Anne of Brittany (Breton: Anna; 25/26 January 1477 – 9 January 1514) was suo jure Duchess of Brittany from 1488 until her death, and Queen of France from 1491 to 1498 and again from 1499 to her death. She was the only woman to have been queen consort of France twice.
Anne was raised in Nantes during a series of conflicts in which the King of France sought to assert his suzerainty over Brittany. Her father, Francis II, Duke of Brittany, was the last male heir of the House of Montfort. Upon his death in 1488, Anne became duchess of Brittany, countess of Nantes, Montfort, and Richmond, and viscountess of Limoges. She was only 11 at that time, but she was already considered a desirable prospect for marriage because of Brittany's strategic position. The next year, she married Maximilian I of Austria by proxy, but Charles VIII of France saw this as a threat since his realm was located between Brittany and Austria. He started a military campaign which eventually forced the duchess to renounce her marriage.
Anne eventually married Charles VIII in 1491. None of their children survived early childhood, and when the king died in 1498, the throne went to his cousin, Louis XII. Following an agreement made to secure the annexation of Brittany, Anne had to marry the new king. Louis XII was deeply in love with his wife and Anne had many opportunities to reassert the independence of her duchy. They had two daughters, although neither could succeed to the French throne due to the Salic law, the elder was proclaimed the heiress of Brittany. Anne managed to have her elder daughter engaged to Charles of Austria, grandchild of Maximilian I, but after Anne's death in 1514, her daughter married her cousin Francis I of France. This marriage later led to the formal union between France and Brittany.
Anne was highly regarded in Brittany as a conscientious ruler who defended the duchy against France. In the Romantic period, she became a figure of Breton patriotism and she was honoured with many memorials and statues. Her artistic legacy is important in the Loire Valley, where she spent most of her life. She was notably responsible, with her husbands, for architectural projects in the châteaux of Blois and Amboise.
Anne was born on 25 or 26 January 1477 in the Castle of the Dukes of Brittany in the city of Nantes in what is now the Loire-Atlantique département of France, as the eldest child of Duke Francis II of Brittany and his second wife Margaret of Foix, Infanta of Navarre. The next year, in 1478, her parents had a second daughter, Isabeau. Her mother died when Anne was nine, while her father died when Anne was eleven years old.
It is likely that she learned to read and write in French, and perhaps a little Latin. Contrary to what is sometimes claimed, it was unlikely that she learned Greek or Hebrew and never spoke or understood the Breton language. She was raised by a governess, Françoise de Dinan, Lady of Chateaubriant and by marriage Countess of Laval. In addition, she had several tutors, including her butler and court poet, Jean Meschinot, who is thought to have taught her dancing, singing and music.
In this period, the law of succession was unclear, but prior to the Breton War of Succession mainly operated according to semi-Salic Law; i.e., noble women could inherit, but only if the male line had died out. The Treaty of Guérande in 1365, however, stated that in the absence of a male heir from the House of Montfort, the heirs of Joanna of Penthièvre would succeed. By the time Anne was born, her father was the only man of from the Breton House of Montfort-Brittany, and the Blois-Penthièvre heir was a woman, Nicole of Blois, who in 1480 sold her rights over Brittany to King Louis XI of France for the amount of 50,000 écus.
The lack of a male heir gave rise to the threat of a dynastic crisis in the Duchy, or to its passing directly into the royal domain. To avoid this, Francis II had Anne officially recognised as his heiress by the Estates of Brittany on 10 February 1486; however, the question of her marriage remained a diplomatic issue.
Being the first eldest surviving child and heiress of the Duchy of Brittany, Anne was, above all, the instrument of her father's political maneuvering. Francis II indeed promised his daughter to various French or foreign princes in order to obtain military and financial aid, and to strengthen his position against the King of France. The prospect for these princes to add the duchy to their domain thus allowed the Duke of Brittany to initiate several marriage negotiations and to forge various secret alliances which accompanied these matrimonial projects. Anne became the stake of these rival ambitions, and her father, reassured by the signing of these alliances, could afford to refuse various marriage projects and contracts. These political calculations thus led to Anne's engagement with different European princes:
In 1480 she was officially promised in marriage to Edward, Prince of Wales, son of Edward IV of England; however, soon after the death of Edward IV in 1483, the boy disappeared, presumed to have been killed – possibly on the orders of his regent, Richard III.
Henry Tudor, the future King Henry VII of England, last male representative of the Lancaster branch, then in exile in Brittany showed interest in being a suitor for Anne's hand, but this marriage did not interest her father.
Maximilian, King of the Romans and Archduke of Austria, widower of Mary of Burgundy, daughter and heiress of Charles the Bold.
Alain I of Albret, son of Catherine of Rohan and Jean I of Albret. Through his mother, he was a great-grandson of Duke John V of Brittany, and thus a possible heir. Although he was an ally of Duke Francis II, Anne refused to marry him because she found him repulsive. Before the papal court, convened by Marshal Rieux, a proponent of Albret's suit, to give the couple a dispensation to marry, Anne declared that she had only entertained his offer of marriage due to "l'obéissance, crainte & révérence" [the obedience, fear, and reverence] due to her father, and that she herself did not want it.
Louis, Duke of Orléans, cousin of King Charles VIII and in turn future King, was another aspirant for her hand, despite being already married to the King's sister Joan.
John IV of Chalon-Arlay, Prince of Orange. A grandson of Richard, Count of Étampes, and nephew of Francis II, he was in line to the throne after Anne and Isabeau.
Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham. In 1488 Henry VII had suggested a marriage between Buckingham and Anne, but in December 1489 the executors of Henry Percy, 4th Earl of Northumberland, paid the King £4000 for Buckingham's marriage to Percy's eldest daughter Eleanor.
Viscount John II of Rohan, also in line to the Breton Ducal throne, offered with the support of Marshal Jean IV de Rieux a double marriage of his sons François and Jean with Anne and her sister Isabeau, but Francis II opposed this plan.
In 1488, Francis II was defeated at the Battle of Saint-Aubin-du-Cormier, ending the Mad War (la Guerre Folle) between Brittany and France. In the Treaty of Sablé (19 August 1488), which concluded the peace settlement, the Duke was forced to accept clauses stipulating that his daughters were not to marry without the approval of the King of France.