In medieval Nicosia, Pierre I commissioned a tower with a church called Mercy above a prison mysteriously named Margarita. Nicholas Costa explores the name’s possible connection to the king’s lover, Joanna L’Aleman, tracing a story of courtly poetry, personal tragedy, and royal revenge.
By Nicholas Costa
In 1368, Pierre I de Lusignan ordered the construction of a major tower at Nicosia. Leontios Makhairas, the principal chronicler of Pierre’s reign, records its striking design: a church named Misericordia (Mercy) occupied the upper level, with an underground prison below called Margarita. Machairas also notes that the building was strong and that Pierre wished to add a moat. Yet he does not explain why the prison was named Margarita.
That silence is the central historical problem. Leontos Machairas establishes the name but does not say why. There have been several subsequent conjectures: most notably that it referred either to Saint Margaret of Antioch (also known as Saint Marina or Margaret the Virgin), a 3rd- or 4th-century saint, or to his young daughter Margaret (c. 1360–1397). The meaning of Margarita therefore remains elusive when read alone.
Joanna L’Aleman: A New Explanation
Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Français 22545 fol. 198v
The author’s research proposes a different and highly personal explanation for Pierre’s choice. In his book Searching for Joanna: The Real Arodafnousa, the author identifies Margarita as the nickname Pierre gave his lover, Joanna L’Aleman. It appears they finally consummated their relationship in the spring of 1367 when the margarita (wild daisy) was in flower. It blooms in spectacular, massive blankets across the island from late February through April, hitting its absolute peak in March.
Notably, the 14th-century exterior of the church of Saint Michael in Lemona provides further material context for the medieval setting in which the symbol was used, as the church entrance prominently features carved margaritas as an integral part of its decoration.
As the author shows, the church adjoined a walled estate that belonged to the l’Alemans (hence the name of the village), specifically to Joanna. Local legend holds that their relationship was consummated there. The site itself has produced many fragments of Lusignan pottery and random architectural stones of medieval provenance.
Therefore, rather than an isolated architectural curiosity, the tower in Nicosia was named by Pierre when he sought in 1368 to take revenge on all those who caused his lover’s suffering and the murder of their child.
Joanna’s Ordeal and the King’s Revenge
Joanna’s story is preserved, in its essential outline, by Machairas. When Pierre left Cyprus for the West late in 1367, Joanna was heavily pregnant with his child. The chronicle describes Queen Eleanor’s attempts to bring about a premature birth or miscarriage by violence and the use of drugs and herbs whilst he was away. Joanna survived, gave birth, and was later imprisoned and subjected to further mistreatment. Pierre learned of the situation while abroad and wrote to Eleanor demanding Joanna’s release. Joanna was removed from a dungeon in Kyrenia Castle and sent to the convent of Saint Clare in Nicosia, where Machairas says that she remained for a year and ‘did not lose her beauty’. This is where Peter’s saw her when he returned. She was a broken woman, too scared to tell him what had befallen her.
The primary source does not specify the fate of Joanna’s child, nor does it preserve a fully coherent account of Pierre’s actions upon his return. It is clear, however, that he became disenchanted, lost his emotional balance, and degenerated into a harsh and tyrannical ruler. The author’s interpretation supplies the larger emotional and political context. Joanna’s ordeal, the loss of the child, and Pierre’s subsequent actions are inseparable. In this reconstruction, Margarita, the name of the tower, was the name through which Pierre memorialised Joanna and expressed his determination to punish all those whom he held responsible for her suffering and the death of his child. He stated as much:
And the king said: ‘By the faith which I owe to God, tomorrow morning I will have the head of John Gorap cut off, and I will make the viscount and his son carry mortar to build the wall; and tomorrow I will put my brothers in prison, and such and such knights.’ And he named them by their names.
This is what ultimately led to his murder in January 1369.
The Hidden Names in Machaut’s Poetry
Guillaume de Machaut’s Dit de la marguerite – Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Français 1584 fol. 213v
Guillaume de Machaut’s poetry adds another layer to the question. James I. Wimsatt identified an acrostic in Complainte VI: the opening sixteen lines spell MARGUERITE / PIERRE. Wimsatt connected Pierre with Pierre I of Cyprus but, in the author’s view, erroneously identified Marguerite with Marguerite of Flanders. He dated the poem after the coronation of Charles V on 19 May 1364.
It should be noted that extant texts bear variant spellings of the name. In the 19th century Marguerite had previously but equally erroneously been identified with Marguerite de Bourbon by Paulin Paris, a French scholar.
That date is not a precise date of the composition. It is a lower limit. A poem written after May 1364 could have been composed in 1364, 1365, 1367, or 1368. The date cannot be fixed from the acrostic alone. Later scholarship places Machault’s longer Le Dit de la Fleur de Lis et de la Marguerite after 1366, while a Paris warrant dated 5 May 1368 is an important chronological point for the broader Marguerite material. Neither fact proves that Complainte VI was written in 1367 or 1368, but neither excludes those years.
Wimsatt correctly located Pierre I in the acrostic, but the Marguerite connected with Pierre was Joanna L’Aleman and not Marguerite of Flanders. The poems belong not only to Pierre’s crusading diplomacy but also to his relationship with Joanna. The poetic name Margarita, the spring flower, and the later prison name are therefore parts of the same personal history.
Pierre I and the World of Courtly Poetry
Pierre’s association with Machaut’s cultural world is well established independently. Uri Smilansky argues that Machaut’s Ballade 30, Pas de tor, was probably composed in May 1364 and supplied to Pierre for his journey to Prague. This demonstrates that Pierre’s western diplomacy involved literary patronage and cultural display as well as military and political negotiation. It does not, by itself, identify the Marguerite of Complainte VI, but it places Pierre within the network in which Machaut’s work circulated.
Likewise, during 1363-4 Pierre met the chronicler Jean Froissart (1337- c.1405) in London. Scholars now think the poem wasn’t written for Pierre, but he remains central to the text’s history because he was a primary consumer and promoter. As Uri Smilansky shows, Pierre travelled with custom-commissioned French poetry specifically as a “cultural display” to charm Western rulers. Pierre was in England when Froissart wrote his Le Dit de la Margheritte. Was this more than coincidence? The poem is acknowledged as a snapshot of the literary currency Pierre used to build his reputation as Europe’s ultimate “chivalric king.”
Mercy Above, Punishment Below
Map of Nicosia in Cyprus, created in 1597 by the Venetian Giacomo (Jacomo) Franco (1550-1620) for his book Viaggio da Venetia a Constantinopoli per Mare
The Margarita Tower was built at the end of Pierre’s reign, when his political position in Cyprus had become dangerous. Its function was punitive as well as defensive. The contrast within its design is difficult to miss: Misericordia, Mercy, stood above ground; Margarita lay below in the prison. The tower was not merely an exercise in fortification. It was Pierre’s answer to betrayal, violence, and the incarceration of Joanna and the destruction of their child and his dreams.
Pierre did not live long enough to see the tower become a lasting instrument of his authority. As stated, he was assassinated in January 1369, less than a year after construction began. After his accession, his son, Pierre II, no doubt with his mother Eleanor, helped oversee the building’s demolition.
La Marguerite in Machaut’s Chronicle
Notably, a structure named “La Marguerite” features in Guillaume de Machaut’s rhymed historical chronicle titled La Prise d’Alexandrie (The Capture of Alexandria), written following Pierre’s assassination. In it, the poet states that King Pierre de Lusignan did indeed build a structure named “La Marguerite” shortly before he was killed in January 1369. In La Prise d’Alexandrie, Machaut writes that in January 1369:
The noble king had built, in a place that pleased him deeply,
A brand new house, which was meant to be fine and beautiful,
for it was by no means a small undertaking.
They called it ‘The Marguerite’
Li gentis roys faire faisoit, En un lieu qui moult li plaisoit, Une maison toute nouvelle, Qui devoit estre bonne et belle, Car pas n’estoit oeuvre petite. On l’apelloit la Marguerite. (Lines 8360–8365)
Machaut also notes that only a couple of days before Pierre I was assassinated by his own nobles (on January 17, 1369), he visited the site to oversee its design:
This was done on the tenth day of January, or perhaps the fifteenth.
On this day, the king went to amuse himself, to look upon and to put in order
The house of ‘The Marguerite’,
In the planning of which he took great delight.
Ce fu fait le jour xme / De janvier ou le jour xve. Ce jour ala li roys jouer / Pour veoir et pour ordener La maison de la Marguerite / Qu’au deviser moult se delite. (Lines 8574–8579)
With the author’s current identification, the disparate strands pull neatly together: Joanna L’Aleman, courtly poetry, the flower-name Margarita, and the underground prison of Nicosia. The result is not a decorative anecdote about a real medieval tower. It is a history in which private loss, literary memory, and royal retribution were written into stone.
Nicholas Costa is a multifaceted British author, historian, and artist.
Further Readings:
Leontios Makhairas, Recital Concerning the Sweet Land of Cyprus Entitled “Chronicle”, ed. and trans. M. Dawkins, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932).
James I. Wimsatt, ed., The Marguerite Poetry of Guillaume de Machaut, Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures, no. 87 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1970), 40–41, 47.
Machaut, Guillaume de. La Prise d’Alexandrie; ou, Chronique du roi Pierre Ier de Lusignan. Edited by Louis de Mas Latrie. Geneva: Fick, 1877. (See lines 8360–8365 and 8574–8579 for the references to the physical house named “La Marguerite”.)
Machaut, Guillaume de. Le Dit de la fleur de lis et de la Marguerite and Complainte VI. (Historically tracked in late 14th-century compilations, notably at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris, MS français 1584 and MS français 22546.)
Froissart, Jean. Le Dit de la Margheritte (1364). Critical text available in Oeuvres de Froissart: Poésies, edited by Auguste Scheler. Brussels: Victor Devaux, 1870.
Makhairas, Leontios. Recital Concerning the Sweet Land of Cyprus, Entitled “Chronicle”. Edited and translated by R. M. Dawkins. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932.
Archival Records
The Paris Warrant (Savoy Account Ledger): Turin, Archivio di Stato, Sezioni Riunite, Camerali, Piemonte, Conti della Tesoreria Generale, Inv. 16, reg. 34. Entry dated 5 May 1368 (records the 300 gold francs payment by Count Amadeus VI of Savoy to Guillaume de Machaut).
In medieval Nicosia, Pierre I commissioned a tower with a church called Mercy above a prison mysteriously named Margarita. Nicholas Costa explores the name’s possible connection to the king’s lover, Joanna L’Aleman, tracing a story of courtly poetry, personal tragedy, and royal revenge.
By Nicholas Costa
In 1368, Pierre I de Lusignan ordered the construction of a major tower at Nicosia. Leontios Makhairas, the principal chronicler of Pierre’s reign, records its striking design: a church named Misericordia (Mercy) occupied the upper level, with an underground prison below called Margarita. Machairas also notes that the building was strong and that Pierre wished to add a moat. Yet he does not explain why the prison was named Margarita.
That silence is the central historical problem. Leontos Machairas establishes the name but does not say why. There have been several subsequent conjectures: most notably that it referred either to Saint Margaret of Antioch (also known as Saint Marina or Margaret the Virgin), a 3rd- or 4th-century saint, or to his young daughter Margaret (c. 1360–1397). The meaning of Margarita therefore remains elusive when read alone.
Joanna L’Aleman: A New Explanation
The author’s research proposes a different and highly personal explanation for Pierre’s choice. In his book Searching for Joanna: The Real Arodafnousa, the author identifies Margarita as the nickname Pierre gave his lover, Joanna L’Aleman. It appears they finally consummated their relationship in the spring of 1367 when the margarita (wild daisy) was in flower. It blooms in spectacular, massive blankets across the island from late February through April, hitting its absolute peak in March.
Notably, the 14th-century exterior of the church of Saint Michael in Lemona provides further material context for the medieval setting in which the symbol was used, as the church entrance prominently features carved margaritas as an integral part of its decoration.
As the author shows, the church adjoined a walled estate that belonged to the l’Alemans (hence the name of the village), specifically to Joanna. Local legend holds that their relationship was consummated there. The site itself has produced many fragments of Lusignan pottery and random architectural stones of medieval provenance.
Therefore, rather than an isolated architectural curiosity, the tower in Nicosia was named by Pierre when he sought in 1368 to take revenge on all those who caused his lover’s suffering and the murder of their child.
Joanna’s Ordeal and the King’s Revenge
Joanna’s story is preserved, in its essential outline, by Machairas. When Pierre left Cyprus for the West late in 1367, Joanna was heavily pregnant with his child. The chronicle describes Queen Eleanor’s attempts to bring about a premature birth or miscarriage by violence and the use of drugs and herbs whilst he was away. Joanna survived, gave birth, and was later imprisoned and subjected to further mistreatment. Pierre learned of the situation while abroad and wrote to Eleanor demanding Joanna’s release. Joanna was removed from a dungeon in Kyrenia Castle and sent to the convent of Saint Clare in Nicosia, where Machairas says that she remained for a year and ‘did not lose her beauty’. This is where Peter’s saw her when he returned. She was a broken woman, too scared to tell him what had befallen her.
The primary source does not specify the fate of Joanna’s child, nor does it preserve a fully coherent account of Pierre’s actions upon his return. It is clear, however, that he became disenchanted, lost his emotional balance, and degenerated into a harsh and tyrannical ruler. The author’s interpretation supplies the larger emotional and political context. Joanna’s ordeal, the loss of the child, and Pierre’s subsequent actions are inseparable. In this reconstruction, Margarita, the name of the tower, was the name through which Pierre memorialised Joanna and expressed his determination to punish all those whom he held responsible for her suffering and the death of his child. He stated as much:
And the king said: ‘By the faith which I owe to God, tomorrow morning I will have the head of John Gorap cut off, and I will make the viscount and his son carry mortar to build the wall; and tomorrow I will put my brothers in prison, and such and such knights.’ And he named them by their names.
This is what ultimately led to his murder in January 1369.
The Hidden Names in Machaut’s Poetry
Guillaume de Machaut’s poetry adds another layer to the question. James I. Wimsatt identified an acrostic in Complainte VI: the opening sixteen lines spell MARGUERITE / PIERRE. Wimsatt connected Pierre with Pierre I of Cyprus but, in the author’s view, erroneously identified Marguerite with Marguerite of Flanders. He dated the poem after the coronation of Charles V on 19 May 1364.
It should be noted that extant texts bear variant spellings of the name. In the 19th century Marguerite had previously but equally erroneously been identified with Marguerite de Bourbon by Paulin Paris, a French scholar.
That date is not a precise date of the composition. It is a lower limit. A poem written after May 1364 could have been composed in 1364, 1365, 1367, or 1368. The date cannot be fixed from the acrostic alone. Later scholarship places Machault’s longer Le Dit de la Fleur de Lis et de la Marguerite after 1366, while a Paris warrant dated 5 May 1368 is an important chronological point for the broader Marguerite material. Neither fact proves that Complainte VI was written in 1367 or 1368, but neither excludes those years.
Wimsatt correctly located Pierre I in the acrostic, but the Marguerite connected with Pierre was Joanna L’Aleman and not Marguerite of Flanders. The poems belong not only to Pierre’s crusading diplomacy but also to his relationship with Joanna. The poetic name Margarita, the spring flower, and the later prison name are therefore parts of the same personal history.
Pierre I and the World of Courtly Poetry
Pierre’s association with Machaut’s cultural world is well established independently. Uri Smilansky argues that Machaut’s Ballade 30, Pas de tor, was probably composed in May 1364 and supplied to Pierre for his journey to Prague. This demonstrates that Pierre’s western diplomacy involved literary patronage and cultural display as well as military and political negotiation. It does not, by itself, identify the Marguerite of Complainte VI, but it places Pierre within the network in which Machaut’s work circulated.
Likewise, during 1363-4 Pierre met the chronicler Jean Froissart (1337- c.1405) in London. Scholars now think the poem wasn’t written for Pierre, but he remains central to the text’s history because he was a primary consumer and promoter. As Uri Smilansky shows, Pierre travelled with custom-commissioned French poetry specifically as a “cultural display” to charm Western rulers. Pierre was in England when Froissart wrote his Le Dit de la Margheritte. Was this more than coincidence? The poem is acknowledged as a snapshot of the literary currency Pierre used to build his reputation as Europe’s ultimate “chivalric king.”
Mercy Above, Punishment Below
The Margarita Tower was built at the end of Pierre’s reign, when his political position in Cyprus had become dangerous. Its function was punitive as well as defensive. The contrast within its design is difficult to miss: Misericordia, Mercy, stood above ground; Margarita lay below in the prison. The tower was not merely an exercise in fortification. It was Pierre’s answer to betrayal, violence, and the incarceration of Joanna and the destruction of their child and his dreams.
Pierre did not live long enough to see the tower become a lasting instrument of his authority. As stated, he was assassinated in January 1369, less than a year after construction began. After his accession, his son, Pierre II, no doubt with his mother Eleanor, helped oversee the building’s demolition.
La Marguerite in Machaut’s Chronicle
Notably, a structure named “La Marguerite” features in Guillaume de Machaut’s rhymed historical chronicle titled La Prise d’Alexandrie (The Capture of Alexandria), written following Pierre’s assassination. In it, the poet states that King Pierre de Lusignan did indeed build a structure named “La Marguerite” shortly before he was killed in January 1369. In La Prise d’Alexandrie, Machaut writes that in January 1369:
The noble king had built, in a place that pleased him deeply,
A brand new house, which was meant to be fine and beautiful,
for it was by no means a small undertaking.
They called it ‘The Marguerite’
Li gentis roys faire faisoit, En un lieu qui moult li plaisoit, Une maison toute nouvelle, Qui devoit estre bonne et belle, Car pas n’estoit oeuvre petite. On l’apelloit la Marguerite. (Lines 8360–8365)
Machaut also notes that only a couple of days before Pierre I was assassinated by his own nobles (on January 17, 1369), he visited the site to oversee its design:
This was done on the tenth day of January, or perhaps the fifteenth.
On this day, the king went to amuse himself, to look upon and to put in order
The house of ‘The Marguerite’,
In the planning of which he took great delight.
Ce fu fait le jour xme / De janvier ou le jour xve. Ce jour ala li roys jouer / Pour veoir et pour ordener La maison de la Marguerite / Qu’au deviser moult se delite. (Lines 8574–8579)
With the author’s current identification, the disparate strands pull neatly together: Joanna L’Aleman, courtly poetry, the flower-name Margarita, and the underground prison of Nicosia. The result is not a decorative anecdote about a real medieval tower. It is a history in which private loss, literary memory, and royal retribution were written into stone.
Nicholas Costa is a multifaceted British author, historian, and artist.
Further Readings:
Leontios Makhairas, Recital Concerning the Sweet Land of Cyprus Entitled “Chronicle”, ed. and trans. M. Dawkins, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932).
See also Municipality of Nicosia, “The Fortifications during the Lusignan Period: 1192–1489 AD.”
Nicholas Costa, Searching for Joanna: The Real Arodafnousa: Pierre I de Lusignan and Joanna L’Aleman (D’Aleman Publishing, 2022), ISBN 978-9963291786.
Małgorzata Dąbrowska, “A Cypriot Story about Love and Hatred,” Text Matters 4, no. 4 (2014): 201–02.
Nicholas Costa, “Love and Intrigue: Ruins of King Pierre I and Joanna l’Aleman’s Forbidden Romance,” Ancient Origins, 17 April 2024.
Nicholas Costa, “The Stone, St Michael and the Demons of Demona,” Ancient Origins, 21 July 2025.
James I. Wimsatt, ed., The Marguerite Poetry of Guillaume de Machaut, Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures, no. 87 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1970), 40–41, 47.
Uri Smilansky, “Machaut and Prague: A Rare New Sighting?” Early Music 46, no. 2 (2018): 211–223.
Machaut, Guillaume de. La Prise d’Alexandrie; ou, Chronique du roi Pierre Ier de Lusignan. Edited by Louis de Mas Latrie. Geneva: Fick, 1877. (See lines 8360–8365 and 8574–8579 for the references to the physical house named “La Marguerite”.)
Machaut, Guillaume de. Le Dit de la fleur de lis et de la Marguerite and Complainte VI. (Historically tracked in late 14th-century compilations, notably at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris, MS français 1584 and MS français 22546.)
Froissart, Jean. Le Dit de la Margheritte (1364). Critical text available in Oeuvres de Froissart: Poésies, edited by Auguste Scheler. Brussels: Victor Devaux, 1870.
Archival Records
The Paris Warrant (Savoy Account Ledger): Turin, Archivio di Stato, Sezioni Riunite, Camerali, Piemonte, Conti della Tesoreria Generale, Inv. 16, reg. 34. Entry dated 5 May 1368 (records the 300 gold francs payment by Count Amadeus VI of Savoy to Guillaume de Machaut).
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