All My Capetians

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

As a history geek, I HATE the way history is taught to most people: as a dry, boring recounting of dates and places. History is in fact the biggest, bawdiest soap opera possible, replete with doomed love affairs, betrayals, scheming, adultery, lies, insanity, illegitimate offspring, and murder.

In this thread, I intend you to walk you through the history of much of the early Capetian dynasty of medieval France, all while introducing y’all to the cast of characters and their goings-on in a hopefully amusing and informative manner.

France in the 10th century was just emerging from the twilight of the Carolingian era and consolidating into a great medieval kingdom under the guidance of the Capetian dynasty that had ruled France for a couple of generations. The Loire valley and the Ile-de-France were the domain of the Franks. Several other principalities made up France, nominally under the rule of the French king, but practically autonomous. The Bretons, a Celtic people considered to be savage and bigamous by the Franks, had established themselves on the Armorican pennisula long ago; Normandy had been settled by the even fiercer Vikings, who quickly enough adopted Christianity and took to speaking French and drinking French wines; Aquitaine in the south, where *langue d’oc *was spoken, ruled by a duke who was a king in all but name; and Flanders and Burgundy were both ‘marches’ originally carved out as buffer zones against the Northmen. A multitude of languages were spoken, including the language of the Basques, who ‘bay like hounds’.

We shall begin with Robert II, himself the son of Hugh (Hugues) Capet, so-called because of the short cape he was fond of wearing. Hugh Capet was having some trouble finding a suitable bride for his son who was royal, but not too closely related to Robert to attract the ire of religious authorities. In his quest to find a bride for Robert, Hugh sent envoys to Constantinople for a Byzantine princess in 988, but they came back empty-handed.

Now, about this time Arnulf II, count of Flanders died, leaving two small children and a widow, Rozala, herself the daughter of Berengario II, king of Italy. Hugh Capet apparently decided that Rozala would make a wonderful match for his son and heir, despite her almost twice Robert’s age. Arnulf II died in March 988, and by April 1, 988 Rozala was calling herself ‘Susanna regina’ 1. As soon as his father died in 996, Robert II dumped Rozala-Suzanna and straightaway married a woman more to his taste, Berthe of Burgundy, herself the widow of Eudes I, count of Blois.

She was, unfortunately, also his second cousin, and Robert had been the godfather of one of her sons by her first husband, which made their union incestuous by blood and spiritual affinity in the eyes of the church. Popes Sylvester II and Gregory V condemned their marriage (indeed, Sylvester tried to talk Berthe out of marrying Robert before they even walked down the aisle). When the couple refused to divorce, the kingdom of France was excommunicated in 1001.

According to Peter Damian’s letter to Didier, Abbot of Monte Cassino, Berthe gave birth to a child “born with the neck and head of a goose.” Taking this as a sign of God’s displeasure with their king’s marriage, the royal servants were horror-stricken and abandoned the royal couple, all but for two loyal servants who remained behind, but who tossed everything Robert touched into the fire for fear of contamination. The child did not live long; it probably suffered from a disease known as microcephaly. This tragedy seems to have been the death knell for their marriage, and Robert and Berthe divorced 2.

In 1004, Robert married again, this time to Constance, the daughter of the count of Provence. She was young and fertile, producing the required heirs, but she also could’ve served as the inspiration for the character of Livia on The Sopranos. Constance had a nasty temper, and at one point struck her confessor in the face with a scepter with such force that she put his eye out. Robert despised her, and by 1009 his friend Hugh de Beauvais was hard at work trying to convince Robert to get rid of her. Unwilling to be tossed on the divorce scrap heap like the last couple of Robert’s wives, Constance turned to her notorious cousin, Fulk Nerra of Anjou, for help.

Fulk III, count of Anjou, known as Fulk Nerra, was one of the great medieval villains. He was a fiend, a plunderer, an oath-breaker, a murderer. He came at anyone who crossed him with incredible violence and left scorched earth wherever he went. In 992, he cut off the hand of his brother-in-law, Conan of Brittany, before killing him. When he caught his wife, Elisabeth de Vendôme, *en flagrante delicto *3 with a shepherd in 999, Fulk Nerra had her burned alive and in the process burned most of the city of Angers to the ground.

Fulk Nerra sent twelve of his knights to stab Hugh de Beauvais to death right in front of Robert. Seeing his friend butchered in front of him seems to have royally pissed off Robert. In 1010 he packed up and headed for Rome to seek a divorce from Constance so he could remarry Berthe. For some reason (divine intervention or political neccesity) Robert abandoned this plan and returned to Constance.

In later years, Constance made more trouble by turning her husband against their son, and then her sons one against the other. She first pitted Robert against their eldest son, Hugh Magnus. According to Raoul Glaber, Hugh Magnus wanted to share power with his father, but Constance, because she was “extremely grasping and dominated her spouse”, opposed this idea and turned on Hugh Magnus “as if he were an enemy, born of another lineage.”

A rift grew between the parents and their son before Hugh Magnus’ sudden death in 1025. With the loss of their eldest son, Robert and Constance now quarreled over the choice of successor. Robert preferred their second-surviving son, Henri, while Constance supported their third son, also named Robert. She hated Henri, thinking of him as a ‘hypocrite, lazy, weak, and ready to take after his father’, but her son Robert was a complete monster. This younger Robert, better known as Robert of Burgundy, burgled abbeys, stole wine from monks, and murdered his father-in-law, Dalmace de Semur, with his own hands. He divorced Dalmace’s daughter Helie so that he could be free to marry his cousin, Ermengarde, herself the daughter of Fulk Nerra, who’s own husband had likewise conveniently died 4.

Robert II chose Henri as his successor despite Constance’s scheming, but in 1027 Constance turned both their sons against their father. Henri and Robert of Burgundy attacked and pillaged King Robert’s villages and castles and caused so much havoc that King Robert was forced to agree to all their demands to make peace with them. No sooner did Robert II die in 1031 than “there arose again between the mother and her sons a cruel discord”. This time, both Henri, now King Henri I, and Robert of Burgundy came after Constance. Fulk Nerra joined them, Constance’s mad-dog cousin having turned against her. Henri beseiged Constance at Pontoise and swore to put everyone to the sword; Constance came out and fell at his feet and begged for mercy. Her days of causing strife at an end, Constance died in 1034.

Now onto King Henri I.

Henri was one of those nonentities who didn’t leave much of a mark on history. He spent most of his reign fighting one or the other of his brothers, or that upstart William the Bastard in Normandy 6.

He was almost as unlucky with regards to marital history as his father. Henri was first betrothed to Mathilda, the daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor Konrad II, but she died in Germany in 1034 before they could be wed 5. Henri instead married Matilda of Friesia, the niece of his deceased fiancee. They had one daughter who died very young, and then Matilda died in 1044 following an emergency Caesarean. Around forty, down one fiancee and one wife, with no heirs 7, Henri went searching around the courts of Europe for another blooded bride who was not a cousin.

At last, in 1051, envoys arrived from faraway Russia with Anna, daughter of the Grand Duke Yaroslav of Kiev, a princess of a dynasty that had only recently converted to Christianity. Nevertheless, Kiev was remarkable for its sophistication (recommended good manners in Kiev included eating and drinking without unseemly noise, and refraining from beating one’s wife). Anna is famous for signing her own name in neat Cyrillic letters on royal documents, surrounded by illiterate French Xs. Anna produced several children, but according to Levin and Pushkareva, “her husband became more and more distant; he preferred the company of comely troubadours.”

Henri finally died in 1060, after disobeying his physician’s orders not to mix his medicine with water. Anna eloped with Raoul, the count of Valois. They wed, despite the small (tiny, insignificant) detail that Raoul already had a wife who was still alive. The wife complained to Pope Alexander II, who invalidated the bigamous union, but Raoul and Anna seem to have remained together anyway. One hopes Anna achieved some marital happiness after putting up with Henri for so many years.

Up next: Philippe I! Bigamy, bigamy, and more bigamy!

Footnotes:

  1. It’s worth noting that Rozala’s name change to Susanna seems to have had symbolic value: St. Susanna was martyred for refusing to marry the son and heir of the Roman emperor, a hint that Rozala-Susanna herself was no more thrilled with the marriage to Robert than Robert himself was.
  2. Rozala-Suzanna died in 1003, being quite done with kings thankyouverymuch.
  3. That means they were having sex.
  4. I suspect Robert and Ermengarde deserved one another.
  5. Perhaps she died upon discovering how uninspiring he was?
  6. William of Normandy was married to Henri’s niece, the diminutive but strong-willed Matilda of Flanders. William invaded England in 1066, and his eventual heir was his and Matilda’s youngest son, Henry I of England, who was named after his French uncle.
  7. Understandably he was reluctant to leave the kingdom to his brother Robert. Robert of Burgundy wasn’t fit to run a hot-dog stand, much less a kingdom.

SOURCES:

Adair, Penelope. “Constance of Arles: A Study in Duty and Frustration”, Capetian Women, ed. Kathleen Nolan, 2003.
Bouchard, Constance Brittain. Those of My Blood: Constructing Noble Families in Medieval Francia, 2001.
Dhondt, Jan. “Sept femmes et un trio de rois,” Contributions a l’histoire
economique et sociale, 3 (1964-65), 42-44
Duby, Georges. France in the Middle Ages 987-1460, 1993.

2

Wow - now that’s history. Read me another story mommy! :wink:

3

I’m cheering for Anna. :smiley:

4

Sweet! Fun History! I want more!

5

I was rereading parts of What If?/What If? 2 over the last few days. One of the essays explores What If… France hadn’t taken major offense at Bismark’s snubs, and the Franco-Prussian War of the 1870s never happened? (France’s loss of Alsace and Lorraine in that war was a major issue in WWI / the Great War, and Bismark used the war to unite the German states under a strong central government, namely his chancellorship.)

Then on reread of this thread, I realized Mississippienne is concentrating on the Capet dynasty. It’ll be curious if the Capet line has an eventual impact on the Franco-Prussian war.

6

I would have given the thread the title “Oh Capetian, my Capetian”, but that’s just me.

7

My word, this is better than A Song of Ice and Fire. I’m waiting for the next episode.

Incidentally, is the reason for the Loire Valley being the scene of all those Renaissance castles that is was an old Frankish stronghold, or is there another explanation for them?

8

Wikipedia says Capet is a “byname of uncertain meaning” and that the above is folk etymology. I remember reading in a high school textbook is that he liked to knock peoples’ hats off, thus the name.

Great tale, can’t wait for more!

9

I love this! Can’t wait for Eleanor of Aquitaine!

10

Why is the Church antipathy toward marrying first or second cousins so strong re it being practically incestuous? If anything I thought this issue was far more relaxed in times past where your choice of non-related partners was limited by distance and access.

11

Welcome to the wild world of consanguinity and affinity. In the 1059 Council of Rome, the impediment was within 7 degrees, and that extended to both consanguinity (blood relationship) and affinity (relationship through sexual intercourse).

The reasons were basically, first, to prevent inbreeding, and second, to discourage clannishness. There was the idea that a ban like that would encourage diversity and friendship among the people of the world. . .that it would remind everyone that they were one people.

12

Fun read - well done. And I *totally *get the need to get that type of stuff off your chest. I do the same in my areas of geekery from time to time…

This should really be in, I dunno, GQ or Cafe Society though…

…much more geeky fun than dating threads, IMHO :wink:

I am looking forward to starting Lords of the Sea by John Hale, about the emergence of Athens as a naval power. Not Capetian, but historic :wink: and the book is supposed to be very readable…

13

This is why I LOVE history. It’s all just a long-running soap opera.

Wait until she gets to dear Richard the Lion Heart, aka Richard I of England, whose father was Henry II of England and whose mother was Eleanor of Aquitaine. Eleanor had an exciting early life in France, then fell in love with an English dude several years younger than she.

You have to understand that William the Conqueror gave England to a younger son because his possessions in France were considered the better deed. As he ran through his will, his youngest son got nothing but some coin, which is why King John was known as “John Lackland”. This is the King John who effectively ruled England and made political hay while Richard I was off to the Crusades, and the King John who figures in the Robin Hood tales. Richard was caught in France on his way home and his ransom practically beggered England - John got the bad rap cause Richard was England’s darlin’. And it was John who had to raise the cash while Richard languished in a French prison.

All nifty reading for students of English history.

an seanchai

14

John was Henry II’s youngest son, not William the Conqueror’s.

:dubious: According to historian Marion Meade’s biography Eleanor of Aquitaine, Richard’s chancellor, William Longchamp, was regent, at least until he was forced to make an ignominious departure. Richard was taken captive in Austria, not France. Eleanor raised the ransom and personally escorted it to Speyer, to give it to the Holy Roman Emperor, Henry Hohenstaufen, Richard’s jailer.

John got the bad rap because he lost almost all the English Crown’s possessions in France by neglect. By December of 1203 all that was left was Rouen and some Norman ports.

Maybe you should read that book.

15

Maybe you should read a more contemporary treatment of King John. Even the WL Warren from the 60s gives a more nuanced treatment.

16

I’d like that. Is the one you referenced your favorite?

17

For King John, I’d recommend Sidney Painter’s “The Reign of King John” (1979) and “King John: New Interpretations” (1999) by S.D. Church. John and Richard I have their part to play in the Capetian saga, but they have not been born yet! So instead we bravely forge ahead.

Captain Amazing, I like “O Capetian, my Capetian!” That can be the title for the last episode of All My Capetians; this episode is entitled “The Queen, Her King, His Mistress, and Her Husband.”

King Philippe I was born in 1052 to Henri I and Anna Yaroslavna. He was the first of their two sons, the younger one being Hugh Magnus. Philippe was only eight-years-old when he became king on the death of his father, and the regency was taken up by his mother Anna and Baldwin V, count of Flanders, who was married to Henri I’s sister Adele. After Anna ran off with Count Raoul, Baldwin V became effective ruler of the kingdom until his own death in 1067, at which point Philippe began ruling on his own.

Baldwin V’s heir was his son, Baldwin VI, who was Philippe’s first cousin. But Baldwin VI died in 1070, leaving a young son of his own, Arnulf III, as his heir. Baldwin VI’s brother, Robert the Frisian, usurped the county and killed his teenage nephew in battle in 1071, and some shit went down before Philippe I decided to make nice with Robert the Frisian by marrying Robert’s pudgy stepdaughter, Bertha of Holland.

Bertha gave birth to a daughter, Constance 1, and then she was barren for several years. Finally, a hermit named Arnoul prayed to the heavens and then the kingdom was blessed with the birth of a son, Louis, in 1081. Having to wait ten years for an heir did not endear Philippe to his queen, as later events would show.

As for Philippe himself, he was not wildly popular with the chroniclers of his day. Towards the end of his life he became quite fat, and Orderic Vitalis calls him “indolent, fat, and unfit for war”. Guibert of Nogent declared that Philippe was “a man most mercenary in what belonged to God”. Nevertheless, Philippe was an active monarch and led many war campaigns. He was also responsible for one of the rare Capetian witticisms; during one of his conflicts with William the Conqueror, Philippe quipped that William was “lying in” at a church, a reference to William’s big belly, so swollen as to seem pregnant.

At this point, I’d like to check back in on the extended family of Philippe’s wicked uncle Robert of Burgundy. Robert, as you may well remember from the last episode, had divorced the wife who’d borne him six children, brutally murdered his ex-wife’s father, then illegally married his cousin, Ermengarde, daughter of the notorious Fulk Nerra. Her own husband had obligingly dropped dead, leaving her a widow with two boys named Fulk and Geoffrey. Ermengarde’s brother Geoffrey II of Anjou died childless, leaving her and her children the heirs to Anjou.

Robert of Burgundy and Ermengarde had one daughter together: Hildegarde-Audearde, who would marry (consanguineously!) her twice-divorced, much-older cousin, Duke William VIII (Gui-Geoffrey) of Aquitaine, to whom she bore a son, inevitably named William, in 1071. Keep these people in mind, they’ll be important later.

Meanwhile, Hildegarde-Audearde’s elder half-brothers were quarreling fiercely. The elder, Geoffrey III, was by rights count of Anjou, but his younger brother Fulk rebelled against him and imprisoned him in 1068, keeping Geoffrey III locked up until 1096 (!!!). Fulk then took control of Anjou and began calling himself Count Fulk IV, and I suppose no one was fool enough to start shit with him about it.

Now, Fulk IV was the sort of man who changed wives the way most people change socks. First there was Hildegarde de Baugency, who’s crime was bearing him a daughter instead of a son. Then came Ermengarde de Bourbon, who did bear him a son, but who got tossed aside anyway. She was followed by Orengarde de Châtel-Aillon, and fourthly a daughter of the count of Brienne. By about 1090 he’d married the young and beautiful Bertrade de Montfort 2. Bertrade gave Fulk IV another son (yet another Fulk) but she knew from Ermengarde de Bourbon’s example that this didn’t neccesarily mean anything.

Apparently Fulk IV and Bertrade had an argument and Fulk called her something to the effect of “vile harlot”. Bertrade decided that she wouldn’t take his crap anymore, and she endeavored to leave Fulk IV before he could leave her. She sent a letter to King Philippe I 3 informing him that she wanted to leave her husband and come live with him and be his lover. King Philippe was like, “Hmmm, lemme thinkaboutitYES.” They hatched a plan. On June 4, 1093 Bertrade snuck out of St. John’s Church in Tours and met up with King Philippe, who was waiting for her a short distance away.

Queen Bertha, understandably perturbed, complained about her husband eloping with the countess of Anjou. Philippe locked her up in a castle in Montreuil, alleging that she’d grown fat. While this was probably true, even then that wasn’t really considered cause for locking your lawful wife and queen in a tower.

Philippe was so enamoured with Bertrade that he decided to marry her. Everything would’ve been hunky-dory were it not for a fellow called Yves, Bishop of Chartres, who due to some boring political stuff, refused to attend the wedding and then wrote a letter saying, “You will not see me in Paris with your wife, of whom I know not if she may be your wife.” In other words, he was saying the whole thing was a sham. Which it kinda was, considering both Bertrade’s husband and Philippe’s wife were very much breathing, but it was still rather rude to point it out. Yves then made a fuss to the Pope, who forbid the prelates to crown Bertrade queen and threatened to excommunicate Philippe. Yves caused even more trouble and there was some talk of having him arrested. Philippe’s wife Bertha, who had been cast-off like a worn shoe, died, so the marriage to Bertrade didn’t look *quite *as illegal anymore.

Fulk IV had spent the last couple of years consoling himself with other women, but then the Pope got involved and when the Pope barked “Jump”, Fulk replied, “How high?” Right on cue he started griping about his adulterous wife and accusing Philippe of incest (since he was related to Philippe, that created a “spiritual affinity” between Bertrade and Philippe). But Bertrade difused the whole thing by inviting Fulk and Philippe to a banquet, then serving them with her own hands. Afterwards, Fulk and Philippe became homies and Bertrade and Philippe even visited Fulk in Anjou in 1106.

Now the Pope was super-pissed. Philippe finally relented and publically split from Bertrade, but the whole thing turned out to be a feint, however, as they were soon back together. The fact that they kept having babies together 4 probably tipped everyone off. The Pope Gregory VII declared that Philippe was a tyrant and possessed by the devil. According to William of Malmesbury, when they visited towns and heard the ringing of the church bells (believed to drive away thunder and evil), Philippe would turn to Bertrade and say, “Do you hear, my beauty, how they drive us away?”

Eventually, everyone more or less just gave up, and they went right on together until 1108, when Philippe kicked the bucket.

Orderic Vitalis makes Bertrade into an evil stepmother, saying she was a sorceress and tried to kill her stepson Louis with dark magic. He claims that she was lascivious and ambitious, a Bad Girl eager to trade up from a count to a king. According to John of Marmoutier, no man ever praised Bertrade “save for her beauty”; William of Malmesbury compared her to an angel. Whatever the truth, she retired to Fontevrault, and lived out her last days dazzling people with her beauty, arguing with her stepson Louis over her dower, and encouraging her sons to make trouble. Her daughter Cécile went off to Outremer as a child-bride and later met up with her half-brother Fulk V there when he became king of Jerusalem. Bertrade’s grandsons were Geoffrey of Anjou (the papa of Henry II of England) and King Baldwin III and King Amaury I of Jerusalem.

I’ll quickly mention Philippe’s brother, Hugh Magnus. He married the heiress of Vermandois and had a pack of children 5 before leaving on the Crusade of 1101, where he distinguished himself only in the loudness of his boasting. Here’s an excerpt from his astonishingly pompous letter to the Byzantine emperor Alexios I:

“Know, O King, that I am King of Kings, and superior to all, who are under the sky. You are now permitted to greet me, on my arrival, and to receive me with magnificence, as befits my nobility.”

He died of the stabbity while in battle with the Turks. His eldest son and heir was Raoul I, count of Vermandois. Don’t forget Raoul; you’ll be encountering him soon.

Footnotes:

  1. Constance would grow up to marry Bohemond of Taranto, the archetypal sexy barbarian warlord of the First Crusade.
  2. The Simon de Montfort who died at Evesham was her great-great-grandnephew.
  3. Orderic Vitalis, who relates this story, doesn’t specify WHY Bertrade chose Philippe, but I like to think it was because she wanted to leave Fulk IV for the most important man she could possibly get her hands on. I mean, what wronged wife wouldn’t want to rub it in her jerk husband’s face that she’s leaving his ass for the goddamn King of France?
  4. Two boys, Philippe and Fleury, and a daughter named Cécile.
  5. Their daughter, Isabelle, continued the proud Capetian family tradition by abandoning her much older first husband, the earl of Leicester, and eloping with the earl of Surrey.

SOURCES:

Bradbury, Jim. The Capetians: kings of France, 987-1328, 2007.
Chibnall, Marjorie. The ecclesiastical history of Orderic Vitalis, ed. 1990.
Levin, Eve, and Pushkareva, Natalia. Women in Russian History: From the Tenth to the Twentieth Century, 1997.

18

munches popcorn

19

I would have gone for “Capetian and to kneel.”

20

My apologies for any errors I laid out here. I can’t wait til we get to Eleanor of Aquitaine and Richard Lion Heart.

For example: who was the father of Eleanor’s son William?

During 1152, she divorced the French king in March, married the next English king in May, had her baby boy in August, and was crowned Queen of England in December. The baby boy was hers, yes, but whose else?

Stay tuned.

an seanchai