Isabella de Villehardouin's brief independent reign over Achaea — before she was effectively forced into marriage with Philip of Savoy in 1301, transferring real power to him — produced a narrow window of autonomous coinage in her own name. The denier tournois type she struck was borrowed wholesale from the royal French model, a deliberate legitimizing gesture by the Frankish principalities of Greece, who had been imitating Tours-style coinage since the mid-thirteenth century.
Metcalf's classification of this type reflects the difficulties in attributing Achaean deniers precisely; die-link analysis remains the primary tool for separating her issues from those of her successors.
Isabella de Villehardouin's brief independent reign over Achaea — before she was effectively forced into marriage with Philip of Savoy in 1301, transferring real power to him — produced a narrow window of autonomous coinage in her own name. The denier tournois type she struck was borrowed wholesale from the royal French model, a deliberate legitimizing gesture by the Frankish principalities of Greece, who had been imitating Tours-style coinage since the mid-thirteenth century.
Metcalf's classification of this type reflects the difficulties in attributing Achaean deniers precisely; die-link analysis remains the primary tool for separating her issues from those of her successors.