Draco Rexus: It was pretty striking alright.
Dhimmi: Well he isn't quite out of the races yet...
BBBD: Currently the Butlers of Ormonde are first in line (despite Angoulême being rich and plague-free), but I'm hoping to see that change.
J. Passepartout: If only indeed...
coz1: Well the future is... unclear at the moment. Though I agree with you about Richard!
Part 37: Final Destination (2)
Above: The return of the Black Death...
Though in restrospect it would appear obvious, at the time re-emergence of the plague amongst the Ossorry courtiers was an utterly unexpected and devestating bolt from the blue.
Ossorry had been amongst the earliest places in Ireland to recover from the plague, being long absent by the time Blathmac died. Therefore Richards old court found themselves much more vunerable than those who had survived Blathmac: no immunity and no experience. Between 1386 and 1389 a half dozen members of the court - all new arrivals - would die of the plague and quite radically alter the balance of power in the Duchy.
In theory the power in the Duchy (with Richard incapacitated) lay with Duchess Phillipa. A weak minded, paranoid woman she had become friends with her advisor in chief, the Steward (Maud de Courtenay) who clung to her like a barnacle.
Until that is she contracted the plague in November - at which point Maud abruptly abandoned her friend to take an extended retreat to her country estates, not returning until after the unfortunate woman died in February 1387.
In two years, the duchy had been ruled by four seperate dukes, co-regencies (twice) and a near constant athmosphere of political upheaval. Phillipa had at least been an identiable and legitimate figurehead - with her death the melancholy subjects might well have felt apprehensive about what the future might bring.
*
Exactly two years to day after Maurice had died Maud and her family returned to a Dublin ripe with uncertainty. No one was entirely sure who was in charge - well expect for Richard and he was mad.
Mad but not feeble. Richard raged and wept and laughed and called down curses upon enemies dead or imaginary but behind his red rimmed and anxiously darting eyes lay a mind capable of moments of extreme lucidity in between panic attacks and arrogant pronouncements on how he intended to punish the shadowy men who plotted against him - and that frigtheningly only he seemed to see. Until that is he met Maud.
The Steward in lieu of anyone else to report to presented herself to the Duke in order to discuss minor matters of the finances of the duchy. What was
actually said was another matter but the short meeting subsequently lasted most of the rest of the day and henceforth the Duke and his Steward were as inseperable as young lovers.
Wagging tongues noticed (often with some dismay) how closely the two seemed to seemed to interact, how Maud had rapidly become Richard's confidant and sole advisor. Still they reasoned: Maud's power over the Duke - though quite evident - was something that could be snatched away quite as easily as she had come by it. When all was said and done she was merely another courtier, right?
Andrew FitzGerald, her husband clearly took little enthusiasm in his wife becoming Richard's confidant and the loud and public quarrels between the two became public legend. He took to spending increasingly little time at home, instead going on long and boisterous hunting trips. It was on one such trip in the Dublin mountains that he took an arrow in the throat. A tragic hunting accident all agreed.
A week later it was announced that Duke Richard intended to remarry. His bride? None other than the grieving widow Maud de Courtenay.
Above: Maud, Duchess of Meath