Jacquetta of Bedford

Sorry, I alluded to the wrong post in my last submission. Here's another
one that Antioch-Lusignan-Rivers posted to The Wars of the Roses Forum.
Certainly everyone who was anyone claimed descent from Melusine. And
those royals whose family hailed from the south of France were involved
in some interesting stuff, I'm not sure what specifics we can deduce
with any great accuracy.

The Throne Glyph of Isis was depicted as floating above the head of
the Goddess on many pictures available to Princess Jacqueline of
Luxembourg and to her grandmother, the Italian Duchess of Andria in
Apulia (Pugliese region) just south of Rome, who was high-priestess
of the Mysteries of Isis in Rome.

Jacqueline was the war-bride (called "Jacquetta of Bedford") of
Prince John, Duke of Bedford, brother of King Henry V. Henry V and
his brother John had invaded her native France and despoiled the
land violently, burning townsfolk alive in their church, starving
two-year-olds in the great ditch that surrounded Rouen during
Christmas, uprooting and burning ancient grape-vines, kidnapping and
torturing innocent peasants, and, with Irish coursers galloping
around the countryside with dead French babies dangling from their
saddle-bows, it was like the Trump of Doom, an echo of the
Albigensian Crusade of 1244 or the Josiannic Purges of 621 BC.

Catherine de Valois, the daughter of the King of France, was taken
as a war-bride by King Henry V and Jacqueline princesse de
Luxembourg by his brother John duke of Bedford. Jeanne d'Arc (Joan
of Arc) was betrayed by Jacquetta's own brother, Jean de Luxembourg,
and brought in chains to his English brother-in-law, John, at Rouen
Castle. There, Joan was gaoled, ravished by an English lord (and,
afterwards, examined by Jacquetta, the duchess of the castle,
herself), put on trial for two years, and ultimately burned alive in
the castle courtyard. Jacquetta witnessed that with a young English
knight, Thomas Malory, who became her devotee.

Catherine of Valois managed to widow herself soon after having given
birth to the infant Henry VI and Jacquetta managed to widow herself
after the death of St. Joan of Arc. Catherine managed to become
Queen Regent Katherine of Valois in London (secretly marrying a
Welsh knight, Sir Owen Tudor) whilst Jacquetta openly married the
English knight Sir Richard Woodville, who was a newly-made baron,
Lord Rivers. That Henry V had raised him to baron had enraged the
English nobility but Rivers's marriage to an imperial princess (the
Luxembourgs were cousins of the Holy Roman Emperour) further enraged
them.

Jacquetta was to increase their outrage by managing a coup with her
new husband's heraldry. In order to achieve the Glyph of Isis as her
Coat-of-Arms, she persuaded her husband to add a centre-shield to
his simple coat of argent a fess gueules (white, a red fess) of a
red centre-shield charged with a golden griffin. An allusion to the
ancient Earls of Devon (named Reviers or Rivers), she knew this was
calculated to enrage the Courtenays, who were then Earls of Devon.
It did and, as a compromise, she had her husband withdraw the
centre-shield, replacing it (as an apostrophe) with a canton gueules
( a red canton) combined unperfled (i.e., without any seam) with his
original red fess. This produced a unique charge in heraldry, closer
to the Glyph of the Throne of Isis than any other charge in
mediaeval heraldry.

Dynasty and House of Antioch-Lusignan-

Rivers