Which he promptly lost to his wife.
Cousin :).
His wife Matilda was a different person that his great rival the Empress Matilda and yet another highly capable medieval woman. Also a cousin of the “Empress” from the Scottish side, curiously enough.
And it wasn’t so prompt, really. Stephen seized power in 1135 and Matilda had to cede her own claim ( but not her son’s ) by 1141. Stephen more or less held on increasingly precariously until his natural death in 1153. Kinda unfortunate from a romantic POV - in many ways he had a great novel of a life, but he was a failed and fatally flawed protagonist in the end.
When I wrote about getting huge tracts of land, I meant the daughter. I’m not questioning the “get rid of her” attitude at all, it was very real. But nobody has mentioned that the parents might have thought about making their daughter rich. As a goal in itself.
The daughter could then be used to loan money, to send assistance in feodal wars, pressure the husband’s family etc. But we don’t need to declare them all cynical.