Blanc with crown of Provence - Louis XII 2nd type, lily-crown

The blanc à la couronne was already an aging denomination by the time Louis XII struck this type — its origins lay in the monetary reforms of Charles VII in the 1430s, and successive kings had progressively debased the billon content across decades of fiscal pressure. Louis XII's administration maintained the denomination partly out of monetary conservatism and partly because the blanc remained the workhorse of small retail transactions in a kingdom that had never successfully replaced it with anything more convenient.

The "var." notation against both Gadoury and the Royales reference reflects genuine die diversity within this type — the lily-crown blans were struck at multiple provincial mints simultaneously, and workshop-level variation in die engraving was routine rather than exceptional.