| Notes |
- Also called Alix.
Her origins are contested. At the Henry Project, Stewart Baldwin considers her a "probable" daughter of William/Guillaume III "Tête-d'Étoupe" ("Towhead"), Duke of Aquitaine, who was also William I of Poitou, "possibly" by Adèle/Gerloc, daughter of Rollo of Normandy. Regarding William III as her father, Baldwin writes "No definitive solution is possible on the known evidence, but this parentage is more likely than the alternatives." He presents a long summary of the competing arguments for and against this model. We follow the Henry project, but in this case we note some strong arguments against this ancestry for the wife of Hugh Capet.
From Peter Stewart, 22 Jun 2010, on soc.genealogy.medieval:
The evidence that Hugo Capet's wife was a daughter of Guilhem III, duke of Aquitaine (Guilhem I as count of Poitou) is late and unsatisfactory but nonetheless straightforward enough.
The evidence that she was related to the ducal family of Normandy is more satisfactory and also straightforward.
However, that this relationship came about through Adela/Gerloc is somewhat less satisfactory, and muddied to a degree by contradictions in the sources for this mysterious personage.
Dudo says that Guilhem III proposed his own marriage to a sister of William Longsword of Normandy in the course of a gathering to hunt mating deer near Rouen, attended amongst others by Hugo Capet's father Hugo Magnus described as duke and leading man of the kingdom—the title and position were accorded to him ca 936. William reportedly called his sister a 'girl' at the time, suggesting that she was perhaps ca. 14 and born well after the conversion of her father Rollo to Christianity. Yet William of Jumièges later gave her the pagan name Gerloc, which appears rather anomalous considering that even William (who must have been ca. 20 years older than her) never occurs with any Norse name.
I would not accept the unsupported word of Dudo for anything at all, including his own existence. He was an outstanding nincompoop, and relied for this period on the memories of people who clearly did not have the story of Rollo's life and family straight in the first place.
Dudo's contemporary Ademar of Chabannes, who certainly knew more about the ducal family in Aquitaine though not that in Normandy, says that Rollo's daughter married Ebles Manzer and was mother of Guilhem III/I ("filius Rannulfi, Eblus manzer, Arvernis et Pictavis simul comes promotus est...Acceptaque in conjugium Adala, filia Rosi [sic] Rotomagensis comitis., genuit ex ea Willelmum Caput Stupe.") The monks of Saint-Maixent, where Guilhem's younger brother Ebles was abbot from 936 (NB around the time that Dudo placed the marriage to Guilhem III/I), followed Ademar and made him also a son of Ebles Manzer and the daughter of Rollo ("Eblus filius Ramnulfi...acceptaque in conjugio Adela, filia Rolli Rothomagensis, genuit ex ea Willelmum Caput Stupæ et episcopum Ebulum".)
We don't know much about the marriages of Ebles Manzer—in the 890s he appears to have had a wife named Aremburgis and by February 911 he was married to a lady named Emillana, probably the same as the Countess Alaina who later became a nun. Guilhem III/I occurs with a wife named Adeleidis in the early 950s. There is no evidence apart from Dudo, Ademar and William of Jumièges that any of these women (or perhaps another who does not occur in charters) was a daughter of Rollo and also had the name Gerloc.
There are such wide gaps in our knowledge of these genealogies that trying to fill in a "Norman ancestry alleged for Adelaide" from the fact that her grandson was somehow related to Edward the Confessor is a stretch too far.
From Peter Stewart, 22 Dec 2020, on soc.genealogy.medieval:
The question of the family origin of Hugo Capet's wife has been raised here before, and I have given reasons for doubting her connection to the dukes of Aquitaine.
A further point has just occurred to me that as far as I know has not been brought into the discussion here or in print before:
In 1025 after Robert II (the only son of Hugo and Adelais) had declined to become king of Italy, Guilhem V of Aquitaine decided to support the candidacy of his own eldest son. To further this he asked for support from the king to prevent opposition from Germany, offering inducements to Robert (1,000 pounds and 100 mantles) and to the queen (500 pounds).
But he put forward the request indirectly, through the queen's first cousin Fulco Nerra of Anjou. A letter to the king, written by St Fulbert of Chartres for Fulco on behalf of Guilhem, sets out the terms of the proposal asking the king to reply to Fulco so that he could relay the answer to Guilhem.
This round-about procedure through a proxy related to the king's wife would seem somewhat odd if Guilhem had been a nephew of Adelais, and his alternative candidate for the Lombard crown therefore the king's first cousin once removed.
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Nielsen Hayden genealogy
- 1003
Siblings
d. 3 Apr 963 (Age 63 years)