Bertha of Holland

Notes:

Source:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertha_of_Holland

Also known as Berthe or Bertha of Frisia,Bertha was the daughter of Count Floris I of Holland and his wife, Gertrude of Saxony. Her father ruled a territory vaguely described as "Friesland west of the Vlie", which is where Bertha spent her childhood. He was assassinated in 1061, and and two years later her mother remarried Count Robert the Frisian of Flanders.

Her stepfather became involved in a war with King Philip I of France over succession to the County of Flanders. Bertha was given in marriage to King Philip as part of the peace negotiations. At the time, she was the lowest ranking woman to marry a French king.

Bertha was queen consort of the Franks from 1072 until 1092. She did not have a happy marriage. After six years of childlessness, the royal couple had three children, including Philip's successor, Louis VI, the Fat, Constance, Princess of Antioch [married Bohemund I of Antioch] and Henry, but he appears to have died in infancy or childhood.

Philip, however, grew tired of his wife by 1090, and repudiated her in 1092 in order to marry the already married Bertrada of Montfort. That marriage was a scandal since both Philip and Bertrada were already married to other people.

The marriage began breaking apart. The King became tired of his wife but the reasons are unclear. Contemporary chroniclers give different explanations. According to the English historian William of Malmesbury, Philip complained that Bertha was "too fat", though he was himself becoming too obese to ride a horse.

The repudiated queen withdrew to the fortress of Montreuil-sur-Mer, which was part of her dower land where she died in 1093. The son of the queen who had been repudiated ostensibly for her obesity ascended the French throne as Louis VI. He was known as Louis, the Fat. Berta's nephew and King Louis' cousin, Count Floris II of Holland, was also nicknamed "the Fat."

Bertha married Philip I of the Franks, the Amorous. Philip (son of Henry I of France and Anna Agnesa Yaroslavna of Kiev) was born 23 May 1052, Champagne-et-Fontaine, France; died 29 Jul 1108, Melun, Seine-et-Marne, Île-de-France, France; was buried , Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire, France. [Group Sheet]

Notes:

Source:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_VI_of_France

He was the son of of Philip I and his first wife, Bertha of Holland. Louis married Lucienne de Rochefort, a French crown princess, in 1104, but repudiated her three years later. They had no children.

Louis married Adelaide of Maurienne, daughter of Humbert II of Savoy and Gisela of Burgundy, and niece of Pope Callixtus II. They had eight children. Adelaide was one of the most politically active of all France's medieval queens. Her name appears on 45 royal charters from the reign of Louis VI. During her tenure as queen, royal charters were dated with both her regnal year and that of the king.

Louis was the first member of the House of Capet to make a lasting contribution to the centralizing institutions of royal power. He spent almost all of his twenty-nine-year reign fighting either the "robber barons" who plagued Paris or the Norman kings of England for their continental possession of Normandy. Nonetheless, Louis VI managed to reinforce his power considerably and became one of the first strong kings of France since the division of the Carolingian Empire in 843.

When Louis ascended the throne the Kingdom of France was a collection of feudal principalities. Beyond the Isle de France the French Kings had little authority over the great Dukes and Counts of the realm but slowly Louis began to change this and assert Capetian rights. This process would take two centuries to complete but began in the reign of Louis VI.

The second great challenge facing Louis was to counter the rising power of the Anglo-Normans under their capable new King, Henry I of England. Louis was involved with a coalition of Norman and French seigneurs opposed to Henry. The plan was to drive the English King from Normandy and replace him.

Louis was a warrior king but by his forties his weight had become so great that it was increasingly difficult for him to lead in the field.

As Louis VI approached his end there seemed reasons for optimism. He made great strides in exercising his royal authority over his barons. William X, Duke of Aquitaine, on his deathbed, had appointed Louis VI guardian of his fifteen-year-old daughter and heiress, Eleanor of Aquitaine. Eleanor was suddenly the most eligible heiress in Europe and Louis wasted no time in marrying her to his own heir, the future Louis VII. At a stroke Louis had added one of the most powerful Duchies in France to the Capetian domains.

Henry I of England was dead and Stephen of Blois had seized the English Crown, reneging on the oath he had sworn to support Empress Matilda. So England was in turmoil. That was not to last as Matilda married Geoffrey of Anjoy [ Plantagenet] and fought to regain the throne for her son, Henry II. Henry II married Eleanor of Aquitaine and added to the hostilities between France and England for Louis descendants.

Source:

GenealogieOnline. Coret Genealogie. http://www.genealogieonline.nl/en/

Name: Louis VI France
Gender: m (Male)
Birth Date: 1 dec 1081
Birth Place: Paris, France
Death Date: 1 aug 1137
Death Place: Béthisy-Saint-Pierre, France
Death Age: 55
Father: Philip I France
Mother: Bertha Holland
Spouse: Adelaide Maurienne
Children: Louis VII France
Robert I Dreux
Peter Courtenay
Constance France



Buried:
Grave location, biography, historical portraits, and photo of tomb effigy:
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=21089

Louis married Adelaide of Maurienne, de Savoy. Adelaide (daughter of Umberto II of Savoy, the Fat and Gisela of Burgundy, Marchioness of Montferrat) was born 1092, Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne, France; died 18 Nov 1154, Abbey of Montmartre, France; was buried , Church of St. Pierre, Montmartre, France. [Group Sheet]

Notes:

Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_VII_of_France

He was King of the Franks from 1137 until his death. He was the son and successor of King Louis VI of France, hence his nickname, and married Eleanor of Aquitaine, one of the wealthiest and most powerful women in western Europe. Eleanor came with the vast Duchy of Aquitaine as a dowry for Louis, thus temporarily extending the Capetian lands to the Pyrenees, but their marriage was annulled in 1152 after no male heir was produced. They had two daughters, Marie and Alix.

Immediately after the annulment of her marriage, Eleanor married Henry Plantagenet, Duke of Normandy and Count of Anjou, to whom she gave the Aquitaine. When Henry became King of England in 1154, as Henry II, he ruled over a large empire that spanned from Scotland to the Pyrenees. Henry's efforts to preserve and expand on this patrimony for the Crown of England would mark the beginning of the long rivalry between France and England.

Louis VII's reign saw the founding of the University of Paris and the disastrous Second Crusade. Louis and his famous counselor Abbot Suger pushed for a greater centralization of the state and favoured the development French Gothic architecture, notably the construction of Notre-Dame de Paris.

Louis was born in 1120 in Paris, the second son of Louis VI of France and Adelaide of Maurienne. The early education of Prince Louis anticipated an ecclesiastical career. As a result, he became well-learned and exceptionally devout, but his life course changed decisively after the accidental death of his older brother Philip in 1131, when he unexpectedly became the heir to the throne of France. He spent much of his youth in Saint-Denis, where he built a friendship with the Abbot Suger, an advisor to his father who also served Louis well during his early years as king.

In the first part of his reign, Louis VII was vigorous and zealous in his prerogatives. His accession was marked by no disturbances other than uprisings by the burgesses of Orléans and Poitiers, who wished to organise communes. He soon came into violent conflict with Pope Innocent II, however, when the archbishopric of Bourges became vacant.

Louis VII then became involved in a war with Theobald II of Champagne by permitting Raoul I of Vermandois, the seneschal of France, to repudiate his wife, Theobald II's niece, and to marry Petronilla of Aquitaine, sister of the queen of France. He was personally involved in the assault and burning of the town of Vitry-le-François. More than a thousand people who had sought refuge in the church died in the flames. Overcome with guilt and humiliated by ecclesiastical reproach, Louis admitted defeat, removed his armies from Champagne and returned them to Theobald.

Desiring to atone for his sins, he declared his intention of mounting a crusade on Christmas Day 1145. In June 1147, in fulfilment of his vow to mount the Second Crusade, Louis VII and his queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine, set out from the Basilica of St Denis, first stopping in Metz on the overland route to Syria. Just beyond Laodicea, the French army was ambushed by Turks. The French were bombarded by arrows and heavy stones, and the Turks swarmed down from the mountains. Louis VII and his army finally reached the Holy Land in 1148. His queen Eleanor supported her uncle, Raymond of Antioch, and prevailed upon Louis to help Antioch against Aleppo. But Louis VII's interest lay in Jerusalem, but this ended in disaster and the project was abandoned. Louis VII decided to leave the Holy Land, despite the protests of Eleanor, who still wanted to help her doomed uncle Raymond. Louis VII and the French army returned home in 1149.

The expedition to the Holy Land came at a great cost to the royal treasury and military. It also precipitated a conflict with Eleanor that lead to the annulment of their marriage. Perhaps the marriage to Eleanor might have continued if the royal couple had produced a male heir, but this had not occurred. The marriage was annulled on 21 March 1152. The pretext of kinship was the basis for annulment, but in fact, it owed more to the state of hostility between Louis and Eleanor, the decreasing likelihood that their marriage would produce a male heir to the throne of France, and the distinct possibility that Louis had learned of Eleanor's affair with Henry, Count of Anjou.

In 1154, Louis VII married Constance of Castile, daughter of Alfonso VII of Castile. She also failed to supply him with a son and heir, bearing only two daughters, Marguerite and Alys. Constance died in childbirth on 4 October 1160.

Five weeks after the death of Constance, Louis VII married Adèle of Champagne. In 1165, she bore him a son and heir, Philip II Augustus. Louis had him crowned at Reims in 1179, in the Capetian tradition (Philip would in fact be the last king so crowned). Already stricken with paralysis, Louis himself could not be present at the ceremony. He died on 18 September 1180 at the Abbey at Saint-Pont, Allier, and was buried in the Cistercian Abbey of Barbeaux (later moved to Saint-Denis in 1817).

From the point of view of the preservation and expansion of the French royal domains, the reign of Louis VII was a difficult and unfortunate one. Yet royal authority was more strongly felt in the parts of France distant from these domains: more direct and more frequent connections were made with distant vassals, a result largely due to an alliance between the clergy with the crown. Louis VII thus reaped the reward for services rendered the church during the least successful portions of his reign. His greater accomplishments lie in the development of agriculture, population, commerce, the building of stone fortresses, as well as an intellectual renaissance. Considering the significant disparity of political leverage and financial resources between Louis VII and his Angevin rival Henry II, not to mention Henry's superior military skills, Louis VII should be credited with helping to preserve the Capetian dynasty.

Louis' children by his three marriages:

Eleanor of Aquitaine:

1. Marie (1145-11 March 1198), married Henry I of Champagne[

2. Alix (1151-1197/1198), married Theobald V of Blois


Constance of Castile:

3. Margaret (1158-August/September 1197), married a) Henry the Young King; b) King Béla III of Hungary

4. Alys (4 October 1160-ca. 1220), engaged to Richard I of England; she married William IV, Count of Ponthieu


Adele of Champagne:

5. Philip II Augustus (22 August 1165-1223)

6. Agnes (1171-after 1204), who was betrothed to Alexius II Comnenus (1180-1183). but married first Andronicus I Comnenus (1183-1185), then Theodore Branas (1204)






Buried:
Grave location and tomb photo:
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=21090

Louis married Constance of Castile. Constance (daughter of Alfonso VII Raimúndez of León, King of Galicia, King of León and Castille and Berenguela (Berengaria) of Barcelona, Queen of Castille, León and Galicia) was born 1140, Spain; died 04 Oct 1160, Paris, France; was buried , Saint Denis Basilique, Saint-Denis, Île-de-France, France. [Group Sheet]

Notes:

Source:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_I_of_Courtenay

He was the youngest son of Louis VI of France and his second wife, Adélaide de Maurienne. In about 1150, he married Elizabeth de Courtenay (1127-September 1205),[1] the daughter of Renaud de Courtenay and Hawise du Donjon, thus starting the Capetian line of the House of Courtenay.

Pierre being the son of the king had important connections, a brother who was king, two brothers who were archbishops, one in Paris and one in Reims, his brother the Count de Dreux, and his sister Constance, the Countess of Boulogne. He died in Acre, Palestine, presumably as a Crusader.

Pierre and Elizabeth had ten children:

Phillip (1153-before 1186)

Peter, Latin Emperor of Constantinople (c. 1155 to 1218

Unnamed daughter (c. 1156)

Alice (died 12 February 1218), married Count Aymer of Angoulême

Eustachia (1162-1235), married firstly William of Brienne, son of Erard II of Brienne and of Agnès of Montfaucon, secondly William of Champlitte

Clémence (1164)

Robert, Seigneur of Champignelles (1166-1239), married in 1217 Mathilde of Mehun (d. 1240). Their eldest son was Peter of Courtenay, Lord of Conches.

William, Seigneur of Tanlay (1168-before 1248)

Isabella (1169-after 1194)

Constance (after 1170-1231)




Buried:
Grave location, biography, and portrait:
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=58301000

Pierre/Peter married Elizabeth de Courtenay. Elizabeth (daughter of Renaud/Reginald de Courtenay, Seigneur of Courtenay and Helvis (Elizabeth) du Donjon) was born 1127, France; died Sep 1205, France. [Group Sheet]

Notes:

Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alys_of_France,_Countess_of_Vexin

She was the daughter of King Louis VII of France and his second wife, Constance of Castile. Alys was the half-sister of Marie and Alix of France, Louis's children by Eleanor of Aquitaine, and the younger sister of Margaret of France.

In January 1169, Louis and Henry II of England signed a contract for the marriage between Alys and Henry's son Richard the Lionheart. The 8-year-old Alys was then sent to England as Henry's ward. There were widespread rumors that Henry had not only made Alys his mistress, but that she had borne him a child. Henry died in 1189. King Richard married Berengaria of Navarre on 12 May 1191, while still officially engaged to Alys.

Her brother, King Philip of France, had offered Alys to Prince John, but Eleanor prevented the match. Alys married William IV Talvas, Count of Ponthieu, on 20 August 1195, and had one child Marie, Countess of Ponthieu. She was some eighteen years older than William, and Philip figured that the couple would be childless, and he would thus gain control of Ponthieu, a small but strategically important county. However, when Alys then gave birth to Marie, this child became the heiress to Ponthieu when her father died.

Alys married William (Guillaume) IV (Talvas) of Ponthieu, Count of Ponthieu. William (son of John (Jean) I of Ponthieu, Count of Ponthieu and Beatrice of Saint-Pol) was born ca 1179, Abbeville, Picardie, France; died 04 Oct 1221; was buried , Abbey of Valloires, Picardie, France. [Group Sheet]

Notes:

Source:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_of_Courtenay

Alice was born in 1160, the second eldest daughter and one of the ten children of Peter I of Courtenay and Elisabeth of Courtenay, daughter of Renauld de Courtenay and Hawise du Donjon. Her family was one of the most illustrious in France; and her paternal grandparents were King Louis VI of France and Adélaide de Maurienne.

In 1178, she married her first husband, Guillaume I, Count of Joigny. The marriage did not produce any children, and they were divorced in 1186.

Alice married her second husband, Aymer Taillefer in 1186, the same year he succeeded his father, William IV as Count of Angoulême. Sometime in 1188, Alice gave birth to her only child, Isabella of Angoulême, wife of King John of England and later Hugh X of Lusignan, Count of La Marche.

Buried:
Grave location and biography:
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=111264390

Alice/Alix married Aymer d'Angoulême, Count of Angoulême. Aymer was born ABT. 1160, Angoulême, France; died 16 Jun 1202, Limoges, France; was buried , Abbaye Notre-Dame de La Couronne La Couronne Departement de la Charente Poitou-Charentes, France. [Group Sheet]