Margaret of Brittany

Margaret of Brittany (in Breton Marc'harid Breizh, in French Marguerite de Bretagne) (c. 1443 – 25 September 1469) was the elder of the two daughters of Francis I, Duke of Brittany (died 1450), by his second wife, Isabella of Scotland, and hence granddaughter of James I of Scotland.

Since the Breton War of Succession, Brittany had been understood to operate according to semi-Salic Law–women could only inherit if the male line had died out. As expected from the provision of the Treaty of Guérande, which ended the war, neither Margaret nor her younger sister, Marie, were recognized as heirs of the duchy. After her father's death, her uncle Peter II succeeded as Duke of Brittany. He was also childless and to avoid any subsequent dispute, he arranged the marriage of Margaret to Francis of Etampes, the second in the order of succession and the last male left of the Breton House of Montfort, and the younger Marie to John II, Viscount of Rohan, the most powerful noble in Brittany.

In 13 or 16 November 1455, she was married to her cousin Francis of Etampes at the Château de l'Hermine, Vannes. She became Duchess of Brittany upon his ascession as Francis II, Duke of Brittany in 1458. Their only son Francis, Count of Montfort, died in 1463. Anne of Brittany (1476/7–1514), queen successively of Charles VIII of France and Louis XII of France, was her widower's daughter by a subsequent marriage.

Margaret died, September 25, 1469, in Nantes. She was buried in the Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul, Nantes, in the tomb constructed for her and her husband and later his second wife, Margaret of Foix.

Ancestry