Ecu 'Vertugadin' of Bearn - Louis XV

The "vertugadin" nickname derives from the pronounced rim bead that rings this particular ecu type — a bulging profile that contemporaries likened to the hooped underskirt fashionable a century earlier. It is a production characteristic, not a design choice: the heavy beading resulted from specific die preparation at Pau and a handful of other provincial mints, making the Béarn examples distinguishable from their Paris counterparts.

Pau was one of the few mints retaining active production rights in the southwest at this date, a privilege tied to Béarn's historically semi-autonomous status within the French crown — formally united with France only in 1620 under Louis XIII. By 1717, monetary reforms were already consolidating production away from provincial houses.