After being conducted to Normandy, where was the court of her uncle, John, the little princess was married immediately. The treaty for whose ratification and observance she was a sort of pledge was signed on May 22, 1200. John ceded nearly all that Philippe could ask, and bestowed twenty thousand marks sterling upon the young husband. The next day the ceremony was performed at Portmort, on the right bank of the Seine, by the Archbishop of Bordeaux, in the presence of a great assemblage of barons and ecclesiastics. The young prince and his bride could not be married on French soil by reason of the interdict then in force against his father for repudiating Ingeburge; hence the choice of Norman soil and of such an out of the way place. The prince, aged only twelve years and six months, proceeded with Blanche direct to Paris. There is no record of the usual festivities accompanying a royal marriage, despite the accounts of some modern historians, who claim that there were grand tourneys, and that Louis was wounded in one of them. In one so young as Blanche it is useless to look for the traits of the grown woman; we might conjecture much, but it would be in the light of after events. To those about her at this time Blanche seemed a beautiful girl, deserving of the flattering play upon words which her name suggested. She was _la princesse candide_ not only in looks but in conduct, and won the devoted love of her boy husband, who seems to have been himself of a lovable disposition. It was at his request that Hugh of Lincoln, at that time in great repute, visited Blanche, whom he found in tears and managed to console. But the times were troublous, and we may well suppose that there was little chance for the fostering of quiet domestic virtues when one had been forced to marry merely for reasons of state. It is rumored, though not positively confirmed, that the crafty King of France made use of his young daughter-in-law to solicit from King John another slice of Normandy, which John dared not refuse. Whether this be true or not, it is at least certain that neither immediately nor ultimately did the marriage of Blanche de Castille help the English Plantagenets. For John quarrelled with Alphonso, Blanche's father, and the two were at war with intervals of truce, between 1204 and 1208, the subject of dispute being Gascony. Blanche naturally sided with her father rather than with her uncle, and when she bore heirs who might inherit the crown of France, made stronger by the accession of the Norman lands which had been taken from John and given to her husband, it is easy to see that her sympathies would be with her adopted country.