Charles the Bold spouse Margaret of York
In 1454, at the age of 21, Charles married a second time. He wanted to marry a daughter of his distant cousin Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York (a sister of English kings Edward IV and Richard III), but under terms of the Treaty of Arras of 1435, he was required to marry a French princess. His father chose Isabella of Bourbon, who was several years younger than him and was the daughter of Philip the Good's sister Agnes and a very distant cousin of Charles VII of France. She died in 1465 and their daughter, Mary, was Charles's only surviving child.
Charles was on friendly terms with his brother-in-law Louis, the Dauphin of France, who had been a refugee at the court of Burgundy from 1456 until he succeeded his father as king of France in 1461. But Louis began to pursue some of the same policies as his father, for example Louis's later repurchase of the towns on the Somme River that Louis's father had ceded in 1435 to Charles's father in the Treaty of Arras, which Charles viewed with chagrin. When his father's failing health enabled him to assume the reins of government (which Philip relinquished to him by an act of 12 April 1465), he initiated a policy of hostility toward Louis XI that led to the Burgundian Wars, and he became one of the principal leaders of the League of the Public Weal, an alliance of west European nobles opposed to policies of Louis XI that sought to centralize the royal authority within France.For his third wife, Charles was offered the hand of Louis XI's daughter Anne. The wife he ultimately chose, however, was his second cousin Margaret of York (who was also, like himself, a great-grandchild of John of Gaunt). Upon the death of his father in 1467, Charles was no longer bound by the terms of the Treaty of Arras, and he decided to ally himself with Burgundy's old ally England. Louis did his best to prevent or delay the marriage with Margaret (he even sent French ships to waylay her as she sailed to Sluys), but in the summer of 1468, it was celebrated sumptuously at Bruges, and Charles was made a Knight of the Garter. The couple had no children, but Margaret devoted herself to her stepdaughter Mary. After Mary's death in 1482, she kept Mary's two infant children, Philip the Fair and Margaret of Austria, as long as she was allowed.On 19 May 1440, he married Catherine of France (1428–1446), daughter of Charles VII of France and Marie of Anjou. She died in 1446.
On 30 October 1454, he married Isabella of Bourbon (1437–1465), daughter of Charles I of Bourbon. He had wanted to marry Anne of York (the daughter of Richard, Duke of York), but his father insisted that he fulfill the conditions of the Treaty of Arras (1435), which committed him to marry a French princess. The marriage was, however, a happy one, and produced his only child, Mary of Burgundy, on 13 February 1457.
On 3 July 1468, Charles married Anne's sister, Margaret of York (1446–1503); her siblings also included Edward IV of England, George, Duke of Clarence, and Richard III of England. The marriage was solemnized at Damme, near Bruges, by the bishop of Salisbury.The Burgundian possessions became part of the Habsburg empire on the marriage of his daughter Mary to Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor.
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