Margaret of Provence place of burial Basilica of Saint-Denis
Queen dowager
After the death of Louis IX on his second crusade in 1270, during which she remained in France, she returned to Provence. She became a more politically active figure after his death. She was particularly exigent – to the point of raising troops – in defending her rights in Provence, where Charles maintained his political authority and control of property after Beatrice's death, contrary to the intentions of Margaret and Beatrice's father, who had died in 1245. She was devoted to Eleanor, and they stayed in contact until Eleanor's death in 1291. Her last years were spent doing pious work, including the founding of the Franciscan nunnery of Lourcines in 1289.Margaret herself died in Paris, at the Poor Clares monastery she had founded, on 20 December 1295, at the age of seventy-four. She was buried near (but not beside) her husband in the Basilica of St-Denis outside Paris. Her grave, beneath the altar steps, was never marked by a monument, so its location is unknown; probably for this reason, it was the only royal grave in the basilica that was not ransacked during the French Revolution, and it probably remains intact today.
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