Through her father, a great collector of antiquities, art patron and bibliophile, she was a granddaughter of King John II of France.

Philippe went on Crusade and fought alongside his friend Jean Le Maingre ("Boucicaut"), marshal of France at the disastrous Battle of Nicopolis on 25 September 1396.

[6] After Philippe's death inter Sarracenos ("among the Saracens"), his body was brought back to Eu, his home town, and Marie gave an endowment of £100 annually to the Collegial Church of Notre-Dame-et-Saint-Laurent for a mass to be celebrated there on 17 June each year in his memory.

[citation needed] Jointly with her widowed sister-in-law, Jeanne of Thouars, Marie was appointed guardian of the three surviving children of her marriage with Philippe: Charles, Bonne and Catherine.

[1] Marie married her third husband John of Bourbon at the "King's Palace" (the Palais de la Cité) in Paris on 21 June 1401.

[citation needed] He was appointed Grand Chamberlain of France on 18 March 1408 and succeeded his father as Duke of Bourbon on 19 August 1410.

Marie is believed to be depicted in one or possibly two full-page miniatures in the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, a lavishly-illustrated manuscript made for her father in the years after his sons' deaths.

According to Patricia Stirnemann, referencing Saint-Jean Boudin, the scene, although not painted until about 1410, depicts the engagement of Marie with John of Bourbon in 1401.

[10] Raymond Cazelles disputes this, arguing that the couple are Marie's niece Bonne of Armagnac and Charles, Duke of Orléans, who were to marry in 1411.

[16] All three of Marie's brothers were dead before 1400,[citation needed] which explains the complexity of the negotiations for her third marriage: she and her elder sister Bonne were to be heirs to John of Berry's titles, which required royal assent.