Maria French (Pooresse Pooresse)

Maria was born in the Vincennes forest and was the sixth of twelve children, eight of whom, including Maria, survived to adulthood.

Mary's father suffered from a hereditary mental illness. Isabella consecrated Mary to the church, perhaps because she saw her husband's insanity as a punishment from God ^[1] .

Mary went to the Poissy Monastery on September 8, 1397 and became a nun on May 26, 1408. She was the only royal child whose life was connected with the church; the rest of her surviving brothers and sisters created families.

At the time when Mary went to the monastery, her abbess was her cousin Marie Bourbon, who was her paternal grandmother, Jeanne Bourbon . Maria’s companion in the monastery was another Maria, the daughter of Christina of Pisa . Cristina described a visit to Poissy in 1400 in her book “The Book of Poissy” ( French: Le Livre du Dit de Poissy ) ^[2] : she was “joyfully and tenderly welcomed” by seven-year-old Maria de Valois and prioressa. Christina also described Mary's home as befitting a royal princess ^[3] .

In 1405, her mother Isabella and her uncle Louis I , Duke of Orleans, visited her and tried to persuade her to abandon her religious life and marry Edward , son of Robert , Duke of Bar, ally of Louis. She refused, emphasizing that only the king (who was already mentally unstable at that time) was able to force her to marry, and remained in the abbey ^[4] . In subsequent years, she became a prioress of the monastery and lived there for the rest of her life. She died of the plague on August 19, 1438 at the Palais Royal in Paris and was buried in a monastery ^[5] . Her only surviving brother was King Charles VII .