

After staying in Navarre for two years, Jeanne II and Philip III returned to France in autumn 1331, spending most of their time traveling back and forth between their French counties, which they ruled as vassals to the French king and in the palace of the kings of Navarre in Paris, at the court of their uncle and aunt King Philip VI and Queen Jeanne of Burgundy. They appointed a French noble, Henry IV of Sully, to rule as governor in their behalf. Philip III tried to get a crusade started against the sultanate of Granada in Southern Spain in 1331, but this attempt failed as the Pope advised against it and the king of Castile signed a truce with Granada.

In June 1335, war broke out with Castile after Henry De Sully, ordered the occupation of towns Fitero and Tudején (1335).The immediate and energetic Castilian counteroffensive threatened Tudela, devastated the lands south of the Ebro and the region of Sonsierra, and attacked the border from Guipúzcoa, taking the castle of Ausa. Only with the aid of Gaston II, Count of Foix and Viscount of Béarn, were the Navarrese able to stop the attack. Jeanne II returned to Navarre in the spring of 1336 to resolve the conflict with Castile. In the kingdom, she ratified the agreements reached with the representatives of King Alfonso XI (April 1336). In agreement with the pontifical recommendations, the new governor Saladin of Angleure and the Castilian delegates agreed to submit the differences to the arbitration of a joint commission or, in case of dissent, of Cardinal Giacomo Gaetani (Cuevas, February 28, 1336), conditions which were also confirmed by Philip III from Toulouse before arriving in Navarre. Determined in any case to end the conflict, in April 1336 he returned to Navarre, where they remained for only a few months confirming the agreements reached with Castile. Quickly and jointly, the King and Queen returned to France. Jeanne II would never return to her kingdom.

Philip III tried again to launch a crusade, this time against the Muslims of the Holy Land, but this was ended as a result of the tensions between Jeanne II's uncle King Philip V of France and cousin King Edward III of England, who in 1337 claimed the French throne through his mom Isabella of France, daughter of King Philip IV of France and Queen Jeanne I of Navarre, though if the Salic law were to repealed, his cousins Queen Jeanne II of Navarre and Countess Jeanne II of Burgundy, and their sons would have had the greater claims as the daughters of Isabella's brothers.

In 1338, Philip III and Jeanne II negotiated the marriage of their second oldest child, ten-year-old Maria of Navarre to twenty-one-year-old King Pedro IV of Aragon, thus making Maria Queen of Aragon. In 1338 Philip III seized the lands of Mixe and Ostabarret and attached them to the crown. These lands were held by the viscounts of Tartas who were ruled Tartas as vassals of the Duke of Guyenne(Edward III) but held Mixe and Ostabarret as vassals to Navarre. When Viscount Guitard d' Albret died, his heir Bernard Ezi refused to do homage to Navarre, so Philip III sent 200 soldiers and a royal official to govern those lands on the behalf of the crown.

Philip III sent three "reformers" from France (March 12, 1340) to examine the management of the kingdom and alleviate the shortage of cash. They dismissed and imposed fines on numerous officials, prosecuted fraud and regulated the use of their own and foreign currency, seeking new revenues and inspecting administrative deficits until they managed to improve the yield of real revenues and the stabilization of prices. In addition, the gradual expansion of royal powers caused friction between the bishop of Pamplona

Philip III returned to Navarre in 1342 and 1343 to help organize a Christian crusade against Granada with the kings of Castile and Aragon. His crusading adventure was received with lukewarm reception by the lords of Navarre and caused conflict with the bishop of Pamplona who refused to give his knights to the crusading effort. As a result, Philip III left Navarre with a small army of 100 knights and 300 infantry. Philip III died after being wounded in battle on September 16, 1343.

Jeanne III took sole control of Navarre as sole monarch and of her French counties of Mortain and Angouleme. Her sons Charles and Philip succeeded their father as counts of Evreux and Longueville respectively, but since they were aged eleven and seven, Jeanne held the rule of those counties as well.  

Jeanne II dismissed the royal governor Philip of Melun, who before the end of 1343 had been replaced by Guillaume de Brahe, lord of Servon (Brie), and resumed the precautionary measures that Philip III had already initiated against his management (March 29, 1344). Also from France, since she was unable to make the planned trip to Navarre in the spring of 1344, Jeanne II confiscated the lands of the bishop of Pamplona until she achieved the renewal of his commitment to the Crown (June 1344) and she appointed Juan de Conflans (7 November 1344), marshal of Champagne, as governor.

Jeanne was able resolve the outstanding payments of the dowry of her daughter Maria, married to King Pedro IV, thanks in large part to the income obtained from the seizure of the goods and revenues of the Jewish banker Ezmel de Ablitas (1344-1345), thus procuring the support of Aragon. In this way, she tried to compensate for the diplomatic offensive of Philip VI of France to attract Castilian loyalty by negotiating the marriage of Blanche of Navarre with the heir of Castile. However, the Valois finally restored to Jeanne II the authority over her children (12 December 1344), and although the French and Castilian monarchs reached an agreement on the terms of the marriage (1 July 1345), the diplomatic duplicity of Alfonso XI and the reluctance of the Queen of Navarre blocked the initiative.

In the meantime, and at the behest of Peter IV, the governor of Navarre consolidated the alliance with Aragon by sealing an agreement on mutual defense and delimitation of borders, which was ratified by Jeanne II in Pacy (22 July 1345), although all diplomatic efforts could not avoid friction with Aragonese and Castilian border populations.

In Navarre, the Queen ordered the arrest of the royal procurator Jacques Licras (5 July 1345). The former executor of Philip III's regalist policy was tried for venality and other abuses, and a year later executed in an exemplary manner in Pamplona. On May 19, 1346, a general injunction was issued to all those affected by the bad practices of the procurator to express their complaints. Roberto Lalose, advisor to the Queen, was commissioned to direct the process with the collaboration of the mayors of Cort Pedro Miguel de Sangüesa and Pedro Paisera and the royal lawyer Juan Jiménez de Echalecu. Meanwhile, on June 27, 1346, the bishop commissioned an investigation into the possible clerical condition of the defendant with the intention of judging him by the courts of the Church. According to the minutes of the trial, partially preserved, Jacques Licras incurred in usurpation of royal jurisdiction, prevarication and bribery. He did not hesitate to corrupt one of the highest offices of the kingdom to his advantage, falsely accused innocent people, and ordered without cause, and without the consent of the Sovereign, the application of torture and the most severe corporal punishment, including capital punishment.

In Pamplona, in the presence of the local authorities, the conviction was carried out by means of a careful penal staging that publicly exposed the misdeeds of the prosecutor and the repudiation of the Crown. Jacques Licras was whipped through the streets to the sound of the bugle carrying in his head the false judicial processes he had led against innocent people. He was placed in the pillory until noon for public ridicule and then taken to the Barañáin meadow, on the outskirts of the city, where his tongue was cut out and he was hanged on a scaffold erected for the occasion. It was also the case of Hugo de Brion, merino de la Ribera, among those of many other officers dismissed and prosecuted before the end of the reign of Jeanne II.

However, it was French affairs that focused the Queen's attention in her last years, marked by attempts to recover one of her main domains, Angoulême. Indeed, the strategic square on the Gascony front had been occupied by the English troops of the Earl of Derby (December 1345), putting an end to the efforts that Philip III had dedicated for decades to its protection. Recovered by the Duke of Normandy with the help of troops sent by Jeanne II under the command of Gil García de Yániz, the King of France retained it, however, in his possession as he considered it too valuable a position to return to its owner, whose fidelity he was suspicious of. In order to compensate for the loss and strengthen loyalties in the south of France, Philip VI asked for the hand of the Infanta Agnes of Navarre for Gaston III Phoebus, Count of Foix, assigning him an important additional dowry. Jeanne II, to whom this southern alliance could bring great benefits, then began negotiations with the mother of the little count (1347-1348) and approved the engagement of her daughter Blanche to John (1349), Duke of Normandy and eldest son of Philip VI, thus consolidating a willful rapprochement with the Valois monarch with which she undoubtedly intended to accelerate the return of Angoulême.

After attending her daughter's marriage to the Count of Foix in Paris (4 August 1349), Jeanne II moved to Conflans. From there she renewed his alliance with Pedro IV of Aragon (27 August 1349), while hoping to be able to resolve the pending issues with Philip VI quickly and definitively. However, she only managed to wrest from the Monarch the places of Pontoise, Beaumont-sur-Oise and Asnières in the Seine basin, as compensation for the loss of Angoulême (Vincennes, 2 October 1349), shortly before falling ill. The epidemic of the Black Death, which had been ravaging all of Europe for a year and affected the kingdom of Navarre with particular virulence, ended the Queen's life, leaving the agreement unfulfilled.

Her son Charles (II) then inherited not only the Navarrese throne and most of the family domains, but also the unresolved problem of territorial compensations and an important network of family and noble loyalties in France. Jeanne II was buried next to her father in the abbey of Saint-Denis, the royal pantheon of the Capetians, while her heart was deposited next to that of Philip III in the church of the great Dominican convent in Paris.

She had a large number of children, the result of her marriage to Philip of Evreux: Jeanne, firstborn, who, after the negotiations to unite her to the heir of Aragon (1331-1333) failed, entered the abbey of Longchamp as a nun (1338) and died in 1387; Maria (c. 1327), who was the one who finally married Pedro IV (1338) and died in 1347; Louis (1330), first male child, died at a young age in 1334; Blanche (c. 1331), betrothed to the Infante Peter of Castile (1345) and the heir of France (1349), but finally married to King Philip VI of Valois (1350), whose first wife Jeanne of Burgundy, was Blanche's grand aunt. Philip died a few months after the wedding, and Blanche enjoying a long widowhood, was a firm supporter of her brother Charles at the French Court until she died in 1398; Charles, born in 1332, became king of Navarre and died in 1387; Philip (1336), who received the county of Longueville and was a fervent supporter of his brother against the Valois and died in 1363; Agnes (c. 1337), married the Count of Foix (1349), who would repudiate her in 1362, died in 1396; a second Louis, the youngest of the sons, a close collaborator of his brother until his departure for Albania after his marriage to Joanna of Anjou, Duchess of Durazzo (1366), he passed away in 1372; and another Jeanne, born before 1343, passed away in 1403, who married definitively John I, Viscount of Rohan (1377).

I call Queen Jeanne II of Navarre "the real Princess Diaries" because like Mia Thermopolis, the fictional protagonist of the book and movies, she became heir to a kingdom when she was a teenager of high school age. The Mia's fictional European kingdom of Genovia is small kingdom between France and Spain. Jeanne II's kingdom was a small European nation comprised of parts of France and Spain. In the movies, but not the books, Mia is the heir to her deceased father and never visited her kingdom prior to becoming heir. Like Mia The real-life Jeanne II's claim to the crown also came through her father and she too never visited her kingdom prior to becoming heir. The fictional Mia and the real-life Jeanne II traveled from one country to a small country they never lived in to inherit its crown.

Jeanne II of Navarre is a fascinating story of a French princess denied the right to rule France because of sexism, becomes reigning queen of small mostly Spanish kingdom, which she rules successfully for 21 years, ruling jointly with her husband and six years alone as a widow, gets caught up in the Hundred Years War between her English cousin King Edward III and her French uncle King Philip VI, and dies during the Black Plaque. Jeanne II, Tainted Queen – History… the interesting bits!

Joan II of Navarre - Wikipedia

In 2001, the movie The Princess Diaries was released about an American teenager named Amelia Mia" Thermopolis, who finds out she's the heiress to the throne of a small European monarchy. Although the story is fictional, 673 years earlier, a teenaged girl inherited a throne of a small European monarchy. Her name was Jeanne II of Navarre

Jeanne was the daughter of King Louis I of Navarre, Count of Champagne, and his wife Margaret, daughter of Robert II, Duke of Burgundy, by his wife Alice Princess of France. Louis was the son and heir of King Philip IV of France and his wife Queen Jeanne I of Navarre, Countess of Champagne. The kingdom of Navarre of roughly 100,000 people was a small kingdom that existed in now what's Northeastern Spain and southwestern France. It was one of the three Christian kingdoms of Spain, the others being Castile-Leon, and Aragon. The county of Champagne was a vassal country within France, whose rulers, the counts of Champagne paid homage to the kings of France. Queen Countess Jeanne I inherited the thrones of Champagne and Navarre as a child from her father King Henry I in 1273.

Louis I and Margaret became king and queen of Navarre and count and countess of Champagne after the death of his mother Queen Jeanne I in 1305. The couple spent two months in their new kingdom before returning to France. Their daughter, Jeanne II, was born in France in 1312.

The marriage between Louis and Margaret was unhappy and Louis had a child, Eudeline, by a mistress. Margaret also had affairs. She and her sister-in-law, Blanche of Burgundy (wife of Louis' brother Charles) had affairs with two brother knights Walter and Philip of Aunay. Louis and Charles' sister, Isabella, Queen of England, grew suspicious after she saw the brother knights wearing the purses she gave to Margaret and Blanche and she told her father, Philip IV, who had the princesses and the knights placed under surveillance. The affairs were exposed, and Margaret, Blanche, and Blanche's sister, Countess Jeanne II of Burgundy, wife of Louis and Charles' brother Philip, were arrested and charged with adultery. Margaret and Blanche were convicted and imprisoned in 1314, but Countess Jeanne II of Burgundy was acquitted of all charges. Philip IV died later that year, on November 29, and Louis succeeded him as King Louis X with Margaret as queen consort, but Margaret was still locked up.

Margaret died in 1315, officially of a cold, but some sources alleged she was murdered so Louis could marry his second wife, Clementia of Hungary. King Louis died on June 5, 1316 and since Clementia was pregnant, his brother Philip, who ruled the county of Burgundy because of his marriage to Countess Jeanne II of Burgundy, ruled France as regent. Clemetia gave birth to a son, who became King Jean I of France, Navarre, Count of Champagne, but he died four days later.

Jean I's death caused a succession crisis as it was the first time in the Capetian dynasty that a king died without children. The two contenders for the thrones of France, Navarre, and Champagne, were Louis' daughter Princess Jeanne, and her paternal uncle Count Philip. Princess Jeanne's candidacy was jeopardized by the fact that she was female, and France had never been ruled by a woman, and the fact that her mother had an affair and as there was no DNA testing back then, no one could be sure if she was Louis' daughter, though Louis did officially acknowledge her as his daughter.

In the end, On January 9, 1317, Count Philip arranged his coronation as King Philip V of France, Count of Champagne, and King Philip II of Navarre with his wife Countess Jeanne II of Burgundy becoming Queen Consort. Philip then assembled the Estates General of France, who ratified his decision by appealing to the Salic law and forever barring women from the throne of France. The succession to the thrones of Champagne and Navarre were more controversial, as Philip couldn't say that women couldn't rule those lands since his own mother Jeanne I, had succeeded her father as rightful ruler of those lands. But Philip remained king and count of all three realms.

Jeanne's maternal uncle, Duke Odo IV of Burgundy, and his mother, her grandmother, Dowager Duchess Alice, protested Philip's actions, claiming the thrones on Princess Jeanne's behalf, but Philip managed to convince Odo IV to abandon his niece, by promising Odo the hand of his daughter, another Jeanne, who was heiress to her mother's county of Burgundy and second in her maternal grandmother Mahaut's county of Artois. It may be confusing, but the county of Burgundy was a separate territory than the Duchy of Burgundy. The counts of Burgundy were vassal rulers to the Holy Roman Emperors/kings of Germany, whereas the dukes of Burgundy were vassals of the kings of France. This marriage would eventually lead to Duke Odo IV tripling the lands under his rule when his wife Duchess Jeanne eventually succeeded her mother Queen Jeanne II as reigning countess Jeanne III of Burgundy and Artois in 1330.

As for Princess Jeanne, King Louis' daughter, her uncle, King Philip V didn't want her to become a useful pawn in the hands of ambitious men, so he arranged her marriage to a distant cousin, Prince Philip, Count of Evreux and Longueville in 1318. Philip was 12 years old and Jeanne II was 6 years old. Philip was a member of the French royal Capetian dynasty, being a grandson of King Philip III of France. Jeanne, now Countess Consort of Evreux, was raised by Philip's grandmother, Queen Dowager Marie of Brabant.

King Philip V died in 1322, Since Philip only had daughters, the throne went to his younger brother Charles as King Charles IV of France and I of Navarre, Count of Champagne. Charles IV, who divorced his wife Blanche, and was married to Philip of Evreux's sister Jeanne of Evreux, died after his ruling for four years on February 1,1328. His death caused another succession crises since Queen Dowager Jeanne of Evreux was pregnant. Philip and Queen Jeanne of Evreux's paternal uncle, Count Philip of Valois, another grandson of King Philip III of France, was made regent of France. Count Philip of Valois was also an uncle in law of Countess Jeanne of Evreux, being married to her maternal aunt, another Jeanne of Burgundy, sister of Duke Odo IV and Queen Margaret.

Queen Jeanne of Evreux gave birth to a daughter named Blanche and as women were not allowed to inherit, this excluded the daughters of Kings Louis X, Philip V, and Charles IV. Another meeting of the Estates General was assembled, and they decreed that not only did the Salic ban female succession to the French throne but also the French throne could not pass through females. This excluded the son of Duchess/Countess Jeanne III of the two Burgundies and King Edward III of England, son of Isabella, daughter of King Philip IV and sister of Kings Louis X, Philip V, and Charles IV. Thus Count Philip of Valois became King Philip VI of France.

The succession to throne being settled, there was also the county of Champagne. Philip V had no claim to the county, but he wanted it to remain united with the French crown, so he persuaded Jeanne to exchange the rich county for two the counties of Mortain and Angouleme. Last there was still the issue of the kingdom of Navarre. Philp V was not of Navarrese royal blood and had no claim to Navarre, but Countess Jeanne of Evreux's cousins Duchess Countess Jeanne III of the Burgundies and Dowager Queen Jeanne of Evreux's daughters Marie and Blanche, had claims to the Navarrese throne. The nobles of Navarre met up at an assembly in May 1328 and declared Countess Jeanne of Evreux as rightful monarch, as Queen Jeanne II when she was sixteen years old. She was the second female to inherit the Navarre throne. The first being her grandmother, Queen Jeanne I.

A new controversy arose over the role of Queen Jeanne II's husband. Christian scriptures instructed that wives should obey husbands, and Philip claimed the right to rule his wife's kingdom, but the Navarre nobles were reluctant to accept the rule of a foreign prince with no Navarrese royal blood. They agreed to allow Philip some role in the administration as king consort. After months of negotiations, Philip and Jeanne arrived in the kingdom and were crowned as joint monarchs King Philip III and Queen Jeanne II on March 5 1329. They both swore an oath to respect the laws of the kingdom. Philip III was twenty-three and Jeanne II was seventeen. Jeanne was the only female ruler of an independent kingdom in Europe until 1343 when another Jeanne became Queen Jeanne II of Naples at age 15. She was one of only two females ruling kingdoms in their own right in the whole world! The other case was a woman ruling in Southeast Asia.

Philip III and Jeanne II governed jointly, although he was the dominant partner. Of the 85 edicts issued during their 15-year joint reign, 41 were issued under both their names, 38 were issued solely under Philip III's name and six were issued solely under Jeanne II's name. From the outset, Philip III expressed his intention to personally exercise royal power and direct the work of government. Jeanne II was, however, the natural ruler of the kingdom and as such accompanied her husband on his travels through Navarre after the proclamation, Philip of Evreux, always concerned with legitimizing his authority, tried to keep her at his side in the public manifestations of monarchical power in Navarre and to make her participate with him in the main orders of government, such as the regulation of succession (May 15, 1329), the granting or confirmation of privileges and the appointment of new governors. Prior to their election, anti-Jewish riots had erupted in 1328, and many Jews were killed and the new king and queen punished the ringleaders of the riots

After attending as witnesses the act of homage paid in Amiens by Jeanne's cousin King Edward III of England to the King of France (6-11 July 1329), the King and Queen returned to Navarre. Philip III and Jeanne II repaired royal fortresses and constructed irrigation systems of arid fields. They signed a peace deal with the neighboring kingdom of Castile on March 15, 1330. Philip III compiled and reformed the law codes of the kingdom. Their dedication to law and justice led them to them to be beloved and gain a reputation of being good monarchs to their subjects. On a personal level, the couple got along well and had 9 children, five daughters and four sons, though one of their sons Louis, died at age 4 in 1334.

After staying in Navarre for two years, Jeanne II and Philip III returned to France in autumn 1331, spending most of their time traveling back and forth between their French counties, which they ruled as vassals to the French king and in the palace of the kings of Navarre in Paris, at the court of their uncle and aunt King Philip VI and Queen Jeanne of Burgundy. They appointed a French noble, Henry IV of Sully, to rule as governor in their behalf. Philip III tried to get a crusade started against the sultanate of Granada in Southern Spain in 1331, but this attempt failed as the Pope advised against it and the king of Castile signed a truce with Granada.

In June 1335, war broke out with Castile after Henry De Sully, ordered the occupation of towns Fitero and Tudején (1335).The immediate and energetic Castilian counteroffensive threatened Tudela, devastated the lands south of the Ebro and the region of Sonsierra, and attacked the border from Guipúzcoa, taking the castle of Ausa. Only with the aid of Gaston II, Count of Foix and Viscount of Béarn, were the Navarrese able to stop the attack. Jeanne II returned to Navarre in the spring of 1336 to resolve the conflict with Castile. In the kingdom, she ratified the agreements reached with the representatives of King Alfonso XI (April 1336). In agreement with the pontifical recommendations, the new governor Saladin of Angleure and the Castilian delegates agreed to submit the differences to the arbitration of a joint commission or, in case of dissent, of Cardinal Giacomo Gaetani (Cuevas, February 28, 1336), conditions which were also confirmed by Philip III from Toulouse before arriving in Navarre. Determined in any case to end the conflict, in April 1336 he returned to Navarre, where they remained for only a few months confirming the agreements reached with Castile. Quickly and jointly, the King and Queen returned to France. Jeanne II would never return to her kingdom.

Philip III tried again to launch a crusade, this time against the Muslims of the Holy Land, but this was ended as a result of the tensions between Jeanne II's uncle King Philip V of France and cousin King Edward III of England, who in 1337 claimed the French throne through his mom Isabella of France, daughter of King Philip IV of France and Queen Jeanne I of Navarre, though if the Salic law were to repealed, his cousins Queen Jeanne II of Navarre and Countess Jeanne II of Burgundy, and their sons would have had the greater claims as the daughters of Isabella's brothers.

In 1338, Philip III and Jeanne II negotiated the marriage of their second oldest child, ten-year-old Maria of Navarre to twenty-one-year-old King Pedro IV of Aragon, thus making Maria Queen of Aragon. In 1338 Philip III seized the lands of Mixe and Ostabarret and attached them to the crown. These lands were held by the viscounts of Tartas who were ruled Tartas as vassals of the Duke of Guyenne(Edward III) but held Mixe and Ostabarret as vassals to Navarre. When Viscount Guitard d' Albret died, his heir Bernard Ezi refused to do homage to Navarre, so Philip III sent 200 soldiers and a royal official to govern those lands on the behalf of the crown.

Philip III sent three "reformers" from France (March 12, 1340) to examine the management of the kingdom and alleviate the shortage of cash. They dismissed and imposed fines on numerous officials, prosecuted fraud and regulated the use of their own and foreign currency, seeking new revenues and inspecting administrative deficits until they managed to improve the yield of real revenues and the stabilization of prices. In addition, the gradual expansion of royal powers caused friction between the bishop of Pamplona

Philip III returned to Navarre in 1342 and 1343 to help organize a Christian crusade against Granada with the kings of Castile and Aragon. His crusading adventure was received with lukewarm reception by the lords of Navarre and caused conflict with the bishop of Pamplona who refused to give his knights to the crusading effort. As a result, Philip III left Navarre with a small army of 100 knights and 300 infantry. Philip III died after being wounded in battle on September 16, 1343.

Jeanne III took sole control of Navarre as sole monarch and of her French counties of Mortain and Angouleme. Her sons Charles and Philip succeeded their father as counts of Evreux and Longueville respectively, but since they were aged eleven and seven, Jeanne held the rule of those counties as well.  

Jeanne II dismissed the royal governor Philip of Melun, who before the end of 1343 had been replaced by Guillaume de Brahe, lord of Servon (Brie), and resumed the precautionary measures that Philip III had already initiated against his management (March 29, 1344). Also from France, since she was unable to make the planned trip to Navarre in the spring of 1344, Jeanne II confiscated the lands of the bishop of Pamplona until she achieved the renewal of his commitment to the Crown (June 1344) and she appointed Juan de Conflans (7 November 1344), marshal of Champagne, as governor.

Jeanne was able resolve the outstanding payments of the dowry of her daughter Maria, married to King Pedro IV, thanks in large part to the income obtained from the seizure of the goods and revenues of the Jewish banker Ezmel de Ablitas (1344-1345), thus procuring the support of Aragon. In this way, she tried to compensate for the diplomatic offensive of Philip VI of France to attract Castilian loyalty by negotiating the marriage of Blanche of Navarre with the heir of Castile. However, the Valois finally restored to Jeanne II the authority over her children (12 December 1344), and although the French and Castilian monarchs reached an agreement on the terms of the marriage (1 July 1345), the diplomatic duplicity of Alfonso XI and the reluctance of the Queen of Navarre blocked the initiative.

In the meantime, and at the behest of Peter IV, the governor of Navarre consolidated the alliance with Aragon by sealing an agreement on mutual defense and delimitation of borders, which was ratified by Jeanne II in Pacy (22 July 1345), although all diplomatic efforts could not avoid friction with Aragonese and Castilian border populations.

In Navarre, the Queen ordered the arrest of the royal procurator Jacques Licras (5 July 1345). The former executor of Philip III's regalist policy was tried for venality and other abuses, and a year later executed in an exemplary manner in Pamplona. On May 19, 1346, a general injunction was issued to all those affected by the bad practices of the procurator to express their complaints. Roberto Lalose, advisor to the Queen, was commissioned to direct the process with the collaboration of the mayors of Cort Pedro Miguel de Sangüesa and Pedro Paisera and the royal lawyer Juan Jiménez de Echalecu. Meanwhile, on June 27, 1346, the bishop commissioned an investigation into the possible clerical condition of the defendant with the intention of judging him by the courts of the Church. According to the minutes of the trial, partially preserved, Jacques Licras incurred in usurpation of royal jurisdiction, prevarication and bribery. He did not hesitate to corrupt one of the highest offices of the kingdom to his advantage, falsely accused innocent people, and ordered without cause, and without the consent of the Sovereign, the application of torture and the most severe corporal punishment, including capital punishment.

In Pamplona, in the presence of the local authorities, the conviction was carried out by means of a careful penal staging that publicly exposed the misdeeds of the prosecutor and the repudiation of the Crown. Jacques Licras was whipped through the streets to the sound of the bugle carrying in his head the false judicial processes he had led against innocent people. He was placed in the pillory until noon for public ridicule and then taken to the Barañáin meadow, on the outskirts of the city, where his tongue was cut out and he was hanged on a scaffold erected for the occasion. It was also the case of Hugo de Brion, merino de la Ribera, among those of many other officers dismissed and prosecuted before the end of the reign of Jeanne II.

However, it was French affairs that focused the Queen's attention in her last years, marked by attempts to recover one of her main domains, Angoulême. Indeed, the strategic square on the Gascony front had been occupied by the English troops of the Earl of Derby (December 1345), putting an end to the efforts that Philip III had dedicated for decades to its protection. Recovered by the Duke of Normandy with the help of troops sent by Jeanne II under the command of Gil García de Yániz, the King of France retained it, however, in his possession as he considered it too valuable a position to return to its owner, whose fidelity he was suspicious of. In order to compensate for the loss and strengthen loyalties in the south of France, Philip VI asked for the hand of the Infanta Agnes of Navarre for Gaston III Phoebus, Count of Foix, assigning him an important additional dowry. Jeanne II, to whom this southern alliance could bring great benefits, then began negotiations with the mother of the little count (1347-1348) and approved the engagement of her daughter Blanche to John (1349), Duke of Normandy and eldest son of Philip VI, thus consolidating a willful rapprochement with the Valois monarch with which she undoubtedly intended to accelerate the return of Angoulême.

After attending her daughter's marriage to the Count of Foix in Paris (4 August 1349), Jeanne II moved to Conflans. From there she renewed his alliance with Pedro IV of Aragon (27 August 1349), while hoping to be able to resolve the pending issues with Philip VI quickly and definitively. However, she only managed to wrest from the Monarch the places of Pontoise, Beaumont-sur-Oise and Asnières in the Seine basin, as compensation for the loss of Angoulême (Vincennes, 2 October 1349), shortly before falling ill. The epidemic of the Black Death, which had been ravaging all of Europe for a year and affected the kingdom of Navarre with particular virulence, ended the Queen's life, leaving the agreement unfulfilled.

Her son Charles (II) then inherited not only the Navarrese throne and most of the family domains, but also the unresolved problem of territorial compensations and an important network of family and noble loyalties in France. Jeanne II was buried next to her father in the abbey of Saint-Denis, the royal pantheon of the Capetians, while her heart was deposited next to that of Philip III in the church of the great Dominican convent in Paris.

She had a large number of children, the result of her marriage to Philip of Evreux: Jeanne, firstborn, who, after the negotiations to unite her to the heir of Aragon (1331-1333) failed, entered the abbey of Longchamp as a nun (1338) and died in 1387; Maria (c. 1327), who was the one who finally married Pedro IV (1338) and died in 1347; Louis (1330), first male child, died at a young age in 1334; Blanche (c. 1331), betrothed to the Infante Peter of Castile (1345) and the heir of France (1349), but finally married to King Philip VI of Valois (1350), whose first wife Jeanne of Burgundy, was Blanche's grand aunt. Philip died a few months after the wedding, and Blanche enjoying a long widowhood, was a firm supporter of her brother Charles at the French Court until she died in 1398; Charles, born in 1332, became king of Navarre and died in 1387; Philip (1336), who received the county of Longueville and was a fervent supporter of his brother against the Valois and died in 1363; Agnes (c. 1337), married the Count of Foix (1349), who would repudiate her in 1362, died in 1396; a second Louis, the youngest of the sons, a close collaborator of his brother until his departure for Albania after his marriage to Joanna of Anjou, Duchess of Durazzo (1366), he passed away in 1372; and another Jeanne, born before 1343, passed away in 1403, who married definitively John I, Viscount of Rohan (1377).

I call Queen Jeanne II of Navarre "the real Princess Diaries" because like Mia Thermopolis, the fictional protagonist of the book and movies, she became heir to a kingdom when she was a teenager of high school age. The Mia's fictional European kingdom of Genovia is small kingdom between France and Spain. Jeanne II's kingdom was a small European nation comprised of parts of France and Spain. In the movies, but not the books, Mia is the heir to her deceased father and never visited her kingdom prior to becoming heir. Like Mia The real-life Jeanne II's claim to the crown also came through her father and she too never visited her kingdom prior to becoming heir. The fictional Mia and the real-life Jeanne II traveled from one country to a small country they never lived in to inherit its crown.

Jeanne II of Navarre is a fascinating story of a French princess denied the right to rule France because of sexism, becomes reigning queen of small mostly Spanish kingdom, which she rules successfully for 21 years, ruling jointly with her husband and six years alone as a widow, gets caught up in the Hundred Years War between her English cousin King Edward III and her French uncle King Philip VI, and dies during the Black Plaque. Jeanne II, Tainted Queen – History… the interesting bits!

Joan II of Navarre - Wikipedia