Agnes of Aquitaine

Notes:

In Spanish, called Ines de Poitou.

Agnes married Amaury VI of Thouars before 1117. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

1. Geoffroi V of Thouars

Agnes married Ramiro II, King of Aragón & Navarre in 1135. Ramiro (son of Sancho V Ramirez, King Of Aragón; King Of Navarre and Felicia of Roucy) was born on 24 Apr 1086; died on 16 Aug 1157. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

1. Petronila of Aragón, Queen of Aragón was born on 29 Jun 1136 in Huesca, Aragón, Spain; died on 13 Oct 1173.

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate death: 10 Feb 1127

Notes:

Also called Guilhèm de Peitieus; Guillaume de Poitiers. Duke of Aquitaine; also, as William VII, Count of Poitou. A leader of the Crusade of 1101, he is much more famous as the first troubador poet whose work has survived.

"Ab la dolcher del temps novel"
By William IX, Duke of Aquitaine

Out of the sweetness of the spring,
The branches leaf, the small birds sing,
Each one chanting in its own speech,
Forming the verse of its new song,
Then is it good a man should reach
For that for which he most does long.

From finest sweetest place I see
No messenger, no word for me,
So my heart can't laugh or rest,
And I don't dare try my hand,
Until I know, and can attest,
That all things are as I demand.

This love of ours it seems to be
Like a twig on a hawthorn tree
That on the tree trembles there
All night, in rain and frost it grieves,
Till morning, when the rays appear
Among the branches and the leaves.

So the memory of that dawn to me
When we ended our hostility,
And a most precious gift she gave,
Her loving friendship and her ring:
Let me live long enough, I pray,
Beneath her cloak my hand to bring.

I've no fear that tongues too free
Might part me from Sweet Company,
I know with words how they can stray
In gossip, yet that's a fact of life:
No matter if others boast of love,
We have the loaf, we have the knife!

Translated by A. S. Kline. © 2009; All Rights Reserved. This work may be freely reproduced, stored, and transmitted, electronically or otherwise, for any non-commercial purpose.

"For any of the later Provençals, i.e., the high-brows, we have to...'put ourselves into the Twelfth Century' etc. Guillaume, writing a century earlier, is just as much of our age as of his own."
[Ezra Pound, The Spirit of Romance]

And Poictiers, you know, Guillaume Poictiers,
had brought the song up out of Spain
with the singers and viels...
[Ezra Pound, Canto VIII]

He is also remembered for his specularly public affair with a woman named Dangereuse, the wife of his vassal Aimery I of Châtellerault. Aside from its interest as pure medieval melodrama, he was the paternal grandfather of Eleanor of Aquitaine, and Dangereuse was Eleanor's maternal grandmother.

William married Philippa of Toulouse in 1094. Philippa (daughter of William IV of Toulouse and Emma of Mortain) died on 28 Nov 1117. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate death: 28 Nov 1118, Fontévrault Abbey, near Chinon, Anjou, France

Notes:

Also called Mathilda; Maud. Regent of Toulouse.

Ancestral Roots and other sources to the contrary, she was probably never married to Sancho V Ramirez (1043-94), king of Aragon. Wikipedia's article on Philippa of Toulouse cites two sources to this effect:

"Szabolcs de Vajay, 'Ramire II le Moine, roi d'Aragon et Agnes de Poitou dans l'histoire et la légende', in Me?langes offerts a? Rene? Crozet, 2 vol, Poitiers, 1966, vol 2, p 727-750; and Ruth E Harvey, 'The wives of the first troubadour Duke William IX of Aquitaine', in Journal of Medieval History, vol 19, 1993, p 315. Harvey states that, contrary to prior assumptions, William IX was certainly Philippa of Toulouse's only husband. Vajay states that the marriage to an unnamed king of Aragon reported by a non-contemporary chronicler is imaginary even though it has appeared broadly in modern histories, and likewise he cites J de Salarrullana de Dios, Documentos correspondientes al reinado de Sancho Ramirez, Saragossa, 1907, vol I, nr 51, p 204-207 to document that Sancho's wife Felicie was clearly still married to him just months before his death, making the marriage to Philippa several years earlier, as reported in several modern popular biographies of her granddaughter, completely unsupportable."

Notes:

As Count of Poitou, he was called William VI; as Duke of Aquitaine, William VIII. Also Duke of Gascony.

Guy-Geoffrey married Hildegarde of Burgundy in 1069. Hildegarde (daughter of Robert I and Ermengarde of Anjou) was born about 1050; died after 1104. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Duke and Count of Toulouse.

William married Emma of Mortain before 1080. Emma (daughter of Robert de Mortain and Maud de Montgomery) died after 1134. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Ancestral Roots and Richardson's Royal Ancestry have a 54-year spread between their two different death dates for Emma of Mortain.

Notes:

Count of Poitou. Duke of Aquitaine.

William married Agnes of Burgundy. Agnes (daughter of Otto-William of Burgundy and Ermentrude de Roucy) was born about 995; died on 10 Nov 1068; was buried in Abbey of St. Nicolas de Poitiers, Vienne, Poitou-Charentes, France. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Also called Agnes de Macon. Duchess of Aquitaine.

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate death: 21 May 1076

Notes:

"The Old." Duke of Burgundy.

"In 1025, with the death of his eldest brother Hugh Magnus, he and Henry rebelled against their father and defeated him, forcing him back to Paris. In 1031, after the death of his father the king, Robert participated in a rebellion against his brother, in which he was supported by his mother, Constance of Arles. Peace was only achieved when Robert was given Burgundy (1032). Throughout his reign, he was little more than a robber baron who had no control over his own vassals, whose estates he often plundered, especially those of the Church. He seized the income of the diocese of Autun and the wine of the canons of Dijon. He burgled the abbey of St-Germain at Auxerre. In 1055, he repudiated his wife, Helie of Semur, and assassinated her brother Joceran and murdered her father, his father-in-law, Lord Dalmace I of Semur, with his own hands. In that same year, the bishop of Langres, Harduoin, refused to dedicate the church of Sennecy so as not "to be exposed to the violence of the duke." [Wikipedia]

Robert married Ermengarde of Anjou about 1048. Ermengarde (daughter of Foulques III "Nerra" and Hildegarde de Lorraine) was born about 1018; died on 18 Mar 1076. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate death: 21 Mar 1076

Notes:

Also called Ermengarde-Blanche.

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate birth: 991

Notes:

Count of Toulouse.

Pons married Almodis de La Marche about 1040, and was divorced after 1053. Almodis (daughter of Bernard I and Amelie) was born about 1010; died on 16 Oct 1071. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate birth: Abt 1020

Notes:

Married Hugh V of Lusignan around 1038. After three children, he divorced her "due to consanguinity" and arranged for her to marry Pons of Toulouse. She had several children by Pons and was still married to him in 1053 when she was abducted by Ramon Berenguer I, Count of Barcelona, who kidnapped her from Narbonne with help from his ally, the Muslim emir of Tortosa. Ramon married her immediately and set about getting her with children. Pope Victor II excommunicated them both, but the writ was rescinded in 1056.

From Wikipedia:

Almodis maintained contact with her former husbands and many children, and in 1066/1067 she traveled to Toulouse for her daughter's wedding [Almodis, who married Count Pierre of Melgueil]. A few years before, in 1060, [her first husband] Hugh V of Lusignan had revolted against his lord, Duke William VIII of Aquitaine, in support of Almodis' son [by her second husband] William IV of Toulouse.* Her sons supported one another in military campaigns; Hugh VI of Lusignan [by her first husband], Raymond IV of Toulouse [by her second], and Berenguer Ramon [by her third] all took the Cross.

*****

She was murdered in October 1071 by one Pere-Ramon who had been Ramon Berenguer's heir before Ramon married her. Wikipedia: "He was disinherited and exiled for his crime, and fled the country. When his father died in 1076, Barcelona was split between Berenguer Ramon and Ramon Berenguer, Almodis' sons. The family history of murder did not end with Pedro Ramon, as Berenguer Ramon earned his nickname 'The Fratricide' when he killed his own twin brother."

*****

* See her first husband Hugh V's entry: she seems to have persuaded him to enter the fray on behalf of her son by husband #2, and he lost his life by so doing.

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate birth: Abt 1040, of Mortain, Manche, Basse-Normandie, France

Notes:

Earl of Cornwall. Count of Mortain. Also called Robert de Mortaigne.

One of the five additional persons agreed upon by both David C. Douglas and Geoffrey H. White, and recorded in Complete Peerage XII/1 appendix L, as companions of the Conqueror at Hastings, in addition to the fifteen "proven Companions".

Robert married Maud de Montgomery before 1066. Maud (daughter of Roger de Montgomery and Mabel de Bellême) died between 1082 and 1084; was buried in Grestain Abbey, Fatouville-Grestain, Normandy, France. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate death: 21 Sep 1082

Notes:

Called "Fierebras," "Iron-Arm." Count of Poitou.

William married Emma of Blois in 968. Emma (daughter of Thibaut I of Blois and Luitgarde de Vermandois) was born in 950; died about 1003. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Buried: 21 Sep 1027, Dijon Cathedral, Dijon, Côte-d'Or, Burgundy, France

Notes:

Count of Burgundy.

Also called Othon Guillaume.

Otto-William married Ermentrude de Roucy. Ermentrude (daughter of Renaud I and Alberade de Lorraine) was born about 950; died on 5 Mar 1002. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate death: 5 Mar 1003
• Alternate death: 5 Mar 1004
• Alternate death: 1005

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate birth: 27 Mar 971, Orléans, Loiret, France
• Alternate birth: 27 Mar 972, Orléans, Loiret, France

Notes:

Called "The Pious."

Robert married Constance of Provence, Queen Consort of France about May 1004. Constance (daughter of Guillaume I "le Liberateur" and Adelaide-Blanche of Anjou) was born between 985-990; died on 22 Jul 1034 in Melun, Seine-et-Marne, Île-de-France, France; was buried in Abbey of Saint-Denis, Saint-Denis, France. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate birth: Abt 986
• Alternate death: 25 Jul 1032, Château Melun, Seine-et-Marne, Île-de-France, France

Notes:

Also called Constance de Toulouse; Constance of Arles.

"Queen Constance was not someone to be caught with down a dark alley, or even a well-lit street -- she was a violent termagant who once poked out a priest's eye with a stick when undertaking crowd control at a heresy trial. She fomented war between her sons over the succession after Robert II's death." [Peter Stewart, SGM, 3 Jun 2022]

Notes:

"The Black." Count of Anjou.

Died while returning from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

Foulques married Hildegarde de Lorraine after 1000. Hildegarde died on 1 Apr 1040 in Jerusalem. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate death: 1 Apr 1046, Jerusalem

Notes:

Guillaume III; Taillefer; Tallefer; Tallifer. Count of Toulouse.

William married Emma of Provence. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Mentioned 1006.

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate death: 1047

Notes:

Comte de la Marche and Périgord.

Bernard married Amelie. Amelie was born about 985; died in 1072. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Also called Ainal. She is shown in various sources as of the families d'Angoulême, de Montignac, or d'Aulnay, but her parentage is unknown.

Herluin married Herleve about 1030. Herleve was born about 1003; died about 1050; was buried in Grestain Abbey, Fatouville-Grestain, Normandy, France. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate death: Aft 1051

Notes:

Also called Arlette. Also called Herleve "de Falaise", this predicated on the belief that she was the daughter of a tanner or forester named Fulbert from the town of Falaise.

Notes:

Earl of Shrewsbury. Also styled, variously, as Earl of Arundel, of Chichester, of Sussex, and of Shropshire. Regent in Normandy during the Conquest. A loyal servant to the dukes of Normandy, he became an important administrator in post-Conquest England and Wales, and (following the disgrace of bishop Odo) the richest of William's tenants-in-chief. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography points out that "Alone of all the Conqueror's vassals, Roger de Montgomery gave his name to a British county, appropriately in Wales." He died as a monk.

Roger married Mabel de Bellême about 1050. Mabel (daughter of William I Talvas and Hildeburg) died in Dec 1077 in Bures-sur-Dives, Normandy, France; was buried in Troarn, Calvados, Normandy, France. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate death: 2 Dec 1079

Notes:

Also called Mabel Talvas; Dame de Alencon, de Seez, and Belleme; Countess of Shrewsbury and Lady of Arundel.

From the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography:

Earl Roger's first wife, Mabel de Bellême, has been depicted unforgettably for posterity by Orderic Vitalis, though that historian never saw her. He describes her as 'a forceful and worldly woman, cunning, garrulous, and extremely cruel', 'a perfidious woman', and 'a cruel woman, who had shed the blood of many and had forcibly disinherited many lords'; and he recounts several stories to her discredit related to him by colleagues at St Evroult. Whatever allowances can be made for Mabel there must have been something particularly aggressive and brutal about her for four of her vassals to ride at night into her castle at Bures [-sur-Dives] and cut off her head as she lay in bed after a bath. Her murderer Hugh Bunel was among those whom she had disinherited and was never caught. The date of the murder must be December 1077, not 1082 as long accepted from a marginal note in the editio princeps of Orderic. There is evidence that Mabel, like a very few other baronial wives, was a tenant-in-chief in England, but no evidence that she ever visited that land or the Montgomery estates there.

Notes:

Also called William "Towhead". William III, Duke of Aquitaine; William I of Poitou.

Guillaume married Adèle of Normandy in 935. Adèle (daughter of Rollo and Poppa) died after Feb 942. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate death: Aft 14 Oct 962
• Alternate death: Aft 969

Notes:

Supposedly also called Geirlaug, Gerloc of Normandy. Widely said to have been a daughter of Rollo "of Normandy", by his supposed wife "Poppa", but various aspects of this are doubted by many. See the Henry Project for much measured discussion; also see Peter Stewart's comments on SGM in 2010, quoted in our entry for her (possible) (maybe) daughter Adélaïde, wife of Hugh Capet.

Notes:

Count of Blois and Chartres.

Also known as Theobald; "le Tricheur" (the Trickster, or the Cheat).

Thibaut married Luitgarde de Vermandois between 942 and 945. Luitgarde (daughter of Heribert II and (Unknown daughter of Robert I, King of France)) died after 978. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Joint king with his father. They were both deposed.

Adalberto married Gerberge. Gerberge (daughter of Lambert of Châlon and Adélaïde) died between 986 and 992. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Also called Ragebold. Count of Roucy 948-967. Count of Reims.

Renaud married Alberade de Lorraine. Alberade (daughter of Giselbert I and Gerberga of Saxony) was born about 931; was buried in Abbey of Saint-Remi, Reims, Marne, Champagne-Ardenne, France. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate birth: Aft 939
• Alternate birth: 941

Notes:

Nicknamed le Grand or Capet. First of the Capetian kings of France.

Hugues married Adélaïde, Queen Consort of France in 968. Adélaïde (daughter of Guillaume "Tête-d'Étoupe" and Adèle of Normandy) died on 15 Jun 1003. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate death: 15 Jun 1004
• Alternate death: 15 Jun 1005
• Alternate death: 15 Jun 1006

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.

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate death: 994

Notes:

Count of Arles, 967. Marquess of Provence from before 967 to 993-94. Sometimes enumerated as Guillaume II.

Guillaume married Adelaide-Blanche of Anjou after 984. Adelaide-Blanche (daughter of Foulques II "Le Bon" and Gerberge) was born between 945 and 950; died in 1026 in Montmajour, Bouches-du-Rhone, Provence, France. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

"Wife of four husbands, and the ancestress of important comital families through three of her marriages, Adélaïde, alias Blanche, was also briefly queen of France, and the mother of another French queen. Yet, in the early nineteenth century, scholars were still confused about her identity. Her story has to be pieced together from various records which, for example, mention an Alaiz, mother of count Pons de Gévaudan, or a Blanca, wife of Louis V, king of France, or an Adelaidis, cui prenomen erat Candida, mother of queen Constance, and only in hindsight is it clear that these records refer to the same woman. The discovery of the work of the historian Richer in the 1830's added a key piece to the puzzle by mentioning three of Adélaïde's marriages, but historians were slow to take advantage of the new information. Nevertheless, by the late nineteeth century, historians had accepted that Adélaïde, alias Blanche, daughter of Foulques II of Anjou, had been successively married to Étienne de Brioude (at the time often incorrectly called count of Gévaudan), king Louis V of France, and Guillaume I (or II) of Provence, and that she was the mother by the last of queen Constance, wife of king Robert II of France, although the marriage to Raymond of "Gothia" was still widely doubted. More recently, in the face of clear proof that Adélaïde was the mother of Guillaume "Taillefer", count of Toulouse, it has been recognized that her marriage to the obscure Raymond was genuine." [The Henry Project]

Notes:

Count of Anjou; Count of Châlon.

Also called Geoffrey Greycloak; Gaufridus; Gauzfredus Grisegonella.

Died while besieging the fortress of Marçon.

Geoffroi married Adèle of Troyes about 965. Adèle (daughter of Robert and Adelais) died after 6 Mar 974. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Also called Adele of Vermandois; Adelaide of Vermandois; Adelaide de Chalons.

Notes:

Also called Pons II; Raymond Pons. Count of Toulouse.

Raymond married Garsinda of Gascony. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Count of Provence.

Roubaud married Ermengarde. Ermengarde died about 28 Aug 1057. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Count de la Marche and of Périgord.

Adelbert married Aisceline of Limoges. Aisceline (daughter of Geraud of Limoges and Rothilde de Brosse) died between 1007 and 1010. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Roger married Emma. Emma died after 1067. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate death: Between 1055 and 1060
• Alternate death: 1070

William married Hildeburg. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]