Anne was born in Nantes.
The 15th centuries was nearly at its end then.
She got married three times and became queen to two successive French kings.
But she always thought of herself as “Duchess of Brittany”
She spent most of her adult life continuously pregnant and practically all her children died in the first days of their life.
In her time, she was the richest European woman.
She walked through history, because her personal life was history.
She was born in winter and she died in winter when she was not 40 yet.
According to her will, her heart was placed in a raised enamel gold reliquary, then transported to Nantes to be deposited, on March 19, 1514, in the vault of the Carmelite friars, in the tomb made for her parents, later being transferred to the Saint-Pierre cathedral.
In 1792, by order of the National Convention, the reliquary was exhumed, emptied, and seized as part of a collection of precious metals pertaining to churches, and sent to Nantes to be melted down.
But because of one of mysteious and casual events which make history too, it was not melted but kept into the secret of a Library and then returned to Nantes.
Since the beginnign of this year 2007 the reliquary is show in the museum of the Castle of the Dukes of Brittany.
It’s there that a clumsy swiss photographer and her Siberian friend could read on it these engraved words:
« En ce petit vaisseau De fin or pur et munde Repose ung plus grand cueur Que oncque dame eut au munde Anne fut le nom delle En France deux fois royne Duchesse des Bretons Royale et Souveraine »
( into this small vase of pure gold is resting one of the greatest hearts any women have ever had in the world.
Her name was Anne she was twice queen in France and Duchess of Royal Bretons)
But in realty Anne lost her heart and it’s only this empty precious little vase which rest in her beloved ancestors’’ castle.