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| Gaston III of Foix |
(1331-1391)
French aristocrat, writer and author
12th Count of Foix 1343
Viscount of Bearn 1343
4th Co-Prince of Andorra 1343
Provost of Andorra 1343
Viscount of Marsan 1343
Husband of: Agnes de Navarra, daughter of Juana II de Navarre & Felipe III de Navarra. mar 1348
"In the list of heroes and celebrities of the fourteenth century, none stands out more brilliantly and vividly than Gaston de Foix. His moral character is entitled to no praise whatever. A man who used his wife so harshly that she refused to reside any longer at his court, murdered---perhaps accidentally---his only child, and left at his death three illegitimate sons to quarrel about his personal property, cannot, by any stretch of flattery, be called good. Nevertheless, Gaston was what is styled a great man. He was at once the handsomest and the most accomplished Prince of his time; his was one of the wealthiest sovereigns of his age; his learning, for the period at which he lived, was something marvellous; his graceful bearing, his conciliating manners, his chivalrous courtesy, was faultless; and every one who came into contact with his was delighted by them. He gained the surname of 'Phoebus' from his resplendent golden hair. 'Although I have seen very many knights, Kings, Princes, and others,' exclaims Froissart, 'I have never yet seen any so handsome as he, either in the form of his limbs and shape, or in his countenance, which was fair and ruddy, with grey eyes.'" (Memoirs of Royal Ladies: 78)
"Now Gaston Phoebus was that Comte de Foix whose deeds have been described in the life of Blanche of Navarre. He was separated from his wife, the Princess Agnes of Navarre, who had gone back to her own family. He was supposed to have stabbed his only legitimate son in a fit of rage, and he now lived with several illegitimate sons and a mistress who was one of the chief causes of the departure of Princess Agnes. But he was a man of many and varied talents; passionately fond of music, a great soldier, an excellent governor of the province entrusted to him by Charles V, and a powerful ally and friend to any one he liked. He received his cousin with great kindness and affection and into his ears she poured the history of her wrongs; her anger against her husband and her resolve to obtain the restitution of Comminges, her inheritance, which had been wrongfully seized by the Comte d'Armagnac. As to her husband, she said, 'he cares nothing about it, he is trop mal chevalier, all he cares for is to eat, drink, and waste his property; if he got Comminges he would only sell it for his follies, and besides, I cannot live with him. With great trouble I have taken and extracted my daughter out of the hands and country of my husband's father, and I have brought her to you to ask you to be her guardian and take care of her. Her father will be rejoiced when he knows she is with you, for he told me he had doubts about his birth.' Gaston de Foix, who seems to have taken a fancy to the child, willingly agreed, and his cousin continued her journey, leaving the child, who was from that time brought up by him as his own daughter in his castle." (Pictures of the Old French Court @Gutenberg)
"In the list of heroes and celebrities of the fourteenth century, none stands out more brilliantly and vividly than Gaston de Foix. His moral character is entitled to no praise whatever. A man who used his wife so harshly that she refused to reside any longer at his court, murdered---perhaps accidentally---his only child, and left at his death three illegitimate sons to quarrel about his personal property, cannot, by any stretch of flattery, be called good. Nevertheless, Gaston was what is styled a great man. He was at once the handsomest and the most accomplished Prince of his time; his was one of the wealthiest sovereigns of his age; his learning, for the period at which he lived, was something marvellous; his graceful bearing, his conciliating manners, his chivalrous courtesy, was faultless; and every one who came into contact with his was delighted by them. He gained the surname of 'Phoebus' from his resplendent golden hair. 'Although I have seen very many knights, Kings, Princes, and others,' exclaims Froissart, 'I have never yet seen any so handsome as he, either in the form of his limbs and shape, or in his countenance, which was fair and ruddy, with grey eyes.'" (Memoirs of Royal Ladies: 78)
"Now Gaston Phoebus was that Comte de Foix whose deeds have been described in the life of Blanche of Navarre. He was separated from his wife, the Princess Agnes of Navarre, who had gone back to her own family. He was supposed to have stabbed his only legitimate son in a fit of rage, and he now lived with several illegitimate sons and a mistress who was one of the chief causes of the departure of Princess Agnes. But he was a man of many and varied talents; passionately fond of music, a great soldier, an excellent governor of the province entrusted to him by Charles V, and a powerful ally and friend to any one he liked. He received his cousin with great kindness and affection and into his ears she poured the history of her wrongs; her anger against her husband and her resolve to obtain the restitution of Comminges, her inheritance, which had been wrongfully seized by the Comte d'Armagnac. As to her husband, she said, 'he cares nothing about it, he is trop mal chevalier, all he cares for is to eat, drink, and waste his property; if he got Comminges he would only sell it for his follies, and besides, I cannot live with him. With great trouble I have taken and extracted my daughter out of the hands and country of my husband's father, and I have brought her to you to ask you to be her guardian and take care of her. Her father will be rejoiced when he knows she is with you, for he told me he had doubts about his birth.' Gaston de Foix, who seems to have taken a fancy to the child, willingly agreed, and his cousin continued her journey, leaving the child, who was from that time brought up by him as his own daughter in his castle." (Pictures of the Old French Court @Gutenberg)
(1028-1070)
French sovereign ruler.
Daughter of: Herbert I de Maine, and Emma de Blois.
Wife of:
1) Thibaut II de Blois-Chartres, marr ?, div 1049
2) Alberto Azzo VII d'Este.
Her lover was:
Geofrroy II du Maine.
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| Guillaume IX of Aquitaine |
Husband of:
1. Ermengarde d'Anjou. mar 1088
2. Philippa de Toulouse. mar 1094.
An ardent lover of women.
"Duke William IX had always been an ardent lover of women. His vehemently sensual nature matured early and he indulged his appetites with a lusty, pagan delight. It made little difference to him whether the woman was harlot or virgin, peasant of noble maiden. When William IX was fifteen, his father died, and the domain passed into his hands. If his barons believed that the amiable young man would be easy to manipulate, they soon discovered their mistake, because he quickly established himself as a lord worthy of respect. For all the lad's notoriety as a Don Juan, he was intelligent, sensitive, and possessed of a genius for writing poetry that was not to blossom for another fifteen years." (Eleanor of Aquitaine: A Biography)
His lover was:
Dangereuse de l'Isle Bouchard (1079-1151).
Lover in 1115.
Daughter of: Barthelemy de L'Isle Bouchard & Gerberge de Blaison.
Wife of: Aimery I de Chatellerault.
Natural offspring:
a. Henri (d. after 1132), Prior of Cluny
b. Adelaide married Raoul de Faye
c. Sibylle, Abbess of Saintes.
" . . . In 1114 he was excommunicated, apparently for keeping a mistress---William of Malmesbury says that he threatened the officiating bishop with his sword and then clapped him in irons, where the poor man died. He had begun a liaison with the Viscountess of Chatellerault, surnamed 'Mauberon' or 'Dangerosa', whom he installed in a tower of his palace. This led to a war between William and his son, which only ceased, it is said, when William's wife died in her convent. William of Malmesbury recounts that the Duke adored his Mauberon so much 'that he had a picture of her placed on his shield, saying thereupon that he wanted to bear her in battle, as she bore him in bed.' Again he was excommunicated, and this time (we are told) he said to the bishop: 'You will comb waves into the hair that has fled your pate before I will give up the Viscountess.'" (Provence and Pound: 96)
"The following year William's quarrels with the Church escalated after an incident that astonished even the blase Aquitainians. Under the pretext of keeping Poitou obedient, he had fallen into the habit of making extensive journeys around the country; Philippa, once again in control of Toulouse, rarely accompanied him. On one of these trips he made the acquaintance of a viscountess with the provocative name of Dangereuse, the wife of Viscount Aimery of Chatellerault. This most immoderate lady formed an exuberant attachment for William who, to understate the matter, reciprocated. Later that year while Philippa was in Toulouse, William cemented his relationship with the beautiful viscountess by setting off at gallop along the Clain River road to Chatellerault, where, the story goes, he snatched the faintly protesting lady from her bedchamber and carried her back to Poitiers. It is unlikely that the eager viscountess protested vehemently, if at all, for she seemed quite prepared to abandon husband and children for the dashing duke. At home, William installed her in his new keep, known as the Maubergeonne Tower, which he had recently added to the ducal palace, and before long the amused Poitevins were calling his mistress La Maubergeonne. There was not question of hiding Dangereuse, nor did the lovers apparently practice discretion. . . ." (Eleanor of Aquitaine: A Biography)
"Eleanor's paternal grandfather, William IX, Duke of Aquitaine was, by all accounts, a colourful character with an infectious joie de vivre, a musician and poet, he came to be acknowledged as the first of the troubadours. He had abducted Dangereuse, the wife of Aimeric I, Vicomte of Chatellerault and made her his long term mistress, flaunting their relationship by displaying her naked image on his shield. His own wife, Phillipa of Toulouse, retired into a nunnery. At the prompting of Dangereuse, William IX married his son and heir William, to her daughter Aenor. This complicated family situation resulted in Eleanor's maternal grandmother being the mistress of her paternal grandfather. The future William X and Aenor produced three children, a son, William Aigret, who died young, and two daughters, Eleanor and Petronella, the children were nurtured in the troubadour culture of the warm south at her grandfather's court, with its cult of courtly love." (englishmonarchs.co.uk)
(1085-1152)
Comte de Vermandois
1102-1152
Husband of:
1. Eleanor de Blois (1104-1147), mar 1125, div 1140
2. Petronille d'Aquitaine (1125-1193), mar 1140
3. Laurette of Flanders (1117-1170), mar 1152
His lover was:
Petronille d'Aquitaine (1125-1193), mar 1140
His lover was:
Petronille d'Aquitaine (1125-1193), mar 1140
" . . . In the queen's Poitevin household was her younger sister Petronilla, who, by virtue of her relation to the royal house and her dower properties in Burgundy, was an enviable prize. The king's elder cousin, Count Raoul of Vermandois, with rich fiefs between Flanders and the Vexin, sought alliance with Petronilla, and the proposal, though in some respects astonishing commended itself to the royal household as having advantage. The only difficulty was the Raoul, who was middle-aged, had some years before, with the very same object of attaching himself to the crown, married the niece of Louis the Fat's chief vassal, Thibault of Champagne. To the queen, who was eager for the marriage of her sister, Raoul's unfortunate ties with the house of Champagne were merely knots to be cut. For Louis, however, canonical sanctions had to be invoked. Legalists were shortly found who discovered a degree of consanguinity between Raoul and the heiress of Champagne prohibited by the church. On this safe ecclesiastical ground, Louis allied himself with the queen's party, eager to repair his cousin's conjugal 'irregularity.' When, late in the summer of 1142, the court returned from a chevauchee in Poitou and Aquitaine, during which Petronilla and the Count of Vermandois were part of the retinue, the sovereigns found three bishops to the north of Paris, well out of the narrowly authoritative diocese of Sens, who annulled the count's marriage and almost at once united him to the Lady Petronilla." (Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Four Kings: 22)
" . . . The decisions of the young duchess-queen in her troubadour Courts of Love have met with the reprobation of modern French historians on account of their immorality; they charge her with avowing the startling opinion that no true love could exist between two married persons; and it is certain that the encouragement she gave to her sister Petronilla and the count Raoul of Vermandois offered too soon a practical illustration of these evil principles. . . Petronilla had made acquaintance with Raoul count of Vermandois at the magnificent festival at Bourdeaux, which comprised her royal sister's marriage and coronation. The beauty of Petronilla equalled that of queen Eleanore, but the young princess carried into practice her sister's avowed principles, and seduced Raoul of Vermandois from his wife. The prince had married a sister of the count of Champagne, whom he divorced for some frivolous pretext, and married, by queen Eleanora's connivance, Petronilla. The count of Champagne laid his sister's wrongs before the pope, who commanded Vermandois to put away Petronilla and to take back the injured sister of Champagne. Queen Eleanora, enraged at the dishonor of Petronilla, prevailed on her husband to punish the count of Champagne for his interference. . . ." (Lives of the queens of England, from the Norman conquest, Vol.1: 248)
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| Thibaut V of Blois @Wikipedia |
(1130-1191)
Comte de Blois
1151-1191
His lover was:
Pulcellina de Blois (d.1171)
"An intriguing and ultimately tragic instance of one such liaison is that of Polcelina, the Jewish mistress of Count Theobald of Blois. In 1171, she was executed together with thirty-three Jews as the result of a baseless accusation of ritual murder brought against the Jewish community of Blois. The blatantly false charge was apparently fueled by jealousy and intrigue against Polcelina in Theobald's court. . . ." (Women in Medieval Western European Culture: 74)
"Assuming that Pulcellina was Thibaut's lover and not merely his creditor, their relationship would have been notorious. Intercourse between Christians and Jews was scandalous. The documented concern of the Church on such relationships dated back to the Council of Elvira in the early fourth century. The taboos on sexual relations between Christians and Jews were strongly reinforced by secular laws that authorized harsh penalties for anyone audacious enough to violate the ban. The sanctions ranged from fines to confiscation of property and castration to death by burning. . . ." (The Murder of William Norwich: 314)
"As the Blois story is generally understood, Count Thibaut acted at the urging of his young, proud wife, Alix, the daughter of the king of France, who demanded that her husband spurn his mistress, Pulcellina, who was Jewish. Hed did so by accusing the Jews of Blois of a child murder and condemning them to flames, apparently at the instigation of his wife, and perhaps reluctantly egged on by a crowd that was incited by the rabble-rousing preaching of some churchmen. The Blois story is usually framed in the context of a domestic spat: a jealous and humiliated young wife, a feckless count, and a spurned mistress, as if it were enough to result in the judicial condemnation and gruesome execution of more than thirty-three people, as well as public appeals to the king and an inversion of religious tradition. But the events at Blois are better understood in a political and economic context that relates directly to developments in the kingdom of France." (The Murder of William Norwich: 314)
'Mistress' was not a lover, but a moneylender.
"What happened in Blois is usually attributed to Alix's distress over her husband's relationship with Pulcellina. Whether this exacerbated the count's hard line toward the Jews in not clear, but Christians resented her and Jews themselves were not complimentary. According to Ephraim of Bonn, however, Pulcellina, 'trusted in the affection of the ruler who up to now had been very attached to her.' It is possible that there never was a torrid affair of the type that historians have taken for granted, that the confident Pulcellina was not the count's lover but his moneylover, and that the relationship was one of loyalty and patronage. Under the influence of contemporary court literature, an essentially feudal relationship was transformed into a romantic one and the haughty and proud businesswoman, described in the letter from Orleans, was subsequently transformed in later retelling into a spurned mistress and represented as a figure of Esther. The affective element has been highlighted and embraced by historians to the exclusion of both political and financial considerations." (The Murder of William Norwich: 164)
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