Philip V of France - Personality and Marriage

Personality and Marriage

Philip was born in Lyon, the second son of King Philip IV of France and Queen Joan I of Navarre. His father granted to him the county of Poitiers in appanage.

Modern historians have described Philip V as a man of "considerable intelligence and sensitivity", and the "wisest and politically most apt" of Philip IV's three sons. Philip was influenced both by the troubles and unrest that his father had encountered during 1314, and the difficulties that his older brother – Louis X, known as "the Quarreler" had faced during the intervening few years. At the heart of both Philip IV and Louis X's problems were taxes, and the difficulty in raising them outside of crises.

Philip married Joan, the Countess of Burgundy and the eldest daughter of Otto IV, Count of Burgundy, in 1307. The original plan had been for Louis X to marry Joan, but this was altered after Louis was engaged to Margaret. Modern scholars have found little evidence as to whether the marriage was a happy one, but the pair had a considerable number of children in a short space of time, and Philip was exceptionally generous to Joan by the standards of the day. Philip went to great lengths not only to endow Joan with lands and money but to try to ensure that these gifts were irrevocable in the event of his early death. Amongst the various gifts were a palace, villages, additional money for jewels and her servants, the property of all the Jews in Burgundy and the entire county of Burgundy itself, which he gave Joan in 1318.

Joan was implicated in Queen Margaret's adultery case during 1314; Margaret was accused and convicted of adultery with two knights, upon the testimony of their sister-in-law, Isabella. Joan was suspected of having secretly known about the adultery; placed under house arrest at Dourdan as punishment, it was then implied that Joan was guilty of adultery herself. With Philip's support she continued to protest her innocence and by 1315 her name had been cleared by the Paris Parlement, partially through Philip's influence, and she was allowed to return to court. It is unclear why Philip stood by her in the way that he did. One theory has been that he was concerned that if he was to abandon Joan, he might also lose Burgundy; another theory suggests that his slightly "formulaic" love letters to his wife should be taken at face value, and that he was in fact very deeply in love.