Medieval French Royal Help

Sat Nam! (Literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)

Not up on the French. But it would be a rare royal of any age or era who would go anywhere without an entourage, especially in the Middle Ages. There are stories of saintly queens who did go out alone (or relatively so) to feed and serve their people. St. Elizabeth of Hungary comes to mind. But even good King Wenceslas goes out with a page in the famous song.

Hope that helps.

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal

When in the medieval period are you thinking of? The French monarchy and their relationship with their nobles and other subjects changed greatly over time -- a scenario focusing on Clovis or his sons would have a very different answer from ones dealing with Louis the Pious, or Louis the Fat, or St. Louis.

Speaking in extreme generality, you would never find a king without his entourage close at hand (probably no further than the other side of the room). The boss always has his boys nearby, ready to do whatever needs done.

At the same time, all sorts of people would have had ready access to the king. Kings, like other nobles, lived surrounded by servants, bureaucrats, functionaries, beggars, & soldiers, and all their hangers-on and appurtenances.

In addition, French kings, being anointed at their coronation, had special sacral powers that mere mortals did not, and that meant among other things that the king could cure certain diseases by his touch -- so at intervals the king would touch his diseased subjects to cure them. (The particular disease so cured, a skin disease, was called "the king's evil," aka scrofula.) This was a special sign of divine blessing for the royal house of France -- needless to say, the kings of England eventually began to imitate it.

French kings were also supposed to make themselves accessible to adjudicate disputes and sit in judgment over their subjects. Another piece of the royal regalia that was trotted out for coronations & other ceremonies was the Hand of Justice -- yes, a sculpted hand on a stick - that symbolized the king's role as the font of justice in the realm. As the kings gained effective power over more of their kingdom, the power of justice was both a thin end of the wedge into their nobles' turf and also proof that they were winning -- because the ability to appeal to the king's justice, and the king's ability to administer justice impartially and effectively to all subjects, demonstrated the king's superior authority and superior moral standing in a way that no mere military victory could.

St. Louis was particularly revered for holding court under the trees and dispensing justice to all and sundry who might approach him. But he wasn't the only one.

During the medieval period, kings weren't so elevated amongst the others as they'd become during the 17th - 18th centuries.

In a feudal system, the King was usually nothing more than the most powerful noble in the land, with a few little perks from the rank. Their retinue and court were ways they'd show how powerful they were - from a humble baron with a single village to the King and hordes of servants.

The title alone wasn't enough, you had to have the power to exercise it. If, say a Duke or Earl was powerful enough and their 'overlord' was weak enough, they'd become de facto independent - like the Duke of Burgundy, the 'Marcher Lords' in Wales and the Elector of Brandenburg (with various degrees of success). To be called 'King' was the ultimate reward; it was rather like being accepted into the UN today as being 'a real country'.

One of the problems for the King of France in this time was the fact he personally ruled little; most of the country was in the noble's hands, who had to be bribed / coerced / bullied into obedience - almost impossible to do with, say the Duke of Normandy, which also happened to be King of England.

It's tricky with France, because originally there wasn't a "France" as an independent nation; it was one of the areas controled by Charlesmagne. What we think of as France was c. the late Roman era/start of the middle ages, controled by various Frankish tribal fiefdoms/kingdoms.

In other words, there really wasn't a single Medieval king of France in terms of what we think of today; it was either part of an empire, as with Rome and Charlemagne, or it was a chunk of what we think of as France today.

England at various times controled parts of France (i.e. Calais, etc.) right up until the era of Henry VI.

In other words, you're going to have to pick an era and a region.

Generally speaking, monarchies as we are used to thinking of them didn't exist until around the Renaissance. The lesser nobles had pretty much absolute authority in their fiefs, and the only thing the king could do was command them to fight for him. Even in that they didn't always obey, particularly because one lord might have lands in two different kingdoms whose kings go to war with each other.

That was particularly true of France after the Norman conquest of England. At first that just meant that the Duke of Normandy, part of France, was also the King of England. But intermarriage with other French noble houses also eventually brought Anjou and Aquitaine under the rule of the English king. That's like half of France.

The Dukes of Burgundy, often related to the French king, were also powerful. They didn't usually openly rebel against the king, but could persuade the king by implying they might rebel.

France was actually one of the more centralized medieval kingdoms, though. After the Hundred Years War, when England's claims to France were defeated, France was pretty centrally ruled. Compare Germany and Italy, which were composed of tiny nearly-independent states until the 19th century.

Kings of France, at various times in the middle ages, decidedly lacked the raw power to force unruly subjects to obey. At their low point, ca. 1000, they were barely able to control the region right around Paris, let alone stand up to the likes of the Duke of Normandy, the Count of Anjou, or the Duke of Aquitaine, among others.

But military power was only part of the story. The great nobles, even while flouting the king in practice, continued to assert their loyalty to the crown, and the kings continued to find ways to circumvent the practical limitations of military dependence and to assert their authority in other ways. Whenever the great nobles were in dispute with each other, and whenever one found himself at odds with his own subordinates, the king was always a party to the conflict, ready to mediate as an impartial lord or to apply whatever leverage he could (men, money, or moral authority) to shift the outcome in his favor. And they were generally very successful at it.

And why did the king retain the ability to extract allegiance from nobles who were more powerful than him, and to intervene in disputes where he really had no direct stake or jurisdiction? The one's easy - because the king was the KING. The whole point of a king in the medieval mind was that he was placed by God over the kingdom, sanctified by God through the rite of anointment at his coronation, and therefore, indisputably, he was NOT just another noble. Overt rebellion against the king was the same as rebellion against God. When the king came into the picture and asserted his authority as king in a matter, everybody else had to either put up or shut up.

The brighter kings recognized that they shouldn't push their positional power too much further than they had the actual force to back it up, so in a lot of dealings with their nobles - even the ones that involved armies and battles - they didn't necessarily invoke the "I'm the King and God says I'm better and badder than you" argument till they were already winning.

Because winning was in itself a proof that God favored the King. Once they had the momentum, no one could stop it.

After 1066 the kings of England borrowed many elements of royal ritual modeled in France to enhance their own position. "Anointed by God" gave a king a demonstrable advantage over un-anointed nobles, even though the English crown was never quite a secure as the French. Because the French also benefited from a dynastic miracle - 300 years of unbroken succession from father to eldest son - while the English crown passed by right of conquest more often than not.

For information about France in the Middle Ages ("...roughly, from the 10th century to the middle of the 15th century"), good old Wikipedia can be a resource, especially since you are looking for a "sense" of the time and some basic information about who ruled and when and how their courts were organized.
For example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/France_in_the_Middle_Ages#Royal_administration
Good luck!