Sanchia of Provence - Life

Life

She was a sister of Margaret of Provence, Eleanor of Provence and Beatrice of Provence. Her sisters were the respective Queen consorts of Louis IX of France, Henry III of England and Charles I of Sicily.

When all four sisters were together, Margaret and Eleanor insisted on the two younger sitting on stools in their presence because they were not queens. This irked Sanchia and Beatrice very much, neither realizing that fate would provide both of them with crowns ultimately and that Beatrice in particular would live a romantic and exciting life.

It was Eleanor of Provence who arranged a marriage between her brother-in-law Richard, 1st Earl of Cornwall, whose first wife Isabel Marshal had died recently, and her sister Sanchia. The latter was engaged to Raymond VII of Toulouse, but the weak part he played in the recent fighting was a good enough excuse for breaking the bond.

A new marriage contract was drawn up and signed, Sanchia, occupying a stool, no doubt, during the ceremony of signature, for Richard, although the wealthiest man in the Kingdom of England and perhaps in Europe, was still only a prince. Beatrice of Savoy, mother of the bride, came to England to see her third daughter wedded, but her father Ramon Berenguer IV was detained by state difficulties which his wife solved by getting a loan from Henry III of four thousand marks. The cost of the wedding was chiefly defrayed by a levy imposed on the Jews of the country. It was an arbitrary proceeding, each of them receiving notice of the size of the donation required. An idea of the extravagance of the festivities may be gleaned from the fact that thirty thousand dishes were prepared for the wedding dinner alone. The marriages of the royal brothers from France and England to the four sisters from Provence improved the relationship between the two countries, which led up to the Treaty of Paris. Sanchia was present, along with all her sisters and her mother.

Sanchia of Provence was said to have a softer and more winsome type of good looks than either her older sisters Margaret or Eleanor. In January 1257, the ambassadors were summoned to a long hall where Richard and Sanchia were dining in considerable elegance and state, "Richard rose to hear what the men from Bohemia had to say and at the finish he burst into tears. He would accept the crown, he said, but it was not through greed or ambition. His sole object was to assist in restoring prosperity to the German states; his honest desire was to rule justly and well. It was clear to the German delegation, and to the throng of adherents and servants who swarmed into the hall to listen, that he was happy over the fulfillment of his great wish. It must have been quite apparent also that Sanchia was delighted beyond measure. Now she would be a queen as well as her two older and patronizing sisters."

She was crowned Queen of the Romans with her husband on 27 May 1257 at Aachen Cathedral in Germany. She and her husband then spent fifteen months traveling in the area near Mainz. They hurriedly traveled back to England when the political situation deteriorated there. She grew ill in the autumn of 1260 and died a year later, with her son Edmund present.