Noble family La Tour d'Auvergne | Died 1524 | |
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Father John III, Count of Auvergne Mother Jeanne de Bourbon-Vendôme Children John Stewart, Duke of Albany Parents Jeanne de Bourbon, Duchess of Bourbon, John III, Count of Auvergne Grandparents Bertrand VI de La Tour d'Auvergne, John VIII, Count of Vendôme, Isabelle de Beauvau, Isabelle de Beauveau Similar John Stewart - Duke of A, Jeanne de Bourbon - Duchess, Madeleine de La Tour d'Auvergne, John II - Duke of Bourbon, Charles I - Duke of Bourbon | ||
Anne de La Tour d'Auvergne (1496–1524) was sovereign Countess of Auvergne from 1501 until 1524, and Duchess of Albany by marriage to John Stewart, Duke of Albany. In her marriage contract, she was called 'Anne de Boulogne fille de Jehan Comte de Boulogne et Auvergne.'
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Family
She was the eldest of two daughters born to Jean III of la Tour d'Auvergne and Jeanne of Bourbon. Her younger sister was Madeleine de La Tour d'Auvergne, who would marry Lorenzo II de' Medici and become the mother of Catherine de' Medici. As the elder daughter, Anne was her father's heiress.
Her father's sister was Jeanne de la Tour d'Auvergne, d.1510, wife of Aymar de Poitiers. Aymar de Poitiers and Jeanne de la Tour d'Auvergne were the grandparents of Diane de Poitiers, mistress of Henry II, King of France.
Marriage
On 13 July 1505, she married her first cousin John Stewart, Duke of Albany, the intermittent heir presumptive to the Kingdom of Scotland and its sometime-regent, who lived in France as a sort of exile.
Death and inheritance
Anne died in 1524 at her castle of Saint-Saturnin, leaving her inheritance (the feudal county of Auvergne) to her infant niece, Catherine de' Medici (born 1519), daughter of her late younger sister Madeleine and Lorenzo II, Duke of Urbino.
A manuscript detailing Anne's inheritance, with pictures of her castles in Auvergne, and her descent from the legendary Belle Moree, daughter of a Pharaoh, survives in the Royal Library of the Hague. The Bibliothèque nationale de France has another manuscript version of this fabulous genealogy, and a similar inventory of Auvergne castles made for Catherine de' Medici. Anne and the Duke of Albany were painted in a stained-glass window at Vic-le-Comte.