William VIII Duke of Aquitaine

Notes:

Source:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_VIII,_Duke_of_Aquitaine

Born Guy-Geoffrey, he was duke of Gascony, then duke of Aquitaine and Count of Poitiers. He was the youngest son of William V of Aquitaine by his third wife Agnes of Burgundy.

William VIII was one of the leaders of the allied army called to help Ramiro I of Aragon in the Siege of Barbastro (1064). This expedition was the first campaign organized by the papacy, namely Pope Alexander II, against a Muslim city, and the precursor of the later Crusades movement. Aragon and its allies conquered the city, killed its inhabitants and collected an important booty.

However, Aragon lost the city again in the following years. During William VIII's rule, the alliance with the southern kingdoms of modern Spain was a political priority as shown by the marriage of all his daughters to Iberian kings.

He married three times and had at least five children. After he divorced his second wife due to infertility, he remarried to a much younger woman who was also his cousin. This marriage produced a son, but William VIII had to visit Rome in the early 1070s to persuade the pope to recognize his children from his third marriage as legitimate.

First wife: Garsende of Périgord, daughter of Count Aldabert II of Périgord (divorced November 1058), no children. She became a nun at Saintes.

Second wife: Matoeda (divorced May 1068), one daughter
Agnes (1052?1078), married Alfonso VI of Castile

Third wife: Hildegarde of Burgundy (daughter of duke Robert I of Burgundy)

Agnes (died 1097), married Peter I of Aragon
William IX of Aquitaine, his heir


Buried:
Grave location and biography:
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=91952010

William married Hildegarde of Burgundy. Hildegarde was born 1056, County of Burgundy, France; died 1104, Aquitaine; was buried , Saint-Jean l'Evangéliste de Montierneuf Poitiers Departement de la Vienne Poitou-Charentes, France. [Group Sheet]

Notes:

Source:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_IX,_Duke_of_Aquitaine

Called the Troubador, was the Duke of Aquitaine and Gascony and Count of Poitou, William was the son of William VIII of Aquitaine by his third wife, Hildegarde of Burgundy. He was also one of the leaders of the Crusade of 1101. Though his political and military achievements have a certain historical importance, he is best known as the earliest troubadour, a lyric poet in the Provençal language whose work survived.

William inherited the duchy at the age of fifteen upon the death of his father. In 1094, William married Philippa, the daughter and heiress of William IV of Toulouse. By Philippa, William had two sons and five daughters, including his eventual successor, William X. His second son, Raymond, eventually became the Prince of Antioch in the Holy Land, and his daughter Agnes married firstly Aimery V of Thouars and then Ramiro II of Aragon, reestablishing dynastic ties with that ruling house.

Pope Urban II urged him to "take the cross" (i.e. the First Crusade) and leave for the Holy Land, but William was more interested in exploiting the absence on Crusade of Raymond IV of Toulouse, his wife's uncle, to press her claim to Toulouse. He and Philippa did capture Toulouse in 1098, an act for which they were threatened with excommunication. Partly out of a desire to regain favor with the religious authorities and partly out of a wish to see the world, William joined the Crusade of 1101, an expedition inspired by the success of the First Crusade in 1099. To finance it, he had to mortgage Toulouse back to Bertrand, the son of Raymond IV.

William arrived in the Holy Land in 1101 and stayed there until the following year. His record as a military leader is not very impressive. He fought mostly skirmishes in Anatolia and was frequently defeated. His recklessness led to his being ambushed on several occasions, with great losses to his own forces. In September 1101, his entire army was destroyed by the Seljuk Turks at Heraclea; William himself barely escaped, and, according to Orderic Vitalis, he reached Antioch with only six surviving companions.

William, like his father and many magnates of the time, had a rocky relationship with the Church. He was excommunicated for "abducting" the Viscountess Dangerose (Dangerosa), the wife of his vassal Aimery I de Rochefoucauld, Viscount of Châtellerault. The lady, however, appears to have been a willing party in the matter. He installed her in the Maubergeonne tower of his castle in Poitiers.

Upon returning to Poitiers from Toulouse, Philippa was enraged to discover a rival woman living in her palace. She appealed to her friends at court and to the Church; however, no noble could assist her since William was their feudal overlord, and whilst the Papal legate Giraud (who was bald) complained to William and told him to return Dangerose to her husband, William's only response was, "Curls will grow on your pate [head] before I part with the Viscountess." Humiliated, Philippa chose in 1116 to retire to the Abbey of Fontevrault and did not survive there long, however: the abbey records state that she died on 28 November 1118.

Relations between the Duke and his elder son William also became strained. Father and son improved their relationship after the marriage of the younger William to Aenor of Châtellerault, Dangerose's daughter by her husband, in 1121.

William's greatest legacy to history was not as a warrior but as a troubadour, a lyric poet employing the Romance vernacular language called Provençal or Occitan. His work is the earliest surviving troubadour poems and songs.

An anonymous 13th-century vida of William remembers him thus:

"The Count of Poitiers was one of the most courtly men in the world and one of the greatest deceivers of women. He was a fine knight at arms, liberal in his womanizing, and a fine composer and singer of songs. He traveled much through the world, seducing women."

He died on 11 February 1127, aged 56, after suffering a short illness.




Buried:
Grave location:
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=90062291

William married Philippa of Toulouse, Countess. Philippa (daughter of William IV of Toulouse and Emma of Mortain) was born ca 1073, Toulouse, Haute-Garonne, Midi-Pyrénées, France; died 28 Nov 1118, Fontevraud Abbey, France; was buried , Fontevraud Abbey Fontevraud-l'Abbaye Departement de Maine-et-Loire Pays de la Loire, France. [Group Sheet]

Notes:

Source:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_X,_Duke_of_Aquitaine

Called the Saint, he was Duke of Aquitaine, Duke of Gascony, and Count of Poitou (as William VIII) from 1126 to 1137. He was the son of William IX by his second wife, Philippa of Toulouse.

William was born in Toulouse during the brief period when his parents ruled the capital. His birth is recorded in the Chronicle of Saint-Maixent for the year 1099: Willelmo comiti natus est filius, equivoce Guillelmus vocatus ("a son was born to Count William, named William like himself"). Later that same year, much to Philippa's ire, Duke William IX mortgaged Toulouse to Philippa's cousin, Bertrand of Toulouse, and then left on Crusade.

Philippa and her infant son William X were left in Poitiers. When Duke William IX returned from his unsuccessful crusade, he took up with Dangerose, the wife of a vassal, and set aside his rightful wife, Philippa. This caused strain between father and son, until 1121 when William X married Aenor de Châtellerault, a daughter of his father's mistress Dangerose by her first husband, Aimery.

William had three children with Aenor:

Eleanor, who later became heiress to the Duchy;

Petronilla, who married Raoul I of Vermandois;

William Aigret, who died at age 4 in 1130, about the time their mother Aenor de Châtellerault died.

William administered his Aquitaine duchy as both a lover of the arts and a warrior. He became involved in conflicts with Normandy (which he raided in 1136, in alliance with Geoffrey V, Count of Anjou who claimed it in his wife's name) and for France.

Even inside his borders, William faced an alliance of the Lusignans and the Parthenays against him, an issue resolved with total destruction of the enemies.

In 1137 William joined the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, but died during the trip.[1] On his deathbed, he expressed his wish to see king Louis VI of France as protector of his fifteen-year-old daughter Eleanor, and to find her a suitable husband. Louis VI naturally accepted this guardianship and married the heiress of Aquitaine to his own son, Louis VII.


Buried:
Grave location, portrait, and cathedral photo:
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=92622584

William married Aenor de Châtellerault. Aenor (daughter of Aimery I, Vicount de Châtellerault and Amauberge (Dangereuse) de L' Isle Bouchard) was born 1103, Châtellerault, Vienne, Poitou-Charentes, France; died Mar 1130, Talmont, Charente-Maritime, Poitou-Charentes, France; was buried , Abbaye de Nieul-sur-l'Autise Nieul-sur-l'Autise Departement de la Vendée Pays de la Loire, France. [Group Sheet]

Notes:

Source:

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

Eleanor was the oldest of three children of William X, Duke of Aquitaine, whose glittering ducal court was renowned in early 12th-century Europe, and his wife, Aenor de Châtellerault, the daughter of Aimery I, Viscount of Châtellerault. She was one of the wealthiest and most powerful women in western Europe during the High Middle Ages and a member of the Ramnulfid dynasty of rulers in southwestern France. She inherited the Duchy of Aquitaine from her father, William X, in 1137, and later became queen of France and of England.

By all accounts, Eleanor's father ensured that she had the best possible education. Eleanor came to learn arithmetic, the constellations, and history. She did learn domestic skills such as household management and the needle arts of embroidery, needlepoint, sewing, spinning, and weaving.[3] Eleanor ended up developing skills in conversation, dancing, games such as backgammon, checkers, and chess, playing the harp, and singing. 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. Eleanor was extroverted, lively, intelligent, and strong-willed.

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.

As Duchess of Aquitaine, Eleanor was the most eligible bride in Europe. Three months after she became duchess, she married King Louis VII of France, son of her guardian, King Louis VI, the Fat. As Queen of France, she participated in the unsuccessful Second Crusade. After the birth of her second daughter Alix, Louis agreed to an annulment given that their union had not produced a son after fifteen years of marriage. Their daughters, Marie and Alix, were declared legitimate and custody was awarded to Louis, while Eleanor's lands were restored to her.

As soon as the annulment was granted, Eleanor became engaged to Henry, Duke of Normandy and Count of Anjou, who became King Henry II of England in 1154. Henry was her third cousin, and eleven years younger. They married eight weeks after the annulment of Eleanor's first marriage.

Over the next thirteen years, she bore Henry eight children: five sons, three of whom would become kings; and three daughters. However, Henry and Eleanor eventually became estranged. Henry imprisoned her in 1173 for supporting her son Henry's revolt against her husband. She was not released until 6 July 1189, when Henry died and their son ascended the English throne as Richard I.

Now queen dowager, Eleanor acted as regent while Richard went on the Third Crusade, where on his return he was captured and held prisoner. Eleanor lived well into the reign of her youngest son, John. By the time of her death, she had outlived all her children except for John and Eleanor.



Buried:
Grave location and tomb effigy:
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=6437&ref=acom

Eleanor married Henry II Plantagenet, King of England. Henry (son of Geoffrey Plantagenet, Count of Anjou and Matilda of England) was born 05 Mar 1133, Le Mans, Sarthe, Pays de la Loire, France; died 06 Jul 1189, Chinon Castle, Indre-et-Loire, Centre, France; was buried , Fontevraud Abbey Fontevraud-l'Abbaye Departement de Maine-et-Loire Pays de la Loire, France. [Group Sheet]