Genealogy and Family History

Sources (for Helen Seltzer's Extraordinary Women)

"Flavius Afranius Syagrius (floruit 369-382) was a Roman politician and administrator. Afranius' father was Clodoreius; it is unknown who his mother was. Afranius was also a member of the Gallic-Roman aristocratic family of the Syagrii, which originated in Lyon. In the same years in which Afranius lived, another Syagrius is attested (he was consul in 381), but it is not always possible to distinguish the career of the two Syagri. In 369 he is attested as notarius: in that year the Roman Emperor Valentinian I removed him from his office after a failed military operation, and Afranius dedicated himself to private life. He continued his career under Emperor Gratian, possibly because of his friendship with the poet Ausonius. Afranius was magister memoriae in 379, when some Theodorus succeeded him. However, that same year he became Proconsul of Africa. Between June 18, 380, and the Spring of 382 he is attested as Praetorian prefect of Italy. In 381 he was also praefectus urbi of Rome and Consul in 382 ."

"Tonantius Ferreolus (405 or ca 420 – 475), was the praetorian prefect of Gaul (praefectus praetorio Galliarum) from 451.  He was either "personally related to" or "connected through relatives" with Sidonius Apollinaris, and was associated with Thaumastus in the impeachment of Arvandus. He was the son of Ferreolus, born say 390, and wife Syagria, clarissima femina, born c.390, and thus maternal grandson of Flavius Afranius Syagrius, Consul in 382. He married Papianilla, clarissima femina, born ca 415, a niece of Emperor Avitus and the first cousin of another Papianilla, wife of Sidonius Apollinaris, and they had many children, among whom Tonantius Ferreolus. She was a partner who shared his troubles, according to Sidonius."

Women and the Law in the Roman Empire: a Sourcebook on Marriage, Divorce and widowhood by Judith Evans Grubbs:

"By the second century the wives and daughters of senators were given the title clarissima femina (“most splendid woman”)... It was clearly a great honor to be a clarissima, and women who had at one time enjoyed that title were anxious to retain it even if they married a non-senatorial man... a woman will be clarissima for as long as she is married to a senator or clarissimus or (as long as) having separated from him, she has not married another man of lower status (dignitas)."

Saints.SQPN.com

Saint Itta. Daughter of Bishop Arnoald of Metz. Sister of Saint Modoald of Trier and Saint Severa. Married to Saint Pepin of Landen. Mother of Saint Gertrude of Nivelles, SaintBegga of Ardenne, and Grimoald, mayor of the palace. Grandmother of Pepin of Herstal. Friend of Saint Amand of Maastricht. Widowed, she built a Benedictinedouble monastery at Nivelles, Belgium under the leadership of her daughter, Saint Gertrude; Ida spent the rest of her life there as a nun.

Wikipedia:

Saint Itta or Itta of Metz (also Ida, Itte or Iduberga) (592-652), was the wife of Pepin of Landen, mayor of the palace of Austrasia. Her brother was Saint Modoald, bishop of Trier. Her sister was abbess Saint Severa. Their father was Arnoald, Bishop of Metz, son of Ansbertus.  On the advice of the missionary bishop Saint Amand, bishop of Maastricht, after Pepin's death, she founded the Benedictine nunnery at Nivelles, with a monastery under the abbess. She herself entered it and installed as abbess her daughter Gertrude, perhaps after resigning the post herself. She had by Pepin another daughter, Abbess Begga of Andenne who married Ansegisel, son of Arnulf of Metz. By Begga, she is the grandmother of Pepin of Herstal and one of the matriarchs of the great Carolingian family. Her only son was Grimoald, later mayor of the palace, and father of King Childebert the Adopted. Both her daughters were later canonised, as was she. Her feast day is May 8.

Saint Begga (also Begue, Begge) (615 – 17 December 693) was the daughter of Pepin of Landen, mayor of the palace of Austrasia, and his wife Itta. On the death of her husband, she took the veil, founded several churches, and built a convent at Andenne on the Meuse River (Andenne sur Meuse) where she spent the rest of her days as abbess. She was buried in Saint Begga's Collegiate Church in Andenne. Some hold that the Beguine movement which came to light in the 12th century was actually founded by St. Begga; and the church in the beguinage of Lier, Belgium, has a statue of St. Begga standing above the inscription: St. Begga, our foundress.
The Lier beguinage dates from the 13th century. More than likely, however, the Beguines derived their name from that of the priest Lambert le Begue, under whose protection the witness and ministry of the Beguines flourished. She married Ansegisel, son of Arnulf, Bishop of Metz, and had three children:
• Pepin of Heristal
• Martin of Laon
• Clotilda of Heristal, who was married to Theuderic III of the Franks.
 
 

Wikipedia:
 
 

Alice of Jerusalem (also Haalis, Halis, or Adelicia) was Princess of Antioch through her marriage to Bohemund II. She was the second daughter of King Baldwin II of Jerusalem and Morphia of Melitene.
 
 

Baldwin II had become regent of Antioch after the defeat of the principality at the Battle of Ager Sanguinis in 1119. In 1126, the 18-year old Bohemund, son of Bohemund I, the first prince of Antioch, arrived to claim his inheritance. Immediately after the principality was handed over to him, Bohemund was married to Alice; the marriage was likely part of the negotiations prior to Bohemund's arrival.
 
 

In 1130 Bohemund was killed in battle with the Danishmends, and Baldwin returned to Antioch to assume the regency, but Alice wanted the city for herself. She attempted to make an alliance with Zengi, the Seljuk atabeg of Mosul and Aleppo, offering to marry her daughter to a Muslim prince. The messenger sent by Alice to Zengi was captured on the way by Baldwin, and was tortured and executed. Alice refused to let Baldwin enter Antioch, but some of the Antiochene nobles opened the gates for Baldwin's representatives, Fulk, Count of Anjou (Alice's brother-in-law) and Joscelin I of Edessa. Alice at first fled to the citadel but finally flung herself on her father's mercy and they were reconciled. She was expelled from Antioch, but was allowed to keep for herself Latakia and Jabala, the cities which had been her dowry when she had married Bohemund. Baldwin left Antioch under the regency of Joscelin, ruling for Alice and Bohemund's young daughter Constance.
 
 

Baldwin also died in 1131. Baldwin was succeeded in Jerusalem by his eldest daughter, Alice's sister Melisende, and her husband Fulk. Joscelin, too, died soon afterwards, and Alice again attempted to take control of Antioch, not wishing her young daughter to inherit the principality. The Antiochene nobles appealed to Fulk for help, and Alice allied with the rulers of the other two northern Crusader states, Pons of Tripoli and Joscelin I's son Joscelin II. Pons would not allow Fulk to pass through the County of Tripoli, and Fulk was forced to travel to Antioch by sea. Both Pons and Joscelin probably feared that Fulk wanted to impose the suzerainty of Jerusalem over the northern states, although it was also rumoured that Alice had simply bribed them. Fulk and Pons fought a battle near Rugia, but peace was eventually made, and Fulk restored the regency in Antioch, placing the principality under the control of Reynald Masoier.
 
 

Around 1135, Alice again attempted to take control of Antioch, negotiating with the Byzantine Empire for a husband for Constance; the future emperor Manuel Comnenus was a candidate. Some of the nobles of the principality, however, not wanting a Greek alliance, secretly summoned Raymond of Poitiers to marry Constance. The Patriarch, Ralph of Domfort, convinced Alice that Raymond was coming to marry her, but instead he himself performed the wedding of Raymond and the still-underage Constance
 
 

Alice was humiliated and left Antioch, never to return. She died in Latakia after 1136. Of her other sisters, Hodierna married Raymond II of Tripoli, and Ioveta became abbess of the convent in Bethany. Her daughter Constance, after the death of Raymond of Poitiers, later married Raynald  of Châtillon.
 
 

Wikipedia:
 
 

Constance of Antioch (1127–1163) was the only daughter of Bohemund II of Antioch by his wife Alice, princess of Jerusalem [1]. She was also Princess regnant of the Principality of Antioch (a crusader state) from 1130 to her death.
She became princess of Antioch when she was only four-years-old, under the regency of Baldwin II of Jerusalem (1130–1131) and Fulk of Jerusalem (1131–1136).
Her mother Alice did not want the principality to pass to Constance, preferring to rule in her own name. Alice attempted to ally with the Muslim atabeg of Mosul, Zengi, offering to marry Constance to a Muslim prince, but the plan was foiled by Alice's father Baldwin, who exiled her from Antioch. In 1135 Alice attempted once again to take control of the principality, and sought a husband for Constance in Manuel Comnenus, at that time the heir to the Byzantine throne. Fulk exiled her again and re-established the regency for Constance. In 1136, while still a child, Constance was married to Raymond of Poitiers, whom the noble supporters of the regency had secretly summoned from Europe; Alice was tricked into believing Raymond was going to marry her, and, humiliated, left Antioch for good when the marriage was performed. From this union three children were born:

    * Bohemund III of Antioch, who succeeded her in 1163
    * Maria of Antioch (1145–1182), married (rechristened as "Xena") to Manuel I Comnenus
    * Philippa of Antioch, mistress to Andronicus I Comnenus

In 1149, Raymond died in the Battle of Inab and Constance remarried in 1153 to Raynald of Châtillon, who also became co-ruler of Antioch. Constance had one daughter from Raynald:

    * Agnes of Antioch (1154–1184), married king Bela III of Hungary

According to some sources [2] believe that Constance and Raynald had another daughter, Joan, possibly the second wife of Boniface I of Montferrat.

Raynald was captured in 1160 and spent the next sixteen years in a prison in Aleppo. A dispute arose between Constance and her son, Bohemund, when Bohemund tried to seize power in Antioch. A riot broke out, and Constance was exiled from the city. She died in 1163.
 
 

Wikipedia:
 
 

Agnes of Antioch, (1154 – c. 1184), Queen Consort of Hungary.
 

Agnes was the daughter of Raynald of Châtillon, Prince of Antioch by right of his wife, and his first wife, Constance of Antioch. Her father was captured by the Muslims in Nov 1160 and was confined in Aleppo for the next seventeen years.
 

In 1170, Ágnes went to Constantinople, where her sister Maria had been living as the wife of the Byzantine Emperor Manuel I Comnenus. She received the name Anna in the imperial court. On the Emperor's request, Agnes was married to kaiszar Alexius, who had been engaged to the Emperor's daughter, Maria Comnena until the birth of Manuel's son, Alexius in 1166.
 

The new couple went on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem where they made a donation for the Knights Hospitaller. In the summer, after the death of King Stephen III of Hungary, her husband ascended the throne as King Béla III, and they moved to Hungary.
 

Agnes died in 1184, aged around thirty. She was buried in Székesfehérvár. Her remains were confidently identified by archeologists during late 19th century excavations at the ruined cathedral of Székesfehérvár. Her remains were afterwards reinterred at the Mathias Church in Budapest, with those of her husband.
 

Marriages and children
c. 1170: King Béla III of Hungary (c. 1148 – 23 April 1196),
• King Emeric of Hungary (1174 – 30 September/November 1204)
• Margaret (1175 – after 1223),
 
 

wife firstly of Emperor Isaac II Angelos,

secondly of King Boniface I of Thessalonica

and thirdly of Nicolas of Saint-Omer
 

• King Andrew II of Hungary (c. 1177 – 21 September 1235)
• Constance (c. 1180 – 6 December 1240), wife of king Ottokar I of Bohemia
 
 

Wikipedia:
 
 

Basina, daughter of the Thuringian king Basin and Basina, a Saxon princess, was queen of Thuringia in the middle of the fifth century. She left her husband king Bisinus and went to Roman Gaul. She herself took the initiative to ask for the hand of Childeric I, king of the Franks, and married him. For as she herself said, "I want to have the most powerful man in the world, even if I have to cross the ocean for him". This remark of hers may have been related to Childeric's successful invasion of the Roman Empire and his attempt to settle a Frankish kingdom on Roman soil.
 
 

Basina's name is probably Low Franconian for 'female boss'. She is the mother of the man who is remembered as the founder of the Frankish realm and modern France. She (not her husband Childeric) named her son Chlodovech, but he is better remembered under his Latinized name Clovis I. The simple fact that Chlodovech's name comes from Basina is remarkable since it was a common practice for the Franks to name a son after a member of the family of the male-line of ancestors.
 
 

Through the ages historians have been intrigued by the story of Basina since she obviously acted as a player and not as bystander — which is not uncommon for the women of the Franks, but highly uncommon for the Italians.
 
 

Wikipedia:
 
 

Saint Clotilde (475–545), also known as Clothilde, Clotilda, Clotild, Rotilde or Chroctechildis, was the second wife of the Frankish king Clovis I. Venerated as a Saint by the Catholic Church, she was instrumental to her husband's famous conversion to Christianity and, in her later years, was known for her almsgiving and penitential works of mercy. Clotilde was born at the Burgundian court of Lyon the daughter of King Chilperic II of Burgundy and his wife Caretena. Upon the death of Chilperic's father King Gondioc in 473, he and his brothers Gundobad and Godegisel had divided their heritage; Chilperic II apparently reigning at Lyon, Gundobald at Vienne and Godegesil at Geneva. According to Gregory of Tours (538–594), Chilperic II was slain by his brother Gundobad in 493, his wife drowned with a stone hung around her neck, and of his two daughters, Chrona took the veil and Clotilde was exiled. This account, however, seems to have been a later invention, since an epitaph discovered at Lyon speaks of a Burgundian queen Caretena who died in 506.[1] This was most probably the mother of Clotilde. In 493 Clotilde married the Merovingian Clovis, King of the Franks, who had just conquered northern Gaul. The marriage produced the following children:

• Ingomer, died young

• Chlodomer (495–524), King of the Franks at Orléans from 511

• Childebert I (496–558), King of the Franks at Paris from 511

• Chlothar I (497–561), King of the Franks at Soissons from 511, King of all Franks from 558

• Clotilde (died 531), married Amalaric, King of the Visigoths
 
 

Clotilde was brought up in the Catholic faith and did not rest until her husband had abjured paganism and embraced the Catholic faith (according to Gregory of Tours' Historia Francorum [History of the Franks]) in the middle of battle with the Alemanni at Tolbiac in 496. He officially converted the same year, baptised by Bishop Remigius of Reims. With him she built at Paris the Church of the Holy Apostles, afterwards known as the Abbey of St Genevieve. After Clovis' death in 511, she retired to the Abbey of St. Martin at Tours.
 
 

In 523 Clotilde finally took revenge for the murder of her father, when she incited her sons against her cousin King Sigismund of Burgundy, the son of Gundobad, and provoked the Burgundian War, which led to Sigismund's deposition, imprisonment and his assassination in the following year. In turn, her eldest son, Chlodomer was killed during the following Burgundian campaign under Sigismund's successor King Godomar at the Battle of Vézeronce. Clotilde tried in vain to protect the rights of her three grandsons, the children of Chlodomer, against the claims of her surviving sons Childebert and Clothar. Chlotar had two of them killed, while only Clodoald (Cloud) managed to escape and later chose an ecclesiastical career. She was equally unsuccessful in her efforts to prevent the civil discords between her children.
 
 

Clotilde died in 544 or 545 at Tours; she was buried at her husband's side, in the Church of the Holy Apostles (Abbey of St Genevieve).
 
 

The Catholic Encyclopedia:

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04066a.htm

(French CLOTILDE; German CHLOTHILDE).

Queen of the Franks, born probably at Lyons, c. 474; died at Tours, 3 June, 545. Her feast is celebrated 3 June. Clotilda was the wife of Clovis I, and the daughter of Chilperic, King of Burgundians of Lyons, and Caretena. After the death of King Gundovic (Gundioch), the Kingdom of Burgundy had been divided among his four sons, Chilperic reigning at Lyons, Gondebad at Vienne, and Godegisil at Geneva; Gondemar's capital is not mentioned. Chilperic and probably Godegisil were Catholics, while Gondebad professed Arianism. Clotilda was given a religious training by her mother Caretena, who, according to Sidonius Apollinaris and Fortunatus of Poitiers, was a remarkable woman. After the death of Chilperic, Caretena seems to have made her home with Godegisil at Geneva, where her other daughter, Sedeleuba, or Chrona, founded the church of Saint-Victor, and took the religious habit. It was soon after the death of Chilperic that Clovis asked and obtained the hand of Clotilda.

From the sixth century on, the marriage of Clovic and Clotilda was made the theme of epic narratives, in which the original facts were materially altered and the various versions found their way into the works of different Frankish chroniclers, e.g. Gregory of Tours, Fredegarius, and the "Liber Historiae". These narratives have the character common to all nuptial poems of the rude epic poetry found among many of the Germanic peoples. Here it will suffice to summarize the legends and add a brief statement of the historical facts. Further information will be found in special works on the subject. The popular poems substituted for King Godegisil, uncle and protector of Clotilda, his brother Gondebad, who was represented as the persecutor of the young princess. Gondebad is supposed to have slain Chilperic, thrown his wife into a well, with a stone tied around her neck, and exiled her two daughters. Clovis, on hearing of the beauty of Clotilda, sent his friend Aurelian, disguised as a beggar, to visit her secretly, and give her a goldring from his master; he then asked Gondebad for the hand of the young princess. Gondebad, fearing the powerful King of the Franks, dared not refuse, and Clotilda accompanied Aurelian and his escort on their return journey. They hastened to reach Frankish territory, as Clotilda feared that Aredius, the faithful counsellor of Gondebad, on his return from Constantinople whither he had been sent on a mission, would influence his master to retract his promise. Her fears were justified. Shortly after the departure of the princess, Aredius returned and caused Gondebad to repent to the marriage. Troops were despatched to bring Clotilda back, but it was too late, as she was safe on Frankish soil. The details of this recital are purely legendary. It is historically established that Chilperic's death was lamented by Gondebad, and that Cartena lived until 506: she died "full of days", says her epitaph, having had the joy of seeing her children brought up in catholic religion. Aurelian and Aredius are historical personages, though little is known of them in the legend is highly improbable.

Clotilda, as wife of Clovis, soon acquired a great ascendancy over him, of which she availed herself to exhort him to embrace the CatholicFaith. For a long time her efforts were fruitless, though the king permitted the baptism of Ingomir, their first son. The child died in his infancy which seemed to give Clovis an argument against the God of Clotilda, but notwithstanding this, the young queen again obtained the consent of her husband to the baptism of their second son, Clodomir. Thus the future of Catholicism was already assured in the Frankish Kingdom. Clovis himself was soon afterwards converted under highly dramatic circumstances, and was baptized at Reims by St. Remigius, in 496 (see CLOVIS). Thus Clotildas accomplished the mission assigned her by Providence; she was made the instrument in the conversion of a great people, who were to be for centuries the leaders of Catholic civilization. Clotilda bore Clovis five children: four sons, Ingomir, who died in infancy, and Kings Clodomir, Childebert, and Clotaire, and one daughter, named Clotilda after her mother. Little more is known of Queen Clotilda during the lifetime of husband, but it may be conjectured that she interceded with him, at the time of his intervention in the quarrel between the Burgundian kings, to win him to the cause of Godegisil as against Gondebad. The moderation displayed by Clovis in this struggle, in which, though victor, he did not seek to turn the victory to his own advantage, as well as the alliance which he afterwards concluded with Gondebad, were doubtless due to the influence of Clotilda, who must have viewed the fratricidal struggle with horror.

Clovis died at Paris in 511, and Clotilda had him interred on what was then Mons Lucotetius, in the church of the Apostles (later Sainte-Geneviève), which they had built together to serve as a mausoleum, and which Clotilda was left to complete. The widowhood of this noble woman was saddened by cruel trials. Her son Clodomir, son-in-law of Gondebad, made war against his cousin Sigismund, who had succeeded Gondebad on the throne of Burgundy, captured him, and put him to death with his wife and children at Coulmiers, near Orléans. According to the popular epic of the Franks, he was incited to this war by Clotilda, who thought to avenge upon Sigismund the murder of her parents; but, as has already been seen Clotilda had nothing to avenge, and, on the contrary, it was probably she who arranged the alliance between Clovis and Gondebad. Here the legend is at variance with the truth, cruelly defaming the memory of Clotilda, who had the sorrow of seeing Clodomir perish in his unholy war on the Burgundians; he was vanquished and slain in the battle of Veseruntia (Vezeronce), in 524, by Godomar, brother of Sigismund. Clotilda took under her care his three sons of tender age, Theodoald, Gunther, and Clodoald. Childebert and Clotaire, however, who had divided between them the inheritance of their elder brother, did not wish the children to live, to whom later on they would have to render an account. By means of a ruse they withdrew the children from the watchful care of their mother and slew the two eldest, the third escaped and entered a cloister, to which he gave his name (Saint-Cloud, near Paris).

The grief of Clotilda was so great that Paris became insupportable to her, and she withdrew to Tours where close to the tomb of St. Martin, to whom she had great devotion, she spent the remainder of her life in prayer and good works. But there were trials still in store for her. Her daughter Clotilda, wife of Amalaric, the Visigothic king, being cruelly maltreated by her husband, appealed for help to her brother Childebert. He went to her rescue and defeated Amalaric in a battle, in which the latter was killed, Clotilda, however, died on the journey home, exhausted by the hardships she had endured. Finally, as though to crown the long martyrdom of Clotilda, her two sole surviving sons, Childebert and Clotaire, began to quarrel, and engaged in serious warfare. Clotaire, closely pursued by Childebert, who had been joined by Theodebert, son of Thierry I, took refuge in the forest of Brotonne, in Normandy, where he feared that he and his army would be exterminated by the superior forces of his adversaries. Then, says Gregory of Tours, Clotilda threw herself on her knees before the tomb of St. Martin, and besought him with tears during the whole night not to permit another fratricide to afflict the family of Clovis. Suddenly a frightful tempest arose and dispersed the two armies which were about to engage in a hand-to-hand struggle; thus, says the chronicler, did the saint answer the prayers of the afflicted mother. This was the last of Clotilda's trials. Rich in virtues and good works, after a widowhood of thirty-four years, during which she lived more as a religious than as a queen, she died and was buried in Paris, in the church of the Apostles, beside her husband and children.

The life of Saint Clotilda, the principal episodes of which, both legendary and historic, are found scattered throughout the chronicle of St. Gregory of Tours was written in the tenth century, by an anonymous author, who gathered his facts principally from this source. At an early period she was venerated by the Church as a saint, and while popular contemporary poetry disfigures her noble personality by making her a type of a savage fury, Clotilda has now entered into the possession of a pure and untarnished fame, which no legend will be able to obscure.

Wikipedia:
 
 

Saint Ludmila (c. 860 – September 15, 921) is a saint and martyr venerated by the Orthodox and the Roman Catholics. She was born in M?lník as daughter of a Slavic prince Slavibor. Saint Ludmila was the grandmother of Saint Wenceslaus, who is widely referred to as Good King Wenceslaus.
 
 

Ludmila was married to Bo?ivoj I of Bohemia, who was the first Christian Duke of Bohemia. The couple was converted to Christianity around 871, probably through the efforts of Saints Cyril and Methodius.[1] Their efforts to convert Bohemia to Christianity were initially not well received, and they were driven from their country for a time by the pagans. Eventually the couple returned, and ruled for several years before retiring to Tetín, near Beroun.
 
 

The couple was succeeded by their son Spytihn?v, who ruled for two years before he died. Spytihn?v was succeeded by his brother Vratislav. When Vratislav died in 921, his eight year old son Wenceslas became the next ruler of Bohemia. It was mainly Ludmila who raised her grandson.

[edit] Ludmila and Drahomíra

Murder of Saint Ludmila
 
 

Wenceslaus' mother Drahomíra became jealous of Ludmila's influence over Wenceslaus. She had two noblemen murder Ludmila at Tetín, and part of Ludmila's story says that she was strangled with her veil. Initially Saint Ludmila was buried at St. Michael's at Tetín. Sometime before the year 1100 her remains were removed to the church of St. George at Prague, Czech Republic.
 
 

Saint Ludmila is venerated as a patroness of Bohemia. Her feast day is celebrated on September 16. She is considered to be a patron saint of Bohemia, converts, Czech Republic, duchesses, problems with in-laws, and widows. She was canonized shortly after her death.
 
 

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Saint Olga also called Olga the Beauty, Old Norse: Helga; born c. 890 died 11 July 969, Kiev) was a ruler of Kievan Rus as regent (945-c. 963) for her son, Svyatoslav.
 
 

Olga was a Pskov woman of Varangian extraction who married the future Igor of Kiev, arguably in 903. The Primary Chronicle gives 879 as her date of birth, which is rather unlikely, given the fact that her only son was probably born some 65 years after that date. After Igor's death, she ruled Kievan Rus as regent (945-c. 963) for their son, Svyatoslav.
 
 

At the start of her son's reign, Olga spent great effort to avenge her husband's death at the hands of the Drevlians, and succeeded in slaughtering many of them and interring some in a ship burial, while still alive. She is reputed to have scalded captives to death and another, probably apocryphal[citation needed], story tells of how she destroyed a town hostile to her. She asked that each household present her with a dove as a gift, then tied burning papers to the legs of each dove which she then released to fly back to their homes. Each avian incendiary set fire to the thatched roof of their respective home and the town was destroyed. More importantly in the long term, Olga changed the system of tribute gathering (poliudie) in what may be regarded as the first legal reform recorded in Eastern Europe.

She was the first Rus ruler to convert to Christianity, either in 945 or in 957. The ceremonies of her formal reception in Constantinople were minutely described by Emperor Constantine VII in his book De Ceremoniis. Following her baptism she took the Christian name Yelena, after the reigning Empress Helena Lekapena. The Slavonic chronicles add apocryphal details to the account of her baptism, such as the story how she charmed and "outwitted" Constantine and how she spurned his matrimonial proposals. In truth, at the time of her baptism, Olga was an old woman, while Constantine had a wife.

Olga was one of the first people of Rus to be proclaimed a saint, for her efforts to spread the Christian religion in the country. Because of her proselytizing influence, the Orthodox Church calls St. Olga by the honorific Isapóstolos, "Equal to the Apostles". However, she failed to convert Svyatoslav, and it was left to her grandson and pupil Vladimir I to make Christianity the lasting state religion. During her son's prolonged military campaigns, she remained in charge of Kiev, residing in the castle of Vyshgorod together with her grandsons. She died soon after the city's siege by the Pechenegs in 969.
 
 

Seven Latin sources document Olga's embassy to Holy Roman Emperor Otto I in 959. The continuation of Regino of Prüm mentions that the envoys requested the Emperor to appoint a bishop and priests for their nation. The chronicler accuses the envoys of lies, commenting that their trick was not exposed until later. Thietmar of Merseburg says that the first archbishop of Magdeburg, Saint Adalbert of Magdeburg, before being promoted to this high rank, was sent by Emperor Otto to the country of the Rus (Rusciae) as a simple bishop but was expelled by pagan allies of Svyatoslav I. The same data is duplicated in the annals of Quedlinburg and Hildesheim, among others.
 
 

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Gormflaith was born in Naas, County Kildare, Ireland, around 960. She was the daughter of Murchad mac Finn, King of Leinster, sister of his successor, Mael Mórdha mac Murchada, and widow of Olaf Cuaran, the Viking king of Dublin and York. The main source of her life history is the Cogadh Gaedhil re Gallaibh. She was also the mother of King Sigtrygg Silkbeard of Dublin. Gormflaith married Máel Sechnaill mac Domnaill after Olaf's death, but she is best known for being the third wife of Brian Ború, the High King of Ireland. She was the mother of Donnchad, who succeeded Brian as King of Munster. In 999, Brian defeated Mael Mordha and Sigtrygg 'Silkbeard' at the Battle of Glen Mama. To negotiate peace, Brian married one of his daughters to Sigtrygg and took Gormflaith as wife. According to Njál's saga, which refers to her as "Kormloð": "she was endowed with great beauty... [but] was utterly wicked." She was later divorced by Brian, and she began engineering opposition to the High King. She prompted Sigtrygg into gathering support from Vikings outside Ireland, most notably Earl Sigurd of Orkney and Brodir of the Isle of Man. The conflict she caused came to its climax at the Battle of Clontarf, at which Brian was killed. Brian's forces were victorious, however, and neither Gormflaith nor Sigtrygg were killed, as they were safe behind the walls of Dublin. She died in 1030.
 
 

Wikipedia:
 
 

 Joan, Princess of Wales and Lady of Snowdon (c. 1191 – 2 February 1237) was the wife of Llywelyn the Great, Prince of Wales and Gwynedd and effective ruler of most of Wales. Joan was a natural daughter of King John of England. She should not be confused with her half-sister Joan, Queen Consort of Scotland.
 
 

Little is known about her early life. Her mother's name is known only from Joan's obituary in the Tewkesbury Annals, where she is called "Regina Clementina" (Queen Clemence); there is no evidence that her mother was in fact of royal blood. Joan seems to have spent part of her childhood in France, as King John had her brought to the Kingdom of England from Normandy in December 1203 in preparation for her wedding to prince Llywelyn ab Iorwerth. Joan married Llywelyn the Great between December 1203 and October 1204. She and Llywelyn had at least two children together:

1. Elen ferch Llywelyn (Helen or Ellen) (1207-1253), married (1) John the Scot, Earl of Chester and (2) Robert II de Quincy

2. Dafydd ap Llywelyn (c. 1215-1246) married Isabella de Braose, died at Garth Celyn, Aber Garth Celyn, (Aber).
 
 

Some of Llywelyn's other recorded children may also have been Joan's:

1. Gwladus Ddu (1206-1251), married (1) Reginald de Braose and (2) Ralph de Mortimer.

2. Susanna, who was sent to England as a hostage in 1228.

3. Margaret, who married Sir John de Braose, the grandson of William de Braose, 4th Lord of Bramber and had issue.
 
 

In April 1226 Joan obtained a papal decree from Pope Honorius III, declaring her legitimate on the basis that her parents had not been married to others at the time of her birth, but without giving her a claim to the English throne. At Easter 1230, William de Braose, who was Llywelyn's prisoner at the time, was discovered with Joan in Llywelyn's bedchamber. William de Braose was hanged at Aber Garth Celyn on 2 May 1230; the place was known as 'Gwern y Grog' and the incident remembered down the generations by the local community. A recent suggestion that the execution might have taken place at Crogen near Bala rests on the suggestion that 'Crogen' and 'Crokein' are one and the same: there is however no further eveidence in the area to lend this substance. Joan was placed under house arrest for twelve months after the incident. She was then, according to the Chronicle of Chester, forgiven by Llywelyn, and restored to favour. She may have given birth to a daughter early in 1231. Joan was never called Princess of Wales, but, in Welsh, "Lady of Wales". She died at the royal home, Garth Celyn, Aber Garth Celyn, on the north coast of Gwynedd in 1237. Llywelyn's great grief at her death is recorded; he founded a Franciscan friary on the seashore at Llanfaes, opposite the royal home, in her honour. The friary was consecrated in 1240, shortly before Llywelyn died. It was destroyed in 1537 by Henry VIII of England during the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Joan's stone coffin can be seen in Beaumaris parish church, Anglesey. Above the empty coffin is a slate panel inscribed: "This plain sarcophagus, (once dignified as having contained the remains of JOAN, daughter of King JOHN, and consort of LLEWELYN ap IOWERTH, Prince of North Wales, who died in the year 1237), having been conveyed from the Friary of Llanfaes, and alas, used for many years as a horsewatering trough, was rescued from such an indignity and placed here for preseravation as well as to excite serious meditation on the transitory nature of all sublunary distinctions. By THOMAS JAMES WARREN BULKELEY, Viscount BULKELEY, Oct 1808"
 
 

Fiction

• Joan and her affair with William de Braose is the subject of Saunders Lewis's Welsh verse play Siwan.

• Edith Pargeter's novel The Green Branch.

• Sharon Kay Penman's novel Here Be Dragons.
 
 

ThePeerage:
 
 

Helen ap Llywelyn was born circa 1207.2 She was the daughter of Llywelyn ap Iorwerth, Prince of North Wales and Joan .1 She married, firstly, John the Scot, 10th Earl of Huntingdon, son of David of Scotland, 9th Earl of Huntingdon and Matilda of Chester, in 1222. She married, secondly, Robert de Quincy, Lord of Ware, son of Saher de Quency, 1st Earl of Winchester, before 5 December 1237. She died between 1 January 1253 and 24 October 1253. An inquest post mortem was held for her on 10 November 1253.4  Helen ap Llywelyn was also known as Helen of North Wales.
 
 

Wikipedia:
 
 

Joan, Countess of Kent (29 September 1328 – 7 August 1385), known to history as The Fair Maid of Kent, was the first English Princess of Wales. The French chronicler Froissart called her "the most beautiful woman in all the realm of England, and the most loving". The "fair maid of Kent" appellation does not appear to be contemporary. Joan was daughter of Edmund of Woodstock, 1st Earl of Kent, and Margaret Wake, 3rd Baroness Wake of Liddell. Her paternal grandparents were Edward I of England and his second queen consort, Margaret of France. Her maternal grandparents were John Wake, 1st Baron Wake of Liddell and Joan de Fiennes.
 

Her father, Edmund, was a younger half-brother of Edward II of England. Edmund's support of the King placed him in conflict with the Queen, Isabella of France, and her lover Roger Mortimer, 1st Earl of March. Edmund was executed after Edward II's deposition, and Joan, her mother and her siblings were placed under house-arrest in Arundel Castle when Joan was only two years old.
 

The Earl’s widow, Margaret Wake, was left with four children. Joan's first cousin, the new King Edward III, took on the responsibility for the family, and looked after them well. His wife, Queen Philippa (who was also Joan's second cousin), was well known for her tender-heartedness,and Joan grew up at court, where she became friendly with her cousins, including Edward, the Black Prince.
 

At the age of twelve (1340), Joan entered into a clandestine marriage with Thomas Holland of Broughton, without first gaining the royal consent necessary for couples of their rank. The following winter (1340 or 1341), while Holland was overseas, her family forced her into a marriage with William Montacute, son and heir of the 1st Earl of Salisbury. Joan later claimed she was afraid that disclosing her previous marriage would lead to Thomas's execution for treason on his return, and so did not disclose it. She may also have become convinced that the earlier marriage was invalid. Joan is often identified as the countess of Salisbury who, legend says, inspired Edward III's founding of the Order of the Garter. It is equally possible, however, that the woman in the case was her mother-in-law Catherine Montacute, Countess of Salisbury.
 

Several years later, Thomas Holland returned from the Crusades, having made his fortune, and the full story of his earlier relationship with Joan came out. Thomas appealed to the Pope for the return of his wife and confessed the secret marriage to the king. When the Earl of Salisbury discovered that Joan supported Holland’s case, he kept her a prisoner in her own home. In 1349, Pope Clement VI annulled Joan’s marriage to the Earl and sent her back to Thomas Holland, with whom she lived for the next eleven years. They had four known children (though some sources list five), before Holland died in 1360.
 
 

Their children were:
1. Thomas Holland, 2nd Earl of Kent
2. John Holland, 1st Duke of Exeter
3. Joan Holland, who married John V, Duke of Brittany (1356-1384)
4. Maud Holland, who married Waleran III of Luxembourg, Count of Ligny (1359 - 1391)
 

Additional children also listed:
1. Edmund (c. 1354) died young
 

In the meantime, when the last of Joan's siblings died in 1352, she became Countess of Kent and Lady Wake of Liddell.
 

Evidence of the affection of Edward, the Black Prince (who was her first cousin once removed) for Joan may be found in the record of his presenting her with a silver cup, part of the booty from one of his early military campaigns. Edward's parents did not, however, favour a marriage between their son and their former ward. Queen Philippa had made a favourite of Joan at first, but both she and the king seem to have been concerned about Joan's reputation. English law was such that Joan's living ex-husband, Salisbury, might have claimed any children of her subsequent marriages as his own. In addition, Edward and Joan were within the prohibited degrees of consanguinity.
 

The secret marriage they are said to have contracted in 1361 would have been invalid because of the consanguinity prohibition. At the King's request, the Pope granted a dispensation allowing the two to be legally married. The official ceremony occurred on 10 October 1361, at Windsor Castle with the King and Queen in attendance. The Archbishop of Canterbury presided.
 

In 1362 the Black Prince was invested as Prince of Aquitaine, a region of France which belonged to the English Crown since the marriage of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry II. He and Joan moved to Bordeaux, the capital of the principality, where they spent the next nine years. Two sons were born in France to the royal couple. The elder son, named Edward (27 January 1365 - 1372) after his father and grandfather, died at the age of six.
 

Around the time of the birth of their younger son, Richard, the Prince was lured into a war on behalf of King Peter of Castile. The ensuing battle was one of the Black Prince’s greatest victories, but King Pedro was later killed, and there was no money to pay the troops. In the meantime, the Princess was forced to raise another army, because the Prince’s enemies were threatening Aquitaine in his absence.
By 1371, the Black Prince was no longer able to perform his duties as Prince of Aquitaine, and returned to England, where plague was wreaking havoc. In 1372, he forced himself to attempt one final, abortive campaign in the hope of saving his father’s French possessions. His health was now completely shattered. On 7 June 1376, a week before his forty-sixth birthday, he died in his bed at Westminster.
 

Joan’s son was next in line to succeed King Edward III. Edward III died on 21 June 1377 and Richard became King. He was crowned Richard II at the age of 10 in the following month. Early in his reign, the young King faced the challenge of the Peasants' Revolt. The Lollards, religious reformers led by John Wyclif, had enjoyed the protection of Joan of Kent, but the violent climax of the popular movement for reform reduced the feisty Joan to a state of terror, while leaving the King with an improved reputation.
 

As a power behind the throne, she was well-loved for her influence over the young king - for example, on her return to London (via her Wickhambreaux estate) from a pilgrimage to Becket's shrine at Canterbury Cathedral in 1381, she found her way barred by Wat Tyler and his mob of rebels on Blackheath but was not only let through unharmed, but saluted with kisses and provided with an escort for the rest of her journey.
 

In 1385, Sir John Holland, an adult son of her first marriage, was campaigning with the King in the Kingdom of Scotland, when a quarrel broke out between him and Ralph Stafford, son of the 2nd Earl of Stafford, a favourite of the new Queen Anne of Bohemia. Stafford was killed, and John Holland sought sanctuary at the shrine of St John of Beverley. On the King’s return, Holland was condemned to death. Joan pleaded with her son for four days to spare his half-brother. On the fifth day (the exact date in August is not known), she died, at Wallingford Castle. Richard relented, and pardoned Holland (though he was then sent on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land), but the damage was done.
 

Joan was buried, as requested in her will, at the Greyfriars, the site of the present hospital, in Stamford in Lincolnshire, beside her first husband. Her third husband, the Black Prince, had built a chantry for her in the crypt of Canterbury Cathedral (where he was to have been buried), with ceiling bosses of her face. (Another boss in the north nave aisle is also said to be of her.)[1]
Joan is a primary figure in The Lady Royal, a fictionalized biography by Molly Costain Haycraft which presents Joan as a rival to her cousin Isabella Plantagenet for the affections of Enguerrand de Coucy. She is also the protagonist of Sweet Passion's Pain, a novel by Karen Harper, republished as The First Princess of Wales, and appears briefly in Katherine by Anya Seton.
 

Joan is also a main character in The Wheel of Fortune by Susan Howatch, a novel that takes the characters of the Plantagenet family and re-creates them in a modern dimension as the Godwin family of Oxmoon (the throne) where she appears as Ginevra (Ginette). Her story, re-told in the first person, closely mirrors Joan's story and background. The last published book of Gordon R. Dickson's semi-historical Dragon Knight series is titled The Dragon and the Fair Maid of Kent, and concerns Joan as she attempts to reconcile the Black Prince with his father Edward III during the first years of the Black Plague in England.
 

Joan of Kent also had a (rather unflattering) presence in the novel The Nameless Day (The Crucible, #1) by Sara Douglass. In that novel, she dies when her husband's death is announced.


 
 
 
 

Wikipedia:
 
 

Edith Swannesha (Old English: Ealdg?ð Swann hnesce, "Edith [the] Gentle Swan"; c.1025 – c. 1086), also known as Edith Swanneschals or Edith the Fair, is best known as the unwedded consort of King Harold II of England. Her common name comes from a historical misinterpretation that her nickname represented Old English swann hnecca, "swan neck" She is sometimes confused with Ældgyth, daughter of Ealdorman Ælfgar of Mercia, and Harold's Queen consort.
 
 

She bore Harold several children and was his common law wife (according to Danish law, by a civil "handfast" marriage) for over 20 years. Though she was not considered Harold's wife by the Church, there is no indication that the children she bore by Harold were treated as illegitimate by the culture at the time. In fact, one of Harold Godwinesson and Edith Swan-Neck's daughters, Gyda Haraldsdatter, (also known as Gytha of Wessex), was addressed as "princess" and was married to the Grand Duke Of Kiev, Vladimir Monomakh.
 
 

Though King Harold II is said to have lawfully married Edith of Mercia, the widow of the Welsh ruler Gruffydd ap Llywelyn, (whom he defeated in battle), in 1064, this is seen by most modern scholars as a marriage of political means, or even dismissed as misunderstanding or propaganda. Since at the time Mercia and Wales were allied against England, the political marriage would give the English claim in two very troublesome regions, as well as give Harold Godwinesson a marriage deemed "legitimate" by the clergy of the Church, something his longtime common law wife, Edith Swan-Neck unfortunately could not provide.
 
 

Edith Swan-Neck would be remembered in history and folklore for one very important thing: it was she who identified Harold after his defeat at The Battle of Hastings. Harold's body was horrifically mutilated after the battle by the Norman army of William the Conqueror, and, despite the pleas by Harold's own mother for William to surrender Harold's body for burial, the Norman army refused, even though Harold's mother offered William Harold's weight in gold. It was then that Edith Swan-Neck walked through the carnage of the battle so that she might identify Harold by markings on his chest known only to her. It was because of Edith Swan-Neck's identification of Harold's body that Harold was given a Christian burial by the monks at Waltham Abbey. This legend was recounted in the well-known poem by Heinrich Heine, "The Battlefield of Hastings" (1855), which features Edith Swan-neck as the main character and claims that the 'marks known only to her' were in fact love bites.
 
 

Wikipedia:
 
 

Theodora Komnene (born 15 January 1096)[1], was a Byzantine noblewoman, being the youngest daughter of Emperor Alexios I Komnenos and Irene Doukaina. She married Konstantinos Angelos, Admiral of Sicily by whom she had seven children. Byzantine emperors Alexios III Angelos and Isaac II Angelos were her grandsons, thereby making her an ancestress of the Angelos dynasty.
Theodora was born in Constantinople on 15 January 1096, the youngest daughter of Emperor Alexios I Komnenos and Irene Doukaina. She had four brothers and four sisters. Among her siblings were Emperor John II Komnenos, and historian Anna Komnene. Her paternal grandparents were Ioannis Komnenos and Anna Dalassena, and her maternal grandparents were Andronikos Doukas and Maria of Bulgaria.
Theodora married Konstantinos Angelos (c.1085- after July 1166) sometime before 1120. He was the son of Manolis Angelos, and a military commander of Emperor Manuel I and would later in 1145 become the commander of the Imperial fleet in Sicily. Byzantine historian Niketas Choniates names Theodoram Alexii avi Manuelis filiam as the wife of Constantium Angelum.[2] Together Konstantinos and Theodora had seven recorded children, although there were possibly eight children born to the couple:

    * John Doukas (c.1126- 1200), Governor of Epirus, married firstly a lady whose name is unknown by whom he had two sons; married secondly Zoe Doukaina by whom he had three sons.
    * Alexios Komnenos Angelos, married and fathered one son.
    * Andronikos Dukas Angelos (died after 1185), married Euphrosyne Kastamonitissa, by whom he had nine children including emperors Alexios III Angelos and Isaac II Angelos.
    * Isaac Angelos, military Governor of Cilicia
    * Maria Angelina, married Konstantinos Kamytzes, by whom she had one daughter.
    * Eudokia Angelina, married Basileios Tsykandeles
    * Zoe Angelina, married Andronikos Synadenos

Theodora Komnene died on an unknown date. Among her numerous descendants was Irene Angelina, wife of Philip of Swabia; thus Theodora is an ancestress of every royal house in Europe.
 
 

 Irene Doukaina or Ducaena (c. 1066 – February 19, 1123 or 1133) was the wife of the Byzantine emperor Alexios I Komnenos, and the mother of the emperor John II Komnenos and of the historian Anna Komnene.

Irene was born in 1066 to Andronikos Doukas and Maria of Bulgaria, granddaughter of Ivan Vladislav of Bulgaria. Andronikos was a nephew of Emperor Constantine X and a cousin of Michael VII.

Irene married Alexios in 1078, when she was still eleven years old. For this reason the Doukas family supported Alexios in 1081, when a struggle for the throne erupted after the abdication of Nikephoros III Botaneiates. Alexios' mother, Anna Dalassene, a lifelong enemy of the Doukas family, pressured her son to divorce the young Irene and marry Maria of Alania, the former wife of both Michael VII and Nikephoros III. Irene was in fact barred from the coronation ceremony, but the Doukas family convinced the Patriarch of Constantinople, Kosmas I, to crown her as well, which he did one week later. Anna Dalassene consented to this but forced Cosmas to resign immediately afterwards; he was succeeded by Eustratios Garidas.
Alexios' mother Anna continued to live in the imperial palace and to meddle in in her son's affairs until her death 20 years later; Maria of Alania may have also lived in the palace, and there were rumours that Alexios carried on an affair with her. Anna Komnene vociferously denied this, although she herself was not born until December 1, 1083, two years later.

Anna may have been whitewashing her family history; she has nothing but praise for both of her parents. She describes her mother in great detail:
"She stood upright like some young sapling, erect and evergreen, all her limbs and the other parts of her body absolutely symmetrical and in harmony one with another. With her lovely appearance and charming voice she never ceased to fascinate all who saw and heard her. Her face shone with the soft light of the moon; it was not the completely round face of an Assyrian woman, nor long, like the face of a Scyth, but just slightly oval in shape. There were rose blossoms on her cheeks, visible a long way off. Her light-blue eyes were both gay and stern: their charm and beauty attracted, but the fear they caused so dazzled the bystander that he could neither look nor turn away...Generally she accompanied her words with graceful gestures, her hands bare to the wrists, and you would say it was ivory turned by some craftsman into the form of fingers and hand. The pupils of her eyes, with the brilliant blue of deep waves, recalled a calm, still sea, while the white surrounding them shone by contrast, so that the whole eye acquired a peculiar lustre and a charm which was inexpressible."
It "would not have been so very inappropriate," Anna writes, to say that Irene was "Athena made manifest to the human race, or that she had descended suddenly from the sky in some heavenly glory and unapproachable splendour."
Irene was shy and preferred not to appear in public, although she was forceful and severe when acting officially as empress (basileia). She preferred to perform her household duties, and enjoyed reading hagiographic literature and making charitable donations to monks and beggars. Although Alexios may have had Maria as a mistress early in his reign, during the later part of his reign he and Irene were genuinely in love (at least according to their daughter Anna). Irene often accompanied him on his expeditions, including the expedition against Prince Bohemund I of Antioch in 1107 and to the Chersonese in 1112. On these campaigns she acted as a nurse for her husband when he was afflicted with gout in his feet. According to Anna she also acted as a sort of guard, as there were constant conspiracies against Alexios. Alexios' insistence that Irene accompany him on campaigns may suggest that he did not fully trust her enough to leave her in the capital. When she did remain behind in Constantinople, she acted as regent, together with Nikephoros Bryennios, Anna's husband, as a counselor.
Irene frequently suggested that Alexios name Nikephoros and Anna as his heirs, over their own younger son John. According to Niketas Choniates, who depicts her more as a nagging shrew than a loving wife, she "...threw her full influence on the side of her daughter Anna and lost no opportunity to calumniate their son John... mocking him as rash, pleasure-loving, and weak in character." Alexios, preferring to create a stable dynasty through his own son, either ignored her, pretended to be busy with other matters, or, at last, lost his temper and chastized her for suggesting such things.

Irene nursed Alexios on his deathbed on 1118, while at the same time still scheming to have Nikephoros and Anna succeed him. Alexios had already promised the throne to John, and when John took his father's signet ring Irene accused him of treachery and theft. When Alexios finally died, she felt genuine grief, and wore the mourning clothes of her daughter Eudokia, whose own husband had died previously. However, she soon conspired with Anna against John, but their plots were unsuccessful and both Irene and Anna were then forced into exile at the monastery of Kecharitomene, which Irene had founded a few years previously. It was not a harsh exile, and Irene lived there in peace, distributing food to the poor and educating young orphan girls. Irene may have inspired the history written by her son-in-law Nikephoros Bryennios and corresponded with or patronized several important literary figures, including Theophylact of Ohrid and Michael Italikos.
Irene died on February 19, in either 1123 or 1133, most likely the latter. With Alexios I Komnenos she had nine children:
• Anna Komnene (1083-1153)
• Maria Komnene
• John II Komnenos (1087-1143)
• Andronikos Komnenos
• Isaac Komnenos
• Eudokia Komnene
• Theodora Komnene, who married Constantine Angelos. Among their children were John Doukas (who took his grandmother's surname) and Andronikos Angelos, father of the emperors Alexios III Angelos and Isaac II Angelos.
• Manuel Komnenos
• Zoe Komnene
 
 

Anna Dalassene (1025–1102) was an important Byzantine noblewoman who played a significant role in the rise of the Komnenoi in the eleventh century. As Augusta, a title bestowed upon her rather than the empress by her son, Alexios I Komnenos, she guided the empire during his many absences for long military campaigns against Turkish and other incursions into the Byzantine empire. As Empress-Mother, she exerted more influence and power than the Empress-Consort, Irene Doukaina, whom she hated because of past intrigues with the Doukas family.
 

Anna was the daughter of Alexios Charon, the imperial lieutenant in Italy, and the daughter of Adriana Dalassene. Her mother's side came from Dalasa-Teresh on the river Euphrates, and it is thought that the family had Armenian origins. Her retention of her mother's family name throughout her life, even after she had married, is an indication that her mother's family was more prestigious (at least at the time) than that of the Komnenoi. Contrary to Byzantine court protocol and expectancies and similar to her predecessor, Eudokia Makrembolitissa, Anna was to be a new model of a powerful family matriarch.
 

In 1044, Anna was married to John Komnenos, whose brother Isaac was chosen by a faction of rebel Byzantine generals to succeed the very old and inept Michael VI Stratiotikos. As a result, John was granted the titles of kouropalates and domestikos ton scholon of the West (commander of the western armies). Anna's equivalent of these titles, which appeared on seals, were kouropalatissa and domestikissa. In this regard, she was a high ranking personage at court, second only to the empress and her daughter. Her eldest child, Manuel, was born in 1045. However, her ambition did not end with bearing eight children: Manuel, Maria, Isaac, Eudokia, Theodora, Alexios, Adrianos and Nikephoros.
 

Unfortunately for Anna, Isaac became very ill and was persuaded by the patriarchs Michael Keroularios and Constantine Leichoudes to abdicate the throne in 1059. Isaac wanted to pass the throne to John, but he would not accept it and Constantine X Doukas was chosen as successor. According to the family historian, Nikephoros Bryennios, Anna was moved to "tears and groans" to make John change his mind but he did not see any advantage to the family, and Anna was forced to accept the consequences. As a historical aside, her granddaughter, Anna Komnene, was to meet the same fate when she was unsuccessful in persuading her husband, the same Nikephoros Bryennios, to usurp the throne from her own brother, John II Komnenos, after the death of Alexios I in 1118.
 

As a result, because of these unsuccessful attempts to seize the imperial crown, she sustained a bitterness for the Doukas family and "lived for intrigue until she had succeeded in placing her son on the throne". After her husband's death in 1067, Anna was to rule her family as a matriarch, constantly maneuvering to advance her own family.
 

After the end of Constantine X Doukas's reign (1059–1067), she shrewdly supported Constantine's widow, Eudokia Makrembolitissa, and her new husband Romanos IV Diogenes (r. 1068–1071) against the rest of Eudokia's former in-laws, who disapproved of the marriage. Anna was to be one of the strongest supporters of the new emperor and encouraged her sons to serve in his military campaigns. Despite his very young age of fourteen, Anna's eldest son, Manuel, was appointed kouropalates and strategos autokrator (commander-in-chief). Although captured by the Turks, he was set free through the diplomacy of Chrysokoulos. Manuel however died of an ear infection in 1071 and after performing his funeral rites, Anna sent her third son, Alexios, to serve in his place. However, Anna's second son, Isaac, was already serving in the army and Romanos Diogenes did not recruit Alexios out of consideration for his mother.[2]
 

The Doukai returned to power after the defeat of Romanos IV by the Seljuk Turks at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071. Anna however retained her loyalty to Diogenes and was soon targeted by the new government (by her old enemy, the Caesar John Doukas, uncle of Michael VII) for it. She was put on trial after a letter she sent to Diogenes was intercepted by imperial spies. However, during the inquest the Komnenoi asserted that the documents were forged. Bryennios states that during her trial for treason at the royal palace, she produced an icon of Christ from under her outer robe and proclaimed her innocence and that "Christ, the Supreme Judge who knows the secrets of her heart was the judge between them and herself.[3] Her judges were allegedly "overawed by her dignity and severity", but were forced to convict her for treason in 1072 and banish her to a monastery on the island of Prinkipos, a favorite place of exile for women and their immediate family. Although she proclaimed her innocence, the fact that she secured a marriage for her daughter, Theodora, to Constantine, son of Romanos IV, makes it very likely that she was still intriguing to restore Romanos to the throne.[citation needed] Some of her seals bear the titles monache ("nun") as well as kouropalatissa so Anna either became a nun on the death of her husband or during this forced exile on the island.[4] A change of fortune soon came when she was recalled to Constantinople in 1073 following the loss of power of the Caesar over Michael VII and the ascendancy of Nikephoritzes.[5]
 

Anna was to play prominent role in the coup d'etat of 1081, along with the current empress, Maria of Alania. First married to Michael VII Doukas and secondly to Nikephoros III Botaneiates, she was preoccupied with the future of her son by Michael VII, Constantine Doukas. Nikephoros III intended to leave the throne to one of his close relatives, and this resulted in Maria's alliance with the Komnenoi. The real driving force behind this political alliance was Anna Dalassene.[6]
Already closely connected to the Komnenoi through her cousin Irene's marriage to Isaac Komnenos, the Komnenoi brothers were able to see the empress under the pretense of a friendly family visit. Furthermore, to aid the conspiracy Maria had adopted Alexios as her son, though she was only five years older than he.[7] Maria was persuaded to do so on the advice of her own "Alans" and her eunuchs, who had been instigated to do his by Isaac Komnenos. Knowing Anna's tight hold on her family, it must have been with her implicit approval that he be adopted.[citation needed] As a result, Alexios and Constantine, Maria's son, were now adoptive brothers and both Isaac and Alexios took an oath that they would safeguard his rights as emperor.[8] By secretly giving inside information to the Komnenoi, Maria was an invaluable ally.[9]
 

Just as on previous occasions, the betrothal of her granddaughter to a relative of Botaneiates' did not stop Anna's intrigues against the new regime. As stated in the Alexiad, when Isaac and Alexios left Constantinople in mid-February 1081 to raise an army against Botaneiates, Anna quickly and surreptitiously mobilized the remainder of the family and took refuge in the Hagia Sophia. From there she negotiated with the emperor for the safety of family members left in the capital, while protesting her sons' innocence of hostile actions.
 

Under the falsehood of making a vesperal visit to worship at the church, she deliberately excluded the grandson of Botaneiates and his loyal tutor, met with Alexios and Isaac and fled for the forum of Constantine. The tutor found them missing and eventually found them on the palace grounds but she was able to convince him that they would return to the palace shortly. Then to gain entrance to both the outer and inner sanctuary of the church the women pretended to the gatekeepers that they were pilgrims from Cappadocia who had spent all their funds and wanted to worship before starting their return trip. However, before they were to gain entry into the sanctuary, Straboromanos and royal guards caught up with them to summon them back to the palace. Anna then protested that the family was in fear for their lives, her sons were loyal subjects (Alexios and Isaac were discovered absent without leave), and had learned of a plot by enemies of the Komnenoi to have them both blinded and had, therefore, fled the capital so they may continue to be of loyal service to the emperor.
 

She refused to go with them and demanded that they allow her to pray to the Mother of God for protection. This request was granted and Anna then manifested her true theatrical and manipulative capabilities: "She was allowed to enter. As if she were weighed down with old age and worn out by grief, she walked slowly and when she approached the actual entrance to the sanctuary made two genuflections; on the third she sank to the floor and taking firm hold of the sacred doors, cried in a loud voice: "Unless my hands are cuff off, I will not leave this holy place except on one condition: that I receive the emperor's cross as guarantee of safety".[11]
Nikephoros III Botaneiates was forced into a public vow that he would grant protection to the family. Straboromanos tried to give her his cross, but for Anna this was not sufficiently large enough so that all bystanders could witness the oath. She also demanded that the cross be personally sent by Botaneiates as a vow of his good faith. He obliged, sending a complete assurance for the family with his own cross. At the emperor's further insistence, and for their own protection they took refuge at the convent of Petrion, where eventually they were joined by Irene Doukaina's mother, Maria of Bulgaria.
 

Botaneiates allowed them to be treated as refugees rather than guests. They were allowed to have family members bring in their own food and were on good terms with the guards from whom they learned the latest news.[12] Anna was highly successful in three important aspects of the revolt: she bought time for her sons to steal imperial horses from the stables and escape the city, she distracted the emperor and gave her sons time to gather and arm their troops and she gave a false sense of security to Botaneiates that there was no real treasonous coup against him.
 

Isaac and Alexios Komnenos entered the capital victoriously on April 1, 1081. However, even this fortunate turn of events did not deter Anna from preventing the Doukas family from sharing the imperial coronation - she had never approved of the marriage of Alexios and Irene Doukaina, and the situation became acute now that the teenage Irene would become Augusta.[13] Although Alexios' candidature for the throne had been agreed upon by the Doukai and the Komnenoi at the army camp at Schiza, the elder Isaac still had supporters.
 

The fact that Alexios was crowned on April 4 while Irene was crowned a full week later is highly suspicious. It is likely that Anna and Maria of Alania had planned for Irene's departure and wanted to rule with Alexios as "both" mothers and wife. The latter was already an empress mother twice-over and far more experienced than the naive, teenaged, childless Irene who was yet to have any children. In her own account of this event, Anna Komnene asserts that the Komnenoi refused to drive Maria from the palace because of her many kindnesses and because "she was in a foreign country, without relatives, without friends, with nobody whatever of her own folk'.
 

However, Irene was finally crowned by the patriarch Cosmas. Anna Dalassene however was allowed to choose the next patriarch, Eustratius Garidas as a compensation.
 
 

From the Komnenian seizure of power in 1081 until either her banishment or death in 1100 or 1102, she was to play a very public role in administering the military and civil services of the empire. Her son Alexios was for many years under her influence. She was however constantly at odds with her daughter-in-law Irene and had, perhaps egregiously, assumed total responsibility for the upbringing and education of her granddaughter Anna Komnene.
 

Given the misogynistic culture and traditions of medieval Greek Byzantium, it is unusual that Anna wielded such power over her son as well as the empire. Though he needed a reliable advisor, and essentially owed his mother for his accession to the throne because of her intrigues[16] to stay in a powerful position for fifteen years after his succession until he was in his mid-forties defies credulity. As middle age approached, Alexios was determined to rule in his own right. After the military campaigns of the 1080s, he was able to stay in the capital and became frustrated over of Anna's tight hold on the administration, however productive this seemed to be. This was suggested by the writer Zonaras who states that Anna was in power for so long that Alexios became frustrated by that he was emperor in name alone.[17] Anna, always one to sense the changing winds of fortune sensed his frustration, and decided to leave before she was forced out and retired to her private apartments attached to her monastic foundation of the Christ Patepoptes. The germs of his discontent may have started as early as 1089 when in an imperial communication he complained of Anna's generosity to the monastery of Docheiariou.]
 

Sources are conflicted concerning the year of Anna's retirement and death. Anna Komnene is strangely silent about her disappearance from court and this may suggest that her grandmother may have been involved in something questionable [19] --perhaps a heretical sect such as the Bogomils. However, we know that she was wielding her power when the First Crusade passed through the city in late 1096 or early 1097, perhaps retiring after their departure [20] Since we are not sure of the date and reason of retirement, Zonaras records that she resided 'imperially with honor' at her foundation for several years, dying in extreme old age just over a year before her son, Isaac, who passed away sometime between 1100 and 1102. Most ironically, she died on the day forecast by an Athenian astrologer for Alexios himself
 

Under the Komenian dynasty, women continued to not only retain their roles set by previous empresses but made great strides in founding monasteries, patronizing churchmen, theologians and literary figures and being more assertive in imperial administration: most prominent in such roles were Anna Dalassene and her contemporary, Maria of Alania.
Children:
• Manuel Komnenos, protostrator
• Maria Komnene, married Michael Taronites
• Isaac Komnenos, sebastokrator, married a Georgian princess named Irene
• Eudokia Komnene, married Nikephoros Melissenos
• Theodora Komnene, married Constantine Diogenes
• Alexios Komnenos, general and emperor (r. 1081–1118), married Irene Doukaina
• Adrianos Komnenos, protosebastos, married Zoe Doukaina
• Nikephoros Komnenos, droungarios of the fleet
 
 

Elizabeth the Cuman was the Queen consort of Stephen V of Hungary.
 

She was born in about 1239/40, a daughter of Kuthen, leader of the Kun (or Kuni) clan of Cumans, and his wife whose identity has not been estasblished. The Cumans were the western tribes of the Kipchaks. The Kipchaks were a confederation of Turkic peoples who spoke the Kipchak language. Her people followed a Shamanist religion and were considered Pagans by their contemporary Christians of Europe.
 

In 1238, Kuthen led the Kuni and a number of other clans in invading the Kingdom of Hungary while fleeing from the advancing hordes of the Mongol Empire. In time, Béla IV of Hungary negotiated an alliance with Kuthen and his people, granting them asylum in exchange for their conversion to the Roman Catholic Church and loyalty to the King.
 

The agreement was sealed with the betrothal of Elizabeth to Stephen, eldest son of Béla IV. The agreement seems to have occurred while Stephen was an infant. Elizabeth was unlikely to have been older than her future husband. In 1241, the Mongol invasion of Europe under the leadership of Batu Khan and Subutai began, with Hungary among its primary targets. Kuthen was assassinated by Hungarian nobles fearing he would lead a defection to the other side.
 

Béla IV and the Hungarian forces suffered a crushing defeat at the Battle of Mohi (11 April 1241). The King fled to the Duchy of Austria while Batu Khan and Subutai tried to set up the Mongol occupation of Hungary until the end of 1242. However news eventually reached them that their overlord Ögedei Khan, Khagan of the Mongol Empire, had died in 1241. His widow Töregene Khatun was serving as regent until a successor could be elected in a Kurultai. Batu decided to return to Karakorum for the Kurultai. He called off the invasion, and Mongol troops were withdrawn from most of Europe, thus evacuating Hungary.
 

Béla IV returned from Austria following the Mongol evacuation. Upon his return to power, Béla began rebuilding his country, including a massive construction campaign which produced the system of castles as a defense against the threat of a Mongol return.
 

Kuthen was deceased but the betrothal was still in effect. Elizabeth was converted to Roman Catholicism in preparation of her marriage. The marriage of Stephen and Elizabeth occurred in 1253. The groom was twelve-years-old and the bride close in age to him.
 

In 1262, Stephen convinced his father to give him twenty-nine counties as a reward of assistance in the war against Ottokar II of Bohemia. He was crowned junior co-ruler and in practice ruled his regions as a separate kingdom, setting up his own capital and adopting foreign policies directly contrary to those of his father. Elizabeth was now his Queen.
 

Béla IV died on 3 May 1270. Stephen succeeded him as senior King. Among his successes were the conclusion of the war against Ottokar II of Bohemia. According to the Peace of Pressburg (2 July 1271, Stephen renounced his claims on parts of present-day Austria and Slovenia while Ottokar renounced his claims on territories of Hungary briefly conquered by him during the war. Stephen died on 6 August 1272. Elizabeth became Regent for their ten-year-old son Ladislaus IV of Hungary. Her regency lasted until 1277 and saw palace revolutions and civil wars. Her upbringing of her son would cause further problems for his reign. Ladislaus favored the society of the "semi-pagan" Cumans, from whom he was descended through his mother. He wore Cuman dress as his court wear, surrounded himself with Cuman concubines and thus alienated the Hungarian nobility. His later attempts to regain Hungarian loyalty instead alienated parts of the Cumans. He was murdered in his tent by Cumans while camped in Bihar county on 10 July 1290.
 

By that time Elizabeth herself seems to have also been deceased. There is no mention of her in the reign of his successor Andrew III of Hungary. There is a tradition that she died in the year 1290.
 

She and her husband Stephen V of Hungary were parents to six known children:
• Elizabeth of Hungary (c. 1255 - 1313). Married firstly Zavis Vítkovci, Lord of Rosenberg, Skalitz and Falkenstein. Married secondly Stefan Uroš II Milutin of Serbia.
• Catherine of Hungary (c. 1256 - after 1314). Married Stefan Dragutin of Serbia.
• Maria of Hungary (c. 1257 - 25 March 1323). Married Charles II of Naples.
• Anna of Hungary (c. 1260 - 1281). Married Andronikos II Palaiologos.
• Ladislaus IV of Hungary (August, 1262 - 10 July 1290).
• András, Duke of Slavonia (1268 - 1278).
 
 

Dorothea of Brandenburg (Germany-1430/1431 – Denmark-November 10, 1495) was the consort of Christopher of Bavaria and Christian I of Denmark. She is also known as Dorothea of Hohenzollern and as Dorothy Achillies. She was queen of Denmark (1445–1448 and 1449–1481), Norway (1445–1448 and 1450–1481) and Sweden (1447–1448 and 1457–1464) two times each. She also served as regent in Denmark during the absences of her spouse.

Dorothea was born in 1430 or 1431 to John, Margrave of Brandenburg-Kulmbach and Barbara of Saxe-Wittenberg (1405–1465). She had two sisters: Barbara (1423–1481, who became the Marchioness of Mantua, and Elisabeth (14??-1451), who married Joachim I Mlodszy, Duke of Pomerania (14??-1451).
 
 

She married, on 12 September 1445, Christopher of Bavaria, the King of Denmark from 1440–1448, Sweden from 1441–1448 and Norway from 1442–1448. The wedding was held in Copenhagen. She was crowned queen of the three kingdoms on 14 September 1445.

After Christopher's death, Dorothea married the next elected king, King Christian I of Denmark, on 28 October 1449. In 1457, she became queen of Sweden for the second time, and was crowned in Uppsala Cathedral.
 
 

She was given control over fiefs in all three Nordic Kingdoms at a value of 45,000 Rhine guilders, as well as an additional note of fiefs valued at 15,000 in Oberpfalz. When she was widowed in 1448, there were marriage negotiations with Albert VI, Archduke of Austria and King Casimir IV Jagiellon, but when Christian of Oldenburg was chosen as the new king of Denmark, it was agreed that he should marry her instead.
 
 

As a widow, her many fiefs were considered a problem. At her second wedding, she renounced her existing fiefs in Denmark and Norway, which were replaced with Kalundborg and Samsø in Denmark and Romerike in Norway. Her claim over her territories in Sweden, however, was something she would not give up. For the rest of her life, she fought to regain control over them. In 1451, war erupted between the countries over her inheritance. She gained control over Närke and Värmland in 1457, and lost them in 1464. In this affair, she asked for the help of the Pope from 1455, and he excommunicated the Swedish regent Sten Sture the Elder. This disrupted the separate political negotiations with Sweden for many years, and her son had the excommunication removed as soon as she died in 1495 – her son became king of Sweden in 1497. She also fought with her uncle over the inheritance after her father.
 
 

She served as regent during the absence of her spouse. She was granted the slotsloven, which meant she had the right to command all the castles in Denmark. She was a great power holder due to her strong economic position, toward both her husband and her son. She also acquired fiefs from her spouse when she lent him money he could not pay back. In 1460, her spouse acquired Holstein and Schleswig, but only on the condition that he could pay his creditors: Dorothea paid the fee demanded of Christian, and made it possible for him to make these territories a part of Denmark. She acquired a large economic influence in Holstein and Schleswig and by 1470 she was the de facto ruler of those fiefs. In 1479, she acquired Holstein and in 1480 Schleswig from her husband as a security for a loan he was unable to pay back, and at the time of his death, she ruled the duchies as her own territory. Her eldest son opposed that she benefited her younger son Frederick in Schleswig-Holstein, and the matter was not solved until 1487, when she divided Schleswig-Holstein between her sons.
 
 

In 1475 and 1488, she visited the Pope in Rome and her sister Barbara in Mantova; in 1488, she also met the Emperor in Innsbrück. She was described as cold, practical and economic. As a widow, she stayed mainly at Kalundborg castle. She died on 25 November 1495, and is interred next to her second husband in Roskilde Cathedral.


 
 

Wikipedia:
 
 

Saint Margaret (c. 1045 – 16 November 1093), canonised by Pope Innocent IV, was the sister of Edgar Ætheling, the short-ruling and uncrowned Anglo-Saxon King of England. She married Malcolm III, King of Scots, becoming his Queen consort.

Saint Margaret was the daughter of the English prince Edward the Exile, son of Edmund Ironside. She was born at Castle Reka near Mecseknadasd, in southern Hungary, and raised at its court where her father had settled in exile. Margaret had two younger siblings, a brother Edgar and a sister Christina. The provenance of her mother, Agatha, is disputed.

Margaret grew up in a very religious environment in the Hungarian court. The king of that time, Andrew I of Hungary, was known as Andrew the catholic for his extreme aversion to pagans, and great loyalty to Rome, which probably could have induced Margaret to follow a pious life. Still a child, she came to England with the rest of her family when her father, Edward, was recalled in 1057 as a possible successor to her great-uncle the childless Edward the Confessor. Her father died soon after the family's arrival in England, but Margaret continued to reside at the English court where her brother, Edgar Ætheling, was being considered as a possible successor to the English Throne. When the Confessor died in January 1066, Harold Godwinson was selected as king, Edgar perhaps being considered too young. After Harold's defeat at the battle of Hastings later that year, Edgar was proclaimed King of England, but as the Normans advanced on London, Margaret and her family fled north to Northumberland.

According to tradition, after the conquest of the Kingdom of England by the Normans, the widowed Agatha (Margaret's Mother) decided to leave Northumberland with her children and return to the Continent. A storm drove their ship to Scotland, where they sought the protection of King Malcolm III. The spot where she is said to have landed is known today as St. Margaret's Hope, near the village of North Queensferry.

Margaret's arrival in Scotland in 1068, after the Northumbrian revolt, has been heavily romanticized, though Symeon of Durham implied that her first meeting with Malcolm III of Scots may not have been until 1070, after William the Conqueror's harrying of the north.

Malcolm was probably a widower, and was no doubt attracted by the prospect of marrying one of the few remaining members of the Anglo-Saxon royal family. The marriage of Malcolm and Margaret soon took place. Malcolm followed it with several invasions of Northumberland by the Scottish king, probably in support of the claims of his brother-in-law Edgar. These, however, had little result beyond the devastation of the province.

Margaret and Malcolm had eight children, six sons and two daughters:
1. Edward, killed 1093.
2. Edmund of Scotland
3. Ethelred, abbot of Dunkeld
4. King Edgar of Scotland
5. King Alexander I of Scotland
6. King David I of Scotland
7. Edith of Scotland, also called Matilda, married King Henry I of England
8. Mary of Scotland, married Eustace III of Boulogne

Her husband, Malcolm III, and their eldest son, Edward, were killed in a fight against the English at Alnwick Castle on 13 November 1093. Her son Edmund was left with the task of telling his mother of their deaths. Margaret was ill, and she died on 16 November 1093, three days after the deaths of her husband and eldest son.

Saint Margaret was canonised in the year 1250 by Pope Innocent IV in recognition of her personal holiness, fidelity to the Church, work for religious reform, and charity. She attended to charitable works, and personally served orphans and the poor every day before she ate. She rose at midnight to attend church services every night. She was known for her work for religious reform. She was considered to be an exemplar of the "just ruler", and also influenced her husband and children to be just and holy rulers.

On 19 June 1250, after her canonisation, her remains were moved to Dunfermline Abbey.

The Roman Catholic Church formerly marked the feast of Saint Margaret of Scotland on June 10, because the feast of "Saint Gertrude, Virgin" was already celebrated on November 16, but in Scotland, she was venerated on November 16, the day of her death. In the revision of the Roman Catholic calendar of saints in 1969, November 16 became free and the Church transferred her feast day to November 16.[3] However, some traditionalist Catholics continue to celebrate her feast day on June 10.

Queen Margaret University (founded in 1875), Queen Margaret College (Glasgow), Queen Margaret Union, Queen Margaret Hospital (just outside Dunfermline), North Queensferry, South Queensferry, Queen Margaret Academy (Ayr), St Margaret's Academy (Livngston), Queen Margaret College (Wellington) and several streets in Scotland are named after her.

She is also venerated as a saint in the Anglican Church.

Wikipedia:
 
 

Matilda of Flanders (c. 1031 – 2 November 1083) was the wife of William the Conqueror and, as such, Queen consort of the Kingdom of England. She bore William eleven children, including two kings, William II and Henry I. Matilda, or Maud, was the daughter of Baldwin V, Count of Flanders and Adèle Capet, herself daughter of Robert II of France. According to legend, when Duke William II of Normandy (later known as William the Conqueror) sent his representative to ask for Matilda's hand in marriage, she told the representative that she was far too high-born, to consider marrying a bastard. After hearing this response, William rode from Normandy to Bruges, found Matilda on her way to church, and dragged her off her horse by her long braids, threw her down in the street in front of her flabbergasted attendants, and rode off. Another version of the story states that William rode to Matilda's father's house in Lille, threw her to the ground in her room (again, by the braids), and hit her (or violently battered her) before leaving. Naturally, Baldwin took offense at this but, before they drew swords, Matilda settled the matter[1] by agreeing to marry him, and even a papal ban on the grounds of consanguinity did not dissuade her. They were married in 1053... Reputed to be 4'2" (127 cm) tall, Matilda was England's smallest queen, according to the Guinness Book of Records. However, in 1819 and 1959 Matilda's incomplete skeleton was examined in France, and her bones were measured to determine her height. The 1819 estimate was under five feet, while the 1959 estimate was 5' (152 cm) tall. A reputed height of 4' 2" (127 cm) appeared at some point after 1959 in the non-scientific literature, misrepresenting the 1959 measurement."
 
 

Wikipedia:

Empress Matilda (c. 7 February 1102 – 10 September 1167), also known as Matilda of England or Maude, was the daughter and heir of King Henry I of England. Matilda and her younger brother, William Adelin, were the only legitimate children of King Henry to survive to adulthood. The death of her brother in the White ship disaster in 1120 made Matilda the last heir from the paternal line of her grandfather William the Conqueror.

As a child, Matilda was betrothed to and later married Henry V, Holy Roman Emperor, acquiring the title Empress. The couple had no known children. After being widowed for a few years, she was married to Geoffrey count of Anjou, with whom she had three sons, the eldest of whom became King Henry II of England.

Matilda was the first female ruler of the Kingdom of England. The length of her effective rule was brief, however — a few months in 1141. She was never crowned and failed to consolidate her rule (legally and politically). For this reason, she is normally excluded from lists of English monarchs, and her rival (and cousin) Stephen of Blois is listed as monarch for the period 1135-1154. Their rivalry for the throne led to years of unrest and civil war in England that have been called The Anarchy. She did secure her inheritance of the Duchy of Normandy — through the military feats of her husband, Geoffrey — and campaigned unstintingly for her oldest son's inheritance, living to see him ascend the throne of England in 1154.

Matilda was the eldest of two children born to Henry I of England and his wife Matilda of Scotland (also known as Edith) who survived infancy.

Her maternal grandparents were Malcolm III of Scotland and Saint Margaret of Scotland. Margaret was daughter of Edward the Exile and granddaughter of Edmund II of England. Most historians believe Matilda was born in Winchester, but one, John M. Fletcher, argues for the possibility of the royal palace at Sutton Courtenay in Oxfordshire. Her paternal grandparents were William the Conqueror and Matilda of Flanders.

When she was seven years old, Matilda was betrothed to Henry V, Holy Roman Emperor; at eight, she was sent to the Holy Roman Empire (Germany) to begin training for the life of an empress consort. The eight-year old Matilda was crowned Queen of the Romans in Mainz on 25 July 1110.^[1][2] Aged 12, Matilda was made a child bride as the royal couple were married at Mainz on 7 January 1114. Matilda accompanied Henry on tours to Rome and Tuscany. Matilda later acted as regent, mainly in Italy, in his absence.^[3] Emperor Henry died on 23 May 1125. The imperial couple had no surviving offspring, but Herman of Tournai states that Matilda bore a son who lived only a short while.

Matilda returned to England. Henry I then arranged a second marriage for Matilda, to ensure peace between Normandy and Anjou. On 17 June 1128, Matilda, then 26, was married to Geoffrey of Anjou, then 15. He was also Count of Maine and heir apparent to (his father) the Count of Anjou — whose title he soon acquired, making Matilda Countess of Anjou. It was a title she rarely used. Geoffrey called himself "Plantagenet" from the broom flower (planta genista) he adopted as his personal emblem. Plantagenet became the dynastic name of the powerful line of English kings descended from Matilda and Geoffrey.

Matilda's marriage with Geoffrey was troubled, with frequent long separations, but they had three sons. The eldest, Henry, was born on 5 March 1133. In 1134, she almost died in childbirth, following the birth of Geoffrey, Count of Nantes. A third son, William X, Count of Poitou, was born in 1136. She survived her second husband, who died in Sept. 1151.

In 1120, her brother William Adelin drowned in the disastrous wreck of the White Ship, making Matilda the only surviving legitimate child of her father King Henry. Her cousin Stephen of Blois was, like her, a grandchild of William (the Conqueror) of Normandy; but her paternal line meant she was senior to Stephen in the line of succession.

After Matilda returned to England, Henry named her as his heir to the English throne and Duchy of Normandy. Henry saw to it that the Anglo-Norman barons, including Stephen, twice swore to accept Matilda as ruler if Henry died without a male heir of his body.

When her father died in Normandy, on 1 December 1135, Matilda was with Geoffrey in Anjou, and, crucially, too far away from events rapidly unfolding in England and Normandy. She and Geoffrey were also at odds with her father over border castles. Stephen of Blois rushed to England upon learning of Henry's death and moved quickly to seize the crown from the appointed heir. He was supported by most of the barons and his brother, Henry, bishop of Winchester, breaking his oath to defend her rights. Matilda, however, contested Stephen in both realms. She and her husband Geoffrey entered Normandy and began military campaigns to claim her inheritance there. Progress was uneven at first, but she persevered. In Normandy, Geoffrey secured all fiefdoms west and south of the Seine by 1143; in January 1144, he crossed the Seine and took Rouen without resistance. He assumed the title Duke of Normandy, and Matilda became Duchess of Normandy. Geoffrey and Matilda held the duchy conjointly until 1149, then ceded it to their son, Henry, which event was soon ratified by King Louis VII of France. It was not until 1139, however, that Matilda commanded the military strength necessary to challenge Stephen within England.

During the war, Matilda's most loyal and capable supporter was her illegitimate half-brother, Robert, 1st Earl of Gloucester.

Matilda's greatest triumph came in February 1141, when her forces defeated and captured King Stephen at the Battle of Lincoln. He was made a prisoner and effectively deposed. Her advantage lasted only a few months. When she arrived in London, the city was ready to welcome her and support her coronation. She used the title of Lady of the English and planned to assume the title of queen upon coronation (the custom which was followed by her grandsons, Richard and John).^[4] However, she refused the citizens' request to halve their taxes and, because of her own arrogance,^[4] they closed the city gates to her and reignited the civil war on 24 June 1141.

By November, Stephen was free (exchanged for the captured Robert of Gloucester) and a year later, the tables were turned when Matilda was besieged at Oxford but escaped to Wallingford, supposedly by fleeing across snow-covered land in a white cape. In 1141, she escaped Devizes in a similar manner, by disguising herself as a corpse and being carried out for burial.

In 1148, Matilda and Henry returned to Normandy, following the death of Robert of Gloucester, and the reconquest of Normandy by Geoffrey. Upon their arrival, Geoffrey turned Normandy over to Henry and retired to Anjou.

Matilda's first son, Henry, was showing signs of becoming a successful leader. It was 1147 when Henry, aged 14, had accompanied Matilda on an invasion of England. It soon failed due to lack of preparation but it made him determined that England was his mother's right, and so his own. He returned to England again between 1149 and 1150. On 22 May 1149 he was knighted by King David I of Scotland, his great uncle, at Carlisle.^[5] Although the civil war had been decided in Stephen's favour, his reign was troubled. In 1153, the death of Stephen's son Eustace, combined with the arrival of a military expedition led by Henry, led him to acknowledge the latter as his heir by the Treaty of Wallingford.

Matilda retired to Rouen in Normandy during her last years, where she maintained her own court and presided over the government of the duchy in the absence of Henry. She intervened in the quarrels between her eldest son Henry and her second son Geoffrey, Count of Nantes, but peace between the brothers was brief. Geoffrey rebelled against Henry twice before his sudden death in 1158. Relations between Henry and his youngest brother, William X, Count of Poitou, were more cordial, and William was given vast estates in England. Archbishop Thomas Becket refused to allow William to marry the Countess of Surrey and the young man fled to Matilda's court at Rouen. William, who was his mother's favourite child, died there in January 1164, reportedly of disappointment and sorrow. She attempted to mediate in the quarrel between her son Henry and Becket, but was unsuccessful.

Although she gave up hope of being crowned in 1141, her name always preceded that of her son Henry, even after he became king. Matilda died at Notre Dame du Pré near Rouen in 1167 and was buried in the Abbey of Bec-Hellouin, Normandy. Her body was transferred to Rouen Cathedral in 1847; her epitaph reads: "Great by Birth, Greater by Marriage, Greatest in her Offspring: Here lies Matilda, the daughter, wife, and mother of Henry."

The civil war between supporters of Stephen and the supporters of Matilda has proven popular as a subject in historical fiction. Novels dealing with it include:

• Graham Shelby, The Villains of the Piece (1972) (published in the US as The Oath and the Sword)
• The Brother Cadfael series by Ellis Peters, and the TV series made from them starring Sir Derek Jacobi
• Jean Plaidy, The Passionate Enemies, the third book of her Norman Trilogy
• Sharon Penman, When Christ and His Saints Slept tells the story of the events before, during and after the civil war
• Haley Elizabeth Garwood, The Forgotten Queen (1997)
• Ken Follett, The Pillars of the Earth
• E. L. Konigsburg, A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver
• Ellen Jones, The Fatal Crown (highly inaccurate)
• Juliet Dymoke, The Lion's Legacy (Being part of a trilogy, the first being, Of The Ring Of Earls, the second, Henry Of The High Rock)

Wikipedia:

Eleanor of Aquitaine (1122 – 1 April 1204) was one of the wealthiest and most powerful women in Western Europe during the High Middle Ages. As well as being Duchess of Aquitaine in her own right, she was queen consort of France 1137–1152 and queen consort of England 1154–1189. She was the patroness of such literary figures as Wace, Benoît de Sainte-More, and Chrétien de Troyes.

Eleanor succeeded her father as suo jure Duchess of Aquitaine and Countess of Poitiers at the age of fifteen, and thus became the most eligible bride in Europe. Three months after her accession she married Louis VII, son and junior co-ruler of her guardian, King Louis VI. As Queen of the Franks, she participated in the unsuccessful Second Crusade. Soon after the Crusade was over, Louis VII and Eleanor agreed to dissolve their marriage, because of Eleanor's own desire for divorce and also because the only children they had were two daughters – Marie and Alix. The royal marriage was annulled on 11 March 1152, on the grounds of consanguinity within the fourth degree. Their daughters were declared legitimate and custody of them awarded to Louis, while Eleanor's lands were restored to her.

As soon as she arrived in Poitiers, Eleanor became engaged to the twelve years younger Henry II, Duke of the Normans, her cousin within the third degree. On 18 May 1152, eight weeks after the annulment of her first marriage, Eleanor married the Duke of the Normans. On 25 October 1154 her husband ascended the throne of the Kingdom of England, making Eleanor Queen of the English. Over the next thirteen years, she bore Henry eight children: five sons, two of whom would become king, and three daughters. However, Henry and Eleanor eventually became estranged. She was imprisoned between 1173 and 1189 for supporting her son Henry's revolt against her husband, King Henry II.

Eleanor was widowed on 6 July 1189. Her husband was succeeded by their son, Richard the Lionheart, who immediately moved to release his mother. Now queen mother, Eleanor acted as a regent for her son while he went off on the Third Crusade. Eleanor survived her son Richard and lived well into the reign of her youngest son King John. By the time of her death she had outlived all of her children except for King John and Eleanor, Queen of Castile.

Eleanor or Aliénor was the oldest of three children of William X, Duke of Aquitaine, whose glittering ducal court was on the leading edge of early–12th-century culture, and his wife, Aenor de Châtellerault, the daughter of Aimeric I, Viscount of Châtellerault, and Dangereuse, who was William IX's longtime mistress as well as Eleanor's maternal grandmother. Her parents' marriage had been arranged by Dangereuse with her paternal grandfather, the Troubadour.

Eleanor was named for her mother Aenor and called Aliénor, from the Latinalia Aenor, which means the other Aenor. It became Eléanor in the langues d'oïl (Northern French) and Eleanor in English.^[2] There is, however, an earlier Eleanor on record: Eleanor of Normandy, William the Conqueror's aunt, who lived a century earlier than Eleanor of Aquitaine.

By all accounts, Eleanor's father ensured that she had the best possible education.^[3] Although her native tongue was Poitevin, she was taught to read and speak Latin, was well versed in music and literature, and schooled in riding, hawking, and hunting.^[4] Eleanor was extroverted, lively, intelligent, and strong willed. In the spring of 1130, when Eleanor was eight, her four-year-old brother William Aigret and their mother died at the castle of Talmont, on Aquitaine's Atlantic coast. Eleanor became the heir presumptive to her father's domains. The Duchy of Aquitaine was the largest and richest province of France; Poitou (where Eleanor spent most of her childhood) and Aquitaine together were almost one-third the size of modern France. Eleanor had only one other legitimate sibling, a younger sister named Aelith but always called Petronilla. Her half brothers, William and Joscelin, were acknowledged by William X as his sons, but not as his heirs. Later, during the first four years of Henry II's reign, all three siblings joined Eleanor's royal household.

In 1137, Duke William X set out from Poitiers to Bordeaux, taking his daughters with him. Upon reaching Bordeaux, he left Eleanor and Petronilla in the charge of the Archbishop of Bordeaux, one of the Duke's few loyal vassals who could be entrusted with the safety of the duke's daughters. The duke then set out for the Shrine of Saint James of Compostela, in the company of other pilgrims; however, he died on Good Friday 9 April 1137.^[5][6]

Eleanor, aged about fifteen, became the Duchess of Aquitaine, and thus the most eligible heiress in Europe. As these were the days when kidnapping an heiress was seen as a viable option for obtaining a title, William had dictated a will on the very day he died, bequeathing his domains to Eleanor and appointing King Louis VI of France as her guardian.^[7] William requested the King to take care of both the lands and the duchess, and to also find her a suitable husband.^[3] However, until a husband was found, the King had the legal right to Eleanor's lands. The Duke also insisted to his companions that his death be kept a secret until Louis was informed — the men were to journey from Saint James across the Pyrenees as quickly as possible, to call at Bordeaux to notify the Archbishop, and then to make all speed to Paris, to inform the King.

The King of France himself was also gravely ill at that time, suffering "a flux of the bowels" (dysentery) from which he seemed unlikely to recover. Despite his immense obesity and impending mortality, however, Louis the Fat remained clear-minded. To his concerns regarding his new heir, Louis, who had been destined for the monastic life of a younger son (the former heir, Philip, having died from a riding accident),^[8] was added joy over the death of one of his most powerful vassals — and the availability of the best duchy in France. Presenting a solemn and dignified manner to the grieving Aquitainian messengers, upon their departure he became overjoyed, stammering in delight.

Rather than act as guardian to the Duchess and duchy, he decided, he would marry the duchess to his heir and bring Aquitaine under the French Crown, thereby greatly increasing the power and prominence of France and the Capets. Within hours, then, Louis had arranged for his 17 year-old son, Prince Louis, to be married to Eleanor, with Abbot Suger in charge of the wedding arrangements. Prince Louis was sent to Bordeaux with an escort of 500 knights, as well as Abbot Suger, Theobald II, Count of Champagne and Count Ralph.

On July 25, 1137 the couple was married in the Cathedral of Saint-André in Bordeaux by the Archbishop of Bordeaux.^[3] Immediately after the wedding, the couple were enthroned as Duke and Duchess of Aquitaine.^[3][3] However, there was a catch: the land would remain independent of France and Eleanor's oldest son would be both King of the Franks and Duke of Aquitaine. Thus, her holdings would not be merged with France until the next generation. She gave Louis a wedding present that is still in existence, a rock crystal vase, currently on display at the Louvre.^[3][8][9]

Eleanor's tenure as junior Queen of the Franks lasted only few days. On 1 August, Eleanor's father-in-law died and her husband became sole monarch. Eleanor was anointed and crownedQueen of the Franks on Christmas Day of the same year.^[3][6]

Possessing a high-spirited nature, Eleanor was not popular with the staid northerners (according to sources, Louis´ mother, Adélaide de Maurienne, thought her flighty and a bad influence) — she was not aided by memories of Queen Constance, the Provençal wife of Robert II, tales of whose immodest dress and language were still told with horror.^[10]

Her conduct was repeatedly criticized by Church elders (particularly Bernard of Clairvaux and Abbot Suger) as indecorous. The King, however, was madly in love with his beautiful and worldly bride and granted her every whim, even though her behavior baffled and vexed him to no end. Much money went into beautifying the austere Cité Palace in Paris for Eleanor's sake.^[8]

Eleanor's grandfather, William IX of Aquitaine, gave her this rock crystal vase, which she in turn gave to Louis as a wedding gift. He later donated it to the Abbey of Saint-Denis. This is the only known surviving artifact of Eleanor's.

Although Louis was a pious man, he soon came into a violent conflict with Pope Innocent II. In 1141, the archbishopric of Bourges became vacant, and the King put forward as a candidate one of his chancellors, Cadurc, whilst vetoing the one suitable candidate, Pierre de la Chatre, who was promptly elected by the canons of Bourges and consecrated by the Pope. Louis accordingly bolted the gates of Bourges against the new Bishop; the Pope, recalling William X's similar attempts to exile Innocent's supporters from Poitou and replace them with priests loyal to himself, blamed Eleanor, saying that Louis was only a child and should be taught manners. Outraged, Louis swore upon relics that so long as he lived Pierre should never enter Bourges. This brought the interdict upon the King's lands. Pierre de la Chatre was given refuge by Theobald II, Count of Champagne.

Louis became involved in a war with Count Theobald of Champagne by permitting Raoul I, Count of Vermandois and seneschal of France, to repudiate his wife Eléonore of Blois, Theobald's sister, and to marry Petronilla of Aquitaine, Eleanor's sister. Eleanor urged Louis to support her sister's illegitimate marriage to Raoul of Vermandois. Champagne had also offended Louis by siding with the Pope in the dispute over Bourges. The war lasted two years (1142–44) and ended with the occupation of Champagne by the royal army. Louis was personally involved in the assault and burning of the town of Vitry. More than a thousand people (1300, some say) who had sought refuge in the church died in the flames.

Horrified, and desiring an end to the war, Louis attempted to make peace with Theobald in exchange for supporting the lift of the interdict on Raoul and Petronilla. This was duly lifted for long enough to allow Theobald's lands to be restored; it was then lowered once more when Raoul refused to repudiate Petronilla, prompting Louis to return to the Champagne and ravage it once more.

In June, 1144, the King and Queen visited the newly built cathedral at Saint-Denis. Whilst there, the Queen met with Bernard of Clairvaux, demanding that he have the excommunication of Petronilla and Raoul lifted through his influence on the Pope, in exchange for which King Louis would make concessions in Champagne, and recognise Pierre de la Chatre as archbishop of Bourges. Dismayed at her attitude, Bernard scolded her for her lack of penitence and her interference in matters of state. In response, Eleanor broke down, and meekly excused her behaviour, claiming to be bitter because of her lack of children. In response to this, Bernard became more kindly towards her: "My child, seek those things which make for peace. Cease to stir up the King against the Church, and urge upon him a better course of action. If you will promise to do this, I in return promise to entreat the merciful Lord to grant you offspring."

In a matter of weeks, peace had returned to France: Theobald's provinces had been returned, and Pierre de la Chatre was installed as Archbishop of Bourges. In April 1145, Eleanor gave birth to a daughter, Marie.

Louis, however still burned with guilt over the massacre at Vitry-le-Brûlé, and desired to make a Pilgrimage to the Holy Land in order to atone for his sins. Fortuitously for him, in the Autumn of 1145, Pope Eugenius requested Louis to lead a Crusade to the Middle East, to rescue the Frankish Kingdoms there from disaster. Accordingly, Louis declared on Christmas Day 1145 at Bourges his intention of going on a crusade.

Eleanor of Aquitaine took up the Second Crusade formally during a sermon preached by Bernard of Clairvaux. However she had been corresponding with her uncle Raymond, King and holder of family properties in Antioch where he was seeking further protection from the French crown. She recruited for the campaign, finally assembling some of her royal ladies-in-waiting as well as 300 non-noble vassals. She insisted on taking part in the Crusades as the feudal leader of the soldiers from her duchy. The story that she and her ladies dressed as Amazons is disputed by serious historians, sometime confused with the account of King Conrad's train of ladies during this campaign (in E. Gibbons Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire). Her testimonial launch of the Second Crusade from Vézelay, the rumored location of Mary Magdalene´s burial, dramatically emphasized the role of women in the campaign.

The Crusade itself achieved little. Louis was a weak and ineffectual military leader with no skill for maintaining troop discipline or morale, or of making informed and logical tactical decisions. In eastern Europe, the French army was at times hindered by Manuel I Comnenus, the Byzantine Emperor, who feared that it would jeopardize the tenuous safety of his empire; however, during their 3-week stay at Constantinople, Louis was fêted and Eleanor was much admired. She is compared with Penthesilea, mythical queen of the Amazons, by the Greek historian Nicetas Choniates; he adds that she gained the epithet chrysopous (golden-foot) from the cloth of gold that decorated and fringed her robe. Louis and Eleanor stayed in the Philopation palace, just outside the city walls.

From the moment the Crusaders entered Asia Minor, the Crusade went badly. The King and Queen were still optimistic — the Byzantine Emperor had told them that the German Emperor Conrad had won a great victory against a Turkish army (where in fact the German army had been massacred), and the great troop was still eating well. However, whilst camping near Nicea, the remnants of the German army, including a dazed and sick Emperor Conrad, straggled past the French camp, bringing news of their disaster. The French, with what remained of the Germans, then began to march in increasingly disorganized fashion, towards Antioch. Their spirits were buoyed on Christmas Eve — when they chose to camp in the lush Dercervian valley near Ephesus, they were ambushed by a Turkish detachment; the French proceeded to slaughter this detachment and appropriate their camp.

Louis then decided to directly cross the Phrygian mountains, in the hope of speeding his approach to take refuge with Eleanor's uncle Raymond in Antioch. As they ascended the mountains, however, the army and the King and Queen were left horrified by the unburied corpses of the previously slaughtered German army.

On the day set for the crossing of Mount Cadmos, Louis chose to take charge of the rear of the column, where the unarmed pilgrims and the baggage trains marched. The vanguard, with which Queen Eleanor marched, was commanded by her Aquitainian vassal, Geoffrey de Rancon; this, being unencumbered by baggage, managed to reach the summit of Cadmos, where de Rancon had been ordered to make camp for the night. De Rancon however chose to march further, deciding in concert with the Count of Maurienne (Louis´ uncle) that a nearby plateau would make a better camp: such disobedience was reportedly common in the army, due to the lack of command from the King.

Accordingly, by midafternoon, the rear of the column — believing the day's march to be nearly at an end — was dawdling; this resulted in the army becoming divided, with some having already crossed the summit and others still approaching it. It was at this point that the Turks, who had been following and feinting for many days, seized their opportunity and attacked those who had not yet crossed the summit. The Turks, having seized the summit of the mountain, and the French (both soldiers and pilgrims) having been taken by surprise, there was little hope of escape: those who tried were caught and killed, and many men, horses and baggage were cast into the canyon below the ridge. William of Tyre placed the blame for this disaster firmly on the baggage — which was considered to have belonged largely to the women.

The King was saved by his lack of authority — having scorned a King's apparel in favour of a simple soldier's tunic, he escaped notice (unlike his bodyguards, whose skulls were brutally smashed and limbs severed). He reportedly "nimbly and bravely scaled a rock by making use of some tree roots which God had provided for his safety", and managed to survive the attack. Others were not so fortunate: "No aid came from Heaven, except that night fell." ^[11]

The official scapegoat for the disaster was Geoffrey de Rancon, who had made the decision to continue, and it was suggested that he be hanged (a suggestion which the King ignored). Since he was Eleanor's vassal, many believed that it was she who had been ultimately responsible for the change in plan, and thus the massacre. This did nothing for her popularity in Christendom — as did the blame affixed to her baggage, and the fact that her Aquitainian soldiers had marched at the front, and thus were not involved in the fight. From here the army was split by a land march with the royalty taking the sea path to Antioch. When most of the land army arrived, the King and Queen had a profound dispute. Some say Eleanor's reputation was sullied by her supposed affair with her uncle Raymond of Poitiers, Prince of Antioch. However, this may have been a mask, as Raymond through Eleanor tried to forcibly sway Louis to use his army to attack the actual Muslim encampment at nearby Aleppo, gateway to recovering Edessa, the objective of the Crusade by papal decree. Although this was perhaps the better military plan, Louis was not keen to enlarge Eleanor's family lands. One of Louis' avowed Crusade goals was to journey in pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Rather than fight and strike the decisive blow that could have ended the Second Crusade, Louis imprisoned Eleanor for her opposition, and in crossing the desert to Jerusalem, watched his army dwindle.

Eleanor was humiliated by imprisonment a second time, for rightly opposing Louis's foolish assault on Damascus with his remaining army, fortified by King Conrad and King Baldwin. It appears that the idea was to plunder this neutral city that still traded with the Crusaders rather than focus any military force on reducing the Muslim forces that had hold of Aleppo, the gate to the recently Muslim reacquired state of Edessa – the actual mission of the 2nd Crusade by Papal decree. With Damascus a disastrous military failure, the royal family retreated to Jerusalem and then sailed to Rome and back to Paris.

While in the eastern Mediterranean, Eleanor learned about maritime conventions developing there, which were the beginnings of what would become admiralty law. She introduced those conventions in her own lands, on the island of Oleron in 1160 ("Rolls of Oléron") and later in England as well. She was also instrumental in developing trade agreements with Constantinople and ports of trade in the Holy Lands.

Even before the Crusade, Eleanor and Louis were becoming estranged. The city of Antioch had been annexed by Bohemond of Hauteville in the First Crusade, and it was now ruled by Eleanor's flamboyant uncle, Raymond of Antioch, who had gained the principality by marrying its reigning Princess, Constance of Antioch. Clearly, Eleanor supported his desire to re-capture the nearby County of Edessa, the cause of the Crusade; in addition, having been close to him in their youth, she now showed excessive affection towards her uncle — whilst many historians today dismiss this as familial affection (noting their early friendship, and his similarity to her father and grandfather), most at the time firmly believed the two to be involved in an incestuous and adulterous affair. Louis was directed by the Church to visit Jerusalem instead. When Eleanor declared her intention to stand with Raymond and the Aquitaine forces, Louis had her brought out by force. His long march to Jerusalem and back north debilitated his army, but her imprisonment disheartened her knights, and the divided Crusade armies could not overcome the Muslim forces. For reasons of plunder and the Germans' insistence on conquest, the Crusade leaders targeted Damascus, an ally until the attack. Failing in this attempt, they retired to Jerusalem, and then home. Before sailing for home, Eleanor got the terrible and ironic news that Raymond, with whom she had the winning battle plan for the Crusade, had been beheaded by the overpowering forces of the Muslim armies from Edessa.

Home, however, was not easily reached. The royal couple, on separate ships due to their disagreements, were first attacked in May by Byzantine ships attempting to capture both (in order to take them to Byzantium, according to the orders of the Emperor). Although they escaped this predicament unharmed, stormy weather served to drive Eleanor's ship far to the south (to the Barbary Coast), and to similarly lose her husband. Neither was heard of for over two months: at which point, in mid-July, Eleanor's ship finally reached Palermo in Sicily, where she discovered that she and her husband had both been given up for dead. The King still lost, she was given shelter and food by servants of King Roger II of Sicily, until the King eventually reached Calabria, and she set out to meet him there. Later, at King Roger's court in Potenza, she learnt of the death of her uncle Raymond; this appears to have forced a change of plans, for instead of returning to France from Marseilles, they instead sought the Pope in Tusculum, where he had been driven five months before by a Roman revolt.

Pope Eugenius III did not, as Eleanor had hoped, grant an annulment; instead, he attempted to reconcile Eleanor and Louis, confirming the legality of their marriage, and proclaiming that no word could be spoken against it, and that it might not be dissolved under any pretext. Eventually, he arranged events so that Eleanor had no choice but to sleep with Louis in a bed specially prepared by the Pope. Thus was conceived their second child — not a son, but another daughter, Alix of France.

The marriage was now doomed. Still without a son and in danger of being left with no male heir, facing substantial opposition to Eleanor from many of his barons and her own desire for divorce, the reason being that she was having an affair with Henry, Duke of Normandy, Louis had no choice but to bow to the inevitable. On 11 March 1152, they met at the royal castle of Beaugency to dissolve the marriage. Hugues de Toucy, Archbishop of Sens and Primate of France, presided, and Louis and Eleanor were both present, as were the Archbishops of Bordeaux and Rouen. Archbishop Samson of Reims acted for Eleanor.

On 21 March, the four archbishops, with the approval of Pope Eugenius, granted an annulment due to consanguinity within the fourth degree (Eleanor and Louis were third cousins, once removed, and shared common ancestry with Robert II of France). Their two daughters were, however, declared legitimate and custody of them awarded to King Louis. Archbishop Sampson received assurances from Louis that Eleanor's lands would be restored to her.

Two lords — Theobald V, Count of Blois, son of the Count of Champagne, and Geoffrey, Count of Nantes (brother of Henry II, Duke of the Normans) — tried to kidnap Eleanor to marry her and claim her lands on Eleanor's way to Poitiers. As soon as she arrived in Poitiers, Eleanor sent envoys to Henry, Count of Anjou and Duke of Normandy, asking him to come at once and marry her.

On 18 May 1152 (Whit Sunday), six weeks after her annulment, Eleanor married Henry 'without the pomp and ceremony that befitted their rank'.^[12] At that moment, Eleanor became Duchess of the Normans and Countess of the Angevins, while Henry became Duke of Aquitaine and Count of Poitiers.

She was about 12 years older than he, and related to him more closely than she had been to Louis. Eleanor and Henry were third cousins through their common ancestor Ermengarde of Anjou (wife to Robert I, Duke of Burgundy and Geoffrey, Count of Gâtinais); they were also both descendants of Robert II of Normandy. A marriage between Henry and Eleanor's daughter, Marie, had indeed been declared impossible for this very reason. One of Eleanor's rumoured lovers had been Henry's own father, Geoffrey V, Count of Anjou, who had advised his son to avoid any involvement with her.

On 25 October1154, Eleanor's second husband became King of the English. Eleanor was crowned Queen of the English by the Archbishop of Canterbury on 19 December 1154.^[6] It may be, however, that she was not anointed on this occasion, because she had already been anointed in 1137.^[13]

Over the next thirteen years, she bore Henry five sons and three daughters: William, Henry, Richard, Geoffrey, John, Matilda, Eleanor, and Joan. John Speed, in his 1611 work History of Great Britain, mentions the possibility that Eleanor had a son named Philip, who died young. His sources no longer exist and he alone mentions this birth.^[14]

Eleanor's marriage to Henry was reputed to be tumultuous and argumentative, although sufficiently cooperative to produce at least eight pregnancies. Henry was by no means faithful to his wife and had a reputation for philandering. Their son, William, and Henry's illegitimate son, Geoffrey, were born just months apart. Henry fathered other illegitimate children throughout the marriage. Eleanor appears to have taken an ambivalent attitude towards these affairs: for example, Geoffrey of York, an illegitimate son of Henry and a prostitute named Ykenai, was acknowledged by Henry as his child and raised at Westminster in the care of the Queen.

The period between Henry's accession and the birth of Eleanor's youngest son was turbulent: Aquitaine, as was the norm, defied the authority of Henry as Eleanor's husband; attempts to claim Toulouse, the rightful inheritance of Eleanor's grandmother and father, were made, ending in failure; the news of Louis of France's widowhood and remarriage was followed by the marriage of Henry's son (young Henry) to Louis' daughter Marguerite; and, most climactically, the feud between the King and Thomas Becket, his Chancellor, and later his Archbishop of Canterbury. Little is known of Eleanor's involvement in these events. By late 1166, and the birth of her final child, however, Henry's notorious affair with Rosamund Clifford had become known, and her marriage to Henry appears to have become terminally strained.

1167 saw the marriage of Eleanor's third daughter, Matilda, to Henry the Lion of Saxony; Eleanor remained in England with her daughter for the year prior to Matilda's departure to Normandy in September. Afterwards, Eleanor proceeded to gather together her movable possessions in England and transport them on several ships in December to Argentan. At the royal court, celebrated there that Christmas, she appears to have agreed to a separation from Henry. Certainly, she left for her own city of Poitiers immediately after Christmas. Henry did not stop her; on the contrary, he and his army personally escorted her there, before attacking a castle belonging to the rebellious Lusignan family. Henry then went about his own business outside Aquitaine, leaving Earl Patrick (his regional military commander) as her protective custodian. When Patrick was killed in a skirmish, Eleanor (who proceeded to ransom his captured nephew, the young William Marshal), was left in control of her inheritance.

Of all her influence on culture, Eleanor's time in Poitiers was perhaps the most critical and yet very little is known as to what happened. King Henry II was elsewhere, attending to his own affairs after escorting Eleanor to Poitiers.^[15]

It was in Poitiers that many scholars attribute Eleanor’s court as the ‘Court of Love’, where Eleanor and her daughter Marie meshed and encouraged the ideas of troubadours, chivalry, and courtly love into a single court. The existence and reasons for this court are debated.

In The Art of Courtly Love, Andreas Capellanus (Andrew the chaplain) refers to the court of Poitiers. He claimed that several women, including Eleanor and her daughter Marie de Champagne, would sit and listen to the quarrels of lovers and act as a jury to the questions of the court that revolved around acts of romantic love. He records some twenty-one cases, the most famous of them being a problem designated to the woman about whether or not true love can exist in marriage. According to Capellanus, the women decided that it was not at all likely.^[16]

Some scholars note that, because the only evidence of the courts of love took place is in Andreas Capellanus’s book The Art of Courtly Love, such an influential court never existed—and to further strengthen their argument they say that there is no evidence that Marie ever stayed with her mother in Poitiers, beyond her name being mentioned in Andreas’s work.^[15] Andreas wrote for the court of the king of France, where Eleanor was not well-regarded.

Others say that the court did exist, but that it was not taken very seriously and that the acts of Courtly Love were just a “parlor game” made up by Eleanor and Marie in order to place some order over all of the young courtiers that were situated there.^[17]

That is not to say that Eleanor invented courtly love, for it was a concept that had begun to grow before Eleanor’s court arose. Still, due to the fact that we do not have much information about what went on while Eleanor was in Poitiers, all that can be taken from it is that this court was most likely a catalyst for the increased popularity of courtly love literature in the Western European regions. .^[18]

Amy Kelly, in her article “Eleanor of Aquitaine and her Courts of Love”, gave a very probable description of what the rules of this court were based on; she said that “in the Poitevin code, man is the property, the very thing of woman; whereas a precisely contrary state of things existed in the adjacent realms of the two kings from whom the reigning duchess of Aquitaine was estranged.”.^[19]

In March 1173, aggrieved at his lack of power and egged on by his father's enemies, the younger Henry launched the Revolt of 1173–1174. He fled to Paris. From there 'the younger Henry, devising evil against his father from every side by the advice of the French King, went secretly into Aquitaine where his two youthful brothers, Richard and Geoffrey, were living with their mother, and with her connivance, so it is said, he incited them to join him'.^[20] One source claimed that the Queen sent her younger sons to France 'to join with him against their father the King'.^[21] Once her sons had left for Paris, Eleanor may have encouraged the lords of the south to rise up and support them.^[22]

Sometime between the end of March and the beginning of May, Eleanor left Poitiers but was arrested and sent to the King at Rouen. The King did not announce the arrest publicly; for the next year, the Queen's whereabouts were unknown. On 8 July 1174, Henry and Eleanor took ship for England from Barfleur. As soon as they disembarked at Southampton, Eleanor was taken either to Winchester Castle or Sarum Castle and held there.

Eleanor was imprisoned for the next sixteen years, much of the time in various locations in England. During her imprisonment, Eleanor had become more and more distant with her sons, especially Richard (who had always been her favorite). She did not have the opportunity to see her sons very often during her imprisonment, though she was released for special occasions such as Christmas. About four miles from Shrewsbury and close by Haughmond Abbey is "Queen Eleanor's Bower", the remains of a triangular castle which is believed to have been one of her prisons.

Henry lost his great love, Rosamund Clifford, in 1176. He had met her in 1166 and began the liaison in 1173, supposedly contemplating divorce from Eleanor. Rosamond was one among Henry's many mistresses, but although he treated earlier liaisons discreetly, he flaunted Rosamond. This notorious affair caused a monkish scribe with a gift for Latin to transcribe Rosamond's name to "Rosa Immundi", or "Rose of Unchastity".

Likely, Rosamond was one weapon in Henry's efforts to provoke Eleanor into seeking an annulment (this flared in October 1175). Had she done so, Henry might have appointed Eleanor abbess of Fontevrault (Fontevraud), requiring her to take a vow of poverty, thereby releasing her titles and nearly half their empire to him, but Eleanor was much too wily to be provoked into this. Nevertheless, rumours persisted, perhaps assisted by Henry's camp, that Eleanor had poisoned Rosamund. No one knows what Henry believed, but he did donate much money to the Godstow Nunnery in which Rosamund was buried.

In 1183, Young Henry tried again. In debt and refused control of Normandy, he tried to ambush his father at Limoges. He was joined by troops sent by his brother Geoffrey and Philip II of France. Henry's troops besieged the town, forcing his son to flee. Henry the Young wandered aimlessly through Aquitaine until he caught dysentery. On Saturday, 11 June 1183, the Young King realized he was dying and was overcome with remorse for his sins. When his father's ring was sent to him, he begged that his father would show mercy to his mother, and that all his companions would plead with Henry to set her free. The King sent Thomas of Earley, Archdeacon of Wells, to break the news to Eleanor at Sarum.^[23] Eleanor had had a dream in which she foresaw her son Henry's death. In 1193 she would tell Pope Celestine III that she was tortured by his memory.

In 1183, Philip of France claimed that certain properties in Normandy belonged to Henry the Young's wife, Margaret of France, but Henry insisted that they had once belonged to Eleanor and would revert to her upon her son's death. For this reason Henry summoned Eleanor to Normandy in the late summer of 1183. She stayed in Normandy for six months. This was the beginning of a period of greater freedom for the still supervised Eleanor. Eleanor went back to England probably early in 1184.^[22] Over the next few years Eleanor often traveled with her husband and was sometimes associated with him in the government of the realm, but still had a custodian so that she was not free.

Upon Henry's death on 6 July 1189, Richard was his undisputed heir. One of his first acts as king was to send William the Marshal to England with orders to release Eleanor from prison, but her custodians had already released her.^[24]

Eleanor rode to Westminster and received the oaths of fealty from many lords and prelates on behalf of the King. She ruled England in Richard's name, signing herself as 'Eleanor, by the grace of God, Queen of England'. On 13 August 1189, Richard sailed from Barfleur to Portsmouth, and was received with enthusiasm. She ruled England as regent while Richard went off on the Third Crusade. Later, when Richard was captured, she personally negotiated his ransom by going to Germany.

Eleanor survived Richard and lived well into the reign of her youngest son King John. In 1199, under the terms of a truce between King Philip II of France and King John, it was agreed that Philip's twelve-year-old heir Louis would be married to one of John's nieces of Castile. John deputed Eleanor to travel to Castile to select one of the princesses. Now 77, Eleanor set out from Poitiers. Just outside Poitiers she was ambushed and held captive by Hugh IX of Lusignan, which had long ago been sold by his forebears to Henry II. Eleanor secured her freedom by agreeing to his demands and journeyed south, crossed the Pyrenees, and travelled through the Kingdoms of Navarre and Castile, arriving before the end of January, 1200.

King Alfonso VIII and her daughter, Queen Eleanor (also called Leonora of England) of Castile had two remaining unmarried daughters, Urraca and Blanche. Eleanor selected the younger daughter, Blanche. She stayed for two months at the Castilian court. Late in March, Eleanor and her granddaughter Blanche journeyed back across the Pyrenees. When she was at Bordeaux where she celebrated Easter, the famous warrior Mercadier came to her and it was decided that he would escort the Queen and Princess north. "On the second day in Easter week, he was slain in the city by a man-at-arms in the service of Brandin",^[21] a rival mercenary captain. This tragedy was too much for the elderly Queen, who was fatigued and unable to continue to Normandy. She and Blanche rode in easy stages to the valley of the Loire, and she entrusted Blanche to the Archbishop of Bordeaux, who took over as her escort. The exhausted Eleanor went to Fontevrault, where she remained. In early summer, Eleanor was ill and John visited her at Fontevrault.

Eleanor was again unwell in early 1201. When war broke out between John and Philip, Eleanor declared her support for John, and set out from Fontevrault for her capital Poitiers to prevent her grandson Arthur, John's enemy, from taking control. Arthur learned of her whereabouts and besieged her in the castle of Mirabeau. As soon as John heard of this he marched south, overcame the besiegers and captured Arthur. Eleanor then returned to Fontevrault where she took the veil as a nun.

Eleanor died in 1204 and was entombed in Fontevraud Abbey next to her husband Henry and her son Richard. Her tomb effigy shows her reading a Bible and is decorated with magnificent jewelry. By the time of her death she had outlived all of her children except for King John and Queen Eleanor.

Contemporary sources praise Eleanor's beauty.^[3] Even in an era when ladies of the nobility were excessively praised, their praise of her was undoubtedly sincere. When she was young, she was described as perpulchra – more than beautiful. When she was around 30, Bernard de Ventadour, a noted troubadour, called her "gracious, lovely, the embodiment of charm," extolling her "lovely eyes and noble countenance" and declaring that she was "one meet to crown the state of any king." ^[25][26][27]William of Newburgh emphasized the charms of her person, and even in her old age, Richard of Devizes described her as beautiful, while Matthew Paris, writing in the 13th century, recalled her "admirable beauty."

However, no one left a more detailed description of Eleanor; the color of her hair and eyes, for example are unknown. The effigy on her tomb shows a tall and large-boned woman, though this may not be an accurate representation. Her seal of c. 1152 shows a woman with a slender figure, but this is likely an impersonal image.^[3]

Eleanor and Henry are the main characters in James Goldman's play The Lion in Winter, which was made into a film starring Peter O'Toole and Katharine Hepburn in 1968 (for which Hepburn won the Academy Award for Best Actress and the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role and was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress - Motion Picture Drama), and remade for television in 2003 with Patrick Stewart and Glenn Close (for which Close won the Golden Globe Award for Best Performance by an Actress In A Mini-series or Motion Picture Made for Television and was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress - Miniseries or a Movie).

The depiction of Eleanor in the play Becket, which was filmed in 1964 with Pamela Brown as Eleanor, contains historical inaccuracies, as acknowledged by the author, Jean Anouilh.

In 2004, Catherine Muschamp's one-woman play, Mother of the Pride, toured the UK with Eileen Page in the title role. In 2005, Chapelle Jaffe played the same part in Toronto.

The character "Queen Elinor" appears in William Shakespeare's King John, along with other members of the family. On television, she has been portrayed in this play by Una Venning in the BBC Sunday Night Theatre version (1952) and by Mary Morris in the BBC Shakespeare version (1984).

She figures prominently in Sharon Kay Penman's novels, When Christ And His Saints Slept, Time and Chance, and Devil's Brood. She appears briefly in Here Be Dragons. Penman has also written a series of historical mysteries where she, in old age, sends a trusted servant to unravel various puzzles. The titles are The Queen's Man, Cruel as the Grave, Dragon's Lair, and Prince of Darkness.

E.L. Konigsburg's young adult novel, A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver, takes place in Heaven of the late 20th century, where Eleanor of Aquitaine, Empress Matilda, and William the Marshall are waiting for King Henry II to be admitted to heaven at last. The Abbot Suger stops to chat with Eleanor and stays to wait, too. To pass the time, the four recall Eleanor's time on Earth. The flashbacks on earth are set during the Middle Ages in France and England, with a brief trip to the Holy Land. The flashbacks trace the highlights of Eleanor's life from 1137 (when she is fifteen years old and about to wed Louis Capet, soon to be King Louis VII of France) to her death in 1204. Her life encompasses the rule of England by her husband Henry II and by her sons Richard and John. A humorous, highly original, and intelligent introduction for young readers to a fascinating chapter in history. Originally published in 1973, it's been put back in print by Atheneum, in 2001.

Christy English's historical novel, The Queen's Pawn, published in April 2010, depicts Eleanor of Aquitaine from 1169–1173, during her marriage to King Henry II of England and her relationship with Princess Alais of France. Also published in April 2010 was the novel The Captive Queen by Alison Weir, detailing Eleanor's life from when she first met Henry II of England to her death in 1204.

Eleanor has also featured in a number of screen versions of Ivanhoe and the Robin Hood story. She has been played by Martita Hunt in The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men (1952), Jill Esmond in the British TV adventure series The Adventures of Robin Hood (1955–1960), Phyllis Neilson-Terry in the British TV adventure series Ivanhoe (1958), Yvonne Mitchell in the BBC TV drama series The Legend of Robin Hood (1975), Siân Phillips in the TV series Ivanhoe (1997), and Tusse Silberg in the TV series The New Adventures of Robin Hood (1997). She was portrayed by Lynda Bellingham in the BBC series Robin Hood. Most recently, she was portrayed by Eileen Atkins in Robin Hood (2010).

She has also been portrayed by Mary Clare in the silent film Becket (1923), based on a play by Alfred Lord Tennyson, Prudence Hyman in the British children's TV series Richard the Lionheart (1962), and Jane Lapotaire in the BBC TV drama series The Devil's Crown (1978), which dramatised the reigns of Henry II, Richard I and John.

Eleanor is played by Jane Lapotaire in Mike Walker's BBC Radio 4 series Plantagenet (2010).

Eleanor and Rosamund Clifford, as well as Henry II and Rosamund's father appear in Gaetano Donizetti's opera Rosmonda d'Inghilterra with a libretto by Felice Romani, which was premiered in Florence, at the Teatro Pergola, in 27 February 1834. A recording made by Opera Rara (1994), features Nelly Miricioiu as Eleanor and Renée Fleming as Rosamund.

Wikipedia:

Joan Stewart, Princess of Scotland (circa 1428 – after 16 October 1486) was a daughter of James I of Scotland and Joan Beaufort. She married James Douglas, 1st Earl of Morton.
 

Joan was born deaf and reportedly used sign language, even in public. She was known as "the dumb lady" (muta domina), or "the dumb lady of Dalkeith," as wife of the 4th Lord Dalkeith. In 1445, she was sent to France to be educated at a nunnery. Afterward, she was married to James Douglas, 1st Earl of Morton. Of the six daughters of James I, only Joan stayed in Scotland, with Annabella returning after a failed marriage in France.

Joan had the following children:

• James Douglas (died 1480).
• John Douglas, 2nd Earl of Morton (1466–1513) married Janet Crichton (died 1515).
• Janet (died 1490), married Patrick Hepburn, 1st Earl of Bothwell (died 1508).
• Elizabeth (died 1479).

 
 

Lady Ingrid Ylva Sunesdotter of Bjelbo (born c. 1180s, died c. 1250–1255), was a Swedish noblewoman, the wife of Magnus Minnesköld of Bjälbo and the mother of regent Birger jarl and grandmother of king Valdemar of Sweden. The exact years of her birth and death are unclear; a traditional year quoted for her death is 26 October 1252; it is also considered, though, that this was the date of her burial, and that she had actually died in 1251. According to Olaus Petri, she was the daughter of Sune Sik. She was married to Magnus Minnesköld of Bjelbo, possibly as his second wife. Several of his sons, born or raised by Ingrid Ylva, would come to hold positions of power when grown: Eskil became lawspeaker in Westrogothia, Karl and Bengt both became bishops of Linköping and Birger became Jarl of Sweden, and later had his son elected king. As a widow, in c. 1208–1210, she most likely managed her estates in Bjälbo as the head of the family, due to her sons being minors. She attended the church from her favourite place in the church tower, to which she had once donated a bell; according to tradition, she often lived in this tower during insecure times. In 1234, her son Birger married Princess Ingeborg Eriksdotter of Sweden, and in 1250, he became regent and father of the king. It remains unclear if Ingrid Ylva was still alive at this point, though it is believed that she was. However, she does not seem to have played any part at the royal court, and probably preferred to stay within her estates. She is said to have married again, to an unnamed man with whom she had a son, Elof Vingad Pil, while other sources claims she remained unmarried.
 
 

Ingrid Ylva is known in various legends, and possibly in her time, as a so-called white witch; she was said to be able to master magic, which she used for good purposes and for her family's good fortune. A lot of stories were told about her magical skills. One legend said that once, when Bjälbo was subjected to a surprise attack from the enemies of the family, Ingrid Ylva rushed to the top of the church tower, and, from there, she ripped open a pillow full of feathers which spread across the land, and turned into knights in armour. These magical stories was far from slander; in the 13th century, the witch trials were hundreds of years in the future, magic was not illegal and the ability to master magic was considered a great and admirable skill; there was a clear separation between white and black magic, and not even black magic was yet connected to the Devil or punishable by death, as it would become later. Her name was widely known long before her son became regent, and her alleged magical skill was highly admired. She was widely regarded for her ability to foretell the future. Legend claims, that on her deathbed she predicted that her line would succeed to the Swedish throne, as long as her head was held high. Legend says, that because of this, her son, the regent, buried her standing upright, inside the tower with which she had had such a close relationship.
 
 

Wikipedia:
 
 

Sophia of Denmark (Sofia Eriksdotter; 1241–1286) was Queen consort of Sweden as spouse of King Valdemar I of Sweden.
 
 

Sophia was the eldest daughter of Eric IV of Denmark and Jutta of Saxony. Her father was murdered in 1250 when she and her younger sisters, Agnes and Jutta of Denmark were young. As he left no son, Eric IV's brothers, Abel of Denmark and then Christopher I of Denmark assumed the Danish throne.
 
 

Sophia was married to Valdemar I of Sweden in 1261, as part of Birger Jarl's policy of peace between Scandinavian kingdoms. It is said, that when she was informed about the arranged marriage, she left the room, went in to her chamber and asked God; Give me happiness with him and him with me. Sophia was described as a politically interested, witty beauty with a quick tongue. She was also known for her interest in chess.
 
 

In 1269, Sophia visited her father's grave in Denmark as well as visiting her sisters, Agnes and Jutta, who had both been placed in Agnesklostret convent in Roskilde. In 1272, Sophia's sister Jutta visited Sweden and became Valdemar's mistress. The affair resulted in a child born in 1273. The following year, Jutta was again placed in a convent and Valdemar was forced to make a pilgrimage to Rome to ask for the Pope's absolution. According to legend, Queen Sophia said: I will never recover from this sorrow. Curse the day my sister saw the kingdom of Sweden.
 
 

In 1275, Valdemar was deposed by his younger brother, Magnus III of Sweden after the battle of Hova. The news was said to have reached the queen while she played chess. Many stories are told about her sharp tongue. She is said to have complained about her husband's brothers as "Magnus Ticklingfingers" and "Eric Everything-and-anything". In 1277, Sophia separated from her spouse and returned to Denmark. Her husband lived openly with mistresses in his comfortable prison. In 1283, the ex-queen gave her income in the fishing of Norrköping to the Saint Martin Abbey in Skänninge. This is the first document were the city of Norrköping is mentioned. She died in 1286.
 
 

Sofia married Valdemar in 1260 and separated in 1277. They had six children:

1. Ingeborg Valdemarsdotter of Sweden (1263–1292), countess of Holstein, spouse of Gerhard II of Holstein.

2. Erik Valdemarsson of Sweden (1272–1330)

3. Marina Valdemarsdotter of Sweden, spouse of Count Rudolf of Diepholz

4. Rikissa Valdemarsdotter of Sweden (d. c. 1292), Queen of Poland, spouse of Przemys? II of Poland

5. Katarina Valdemarsdotter of Sweden (d. 1283)

6. Margareta Valdemarsdotter of Sweden, a nun.

Wikipedia:
 
 

Marjorie Bruce or Marjorie de Brus (December, 1296 – 2 March 1316) was the eldest daughter of Robert the Bruce, King of Scots by his first wife, Isabella of Mar, and the founder of the Stewart dynasty. Her marriage to Walter, High Steward of Scotland gave rise to the House of Stewart. Her son was the first Stewart monarch, King Robert II of Scotland.

Her mother, Isabella, a nineteen-year-old noblewoman from the Clan Mar, died soon after giving birth to her. Her father was then the Earl of Carrick, and her mother died the Countess of Carrick; she never became Queen. Marjorie was named after her father's mother, Marjorie, Countess of Carrick.

According to legend, her parents had been very much in love, and Robert the Bruce did not remarry until Marjorie was six years old. In 1302, a courtier named Elizabeth de Burgh became her stepmother.

On 27 March 1306, her father was crowned King of Scots at Scone, Perthshire, and Marjorie, then nine years old, became a Princess of Scotland.

The Priory of Watton, where Marjorie was imprisoned under Edward I

Three months after the coronation, in June, 1306, her father was defeated at the Battle of Methven. He sent his female relatives (his wife, two sisters and Marjorie) north with his supporter the Countess of Buchan, but by the end of June the band of Bruce women were captured and betrayed to the English by the Earl of Ross.

As punishment, Edward I sent his hostages to different places in England. Princess Marjorie went to the convent at Watton; her aunt Christina Bruce was sent to another convent; Queen Elizabeth was placed under house arrest at a manor house in Yorkshire (because Edward I needed the support of her father, the powerful Earl of Ulster, her punishment was lighter than the others'); and Marjorie's aunt Mary Bruce and the Countess of Buchan were imprisoned in wooden cages, exposed to public view, Mary's cage at Roxburgh Castle and Countess Isabella's at Berwick Castle. For the next four years, Marjorie, Elizabeth, Christina, Mary and Isabella endured solitary confinement, with daily public humiliation for the latter two. A cage was built for Marjorie at the Tower of London, but Edward I reconsidered and instead sent her to the convent.^[1] Christopher Seton, Christina's husband, was executed.

Edward I died on 7 July 1307. He was succeeded by his son, Edward II, who subsequently held Marjorie captive in a convent for about seven more years. She was finally set free around 1314, possibly in exchange for English noblemen captured after the Battle of Bannockburn (23 June – 24 June 1314).

Walter Stewart, 6th High Steward of Scotland distinguished himself in the battle and was rewarded the hand of the adolescent princess. Her dowry included the Barony of Bathgate in West Lothian.

Two years later, on 2 March 1316, Marjorie went horse-riding near Paisley, Renfrewshire while heavily pregnant. Her horse was suddenly startled and threw her to the ground at a place called "The Knock." She went into premature labour and delivered the child at Paisley Abbey, surviving the birth by a few hours at most.

She was nineteen at the time of her death, like her mother, who was also nineteen years old when she died in childbirth.

At the junction of Renfrew Road and Dundonald Road in Paisley, a cairn marks the spot where Marjorie reputedly fell from her horse. She is buried at the abbey.

Her son succeeded his childless uncle David II of Scotland in 1371 as King Robert II. Her descendants include the House of Stuart and all their successors on the throne of Scotland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom.

The young adult novel Girl in a Cage by Jane Yolen and Robert J. Harris features Marjorie Bruce as its protagonist. In it, Marjorie is imprisoned in a cage. Although there is a preface stating that it is fictional, many have taken it to be a true story.

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