| Another Isabella of Angoulême (1186 or 1188 – 4 June 1246), not to be confused with Isabella I, was born to Aymer Taillefer, Count of Angoulême, and Alice of Courtenay, who was sister of Peter II of Courtenay, Latin Emperor of Constantinople and granddaughter of King Louis VI of France. She was said to be beautiful beyond belief at a very early age and while she was engaged to marry Hugh IX of France by age twelve, she was spotted by King John whom she had five children with. In 1220, Isabella married Hugh X of Lusignan, Count of La Marche, by whom she had another nine heirs. According to author Thomas B. Costain, in The Conquering Family, Isabella was so beautiful that she was often referred to as “Helen of Troy.” She was much younger than her husband and had quite a temper and attitude. King John was said to attend to her constantly to the point that his opponents and detractors would speak derogatorily of his desire to spend the whole morning until noon in bed with her. At the time King John was engaged in a war with King Philip of France to keep control over Plantagenet holdings. The common people began to term her a “siren” or “Messalina.” (27) On October 1, 1207 at Winchester Castle, Isabella gave birth to a son and heir, named Henry III after the King's father, Henry II. He was quickly followed by another son, Richard, and three daughters, Joan, Isabella, and Eleanor. King John died in October 1216 and Isabella was quick to get her son John coronated at age nine. This may have something to do with the idea of the mother son love of ancient kings and queens marrying their own children and having children with them. When King John died, her son had to become king for her to keep her Queenship, and in a sense, they are now married as King and Queen, although they are related, and one is much younger. Therefore, all kinds of stories and myths can be created from this kind of relationship. The Mother would now be working in unison with her little boy, to run the kingdom. This is an awkward relationship indeed, although we all assume mommy made the rules, most of the time. Valeria Messalina (c. 17/20–48 AD) was the third wife of the Roman Emperor Claudius. She was a paternal cousin of the Emperor Nero, a second-cousin of the Emperor Caligula, and a great-grandniece of the Emperor Augustus. When Messalina ascended in power, she gained a reputation as ruthless, predatory and sexually insatiable. It was said that she had numerous affairs to which her husband was completely oblivious. She even conspired against her husband and was executed for the act. Politically motivated hostility (28) caused rumors to be spread and stories to be written about her. Pliny Writes about her in Natural History on the sexual prowess of people: “Messalina, the wife of Claudius Cæsar, thinking this a palm quite worthy of an empress, selected, for the purpose of deciding the question, one of the most notorious of the women who followed the profession of a hired prostitute; and the empress outdid her, after continuous intercourse, night and day, at the twenty-fifth embrace.” (29) |
The poet Juvenal mentions Messalina twice in his satires. One story told there is that she compelled Gaius Silius to divorce his wife and marry her. (30) In the course of that work, Juvenal coined the phrase frequently applied to Messalina thereafter, meretrix augusta (the imperial whore). (31) There stands a statue in the Louvre Museum of Messalina holding her son Britannicus. We will return to the reason for introducing Messalina, briefly. Pons (II) William (991 – 1060) was the Count of Toulouse from 1037. The Counts were given estates and control under the Frankish Kings. Already in 1030, he possessed a lot of power in the Albigeois, or Albi. Pons had a son named Raymond IV (c. 1041 – 28 February 1105), sometimes called Raymond of Saint-Gilles or Raymond I of Tripoli, who was one of the leaders of the First Crusade (1096–99). From The History of the Crusades: by Frederic Duncalf, we learn: “He is sometimes called ‘the one-eyed’ after a rumour that he had lost an eye in a scuffle with the doorkeeper of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre during an earlier pilgrimage to Jerusalem.” (32) He was the Count of Toulouse, Duke of Narbonne and Margrave of Provence from 1094. Raymond IV helped establish the county of Tripoli. Raymond's third wife was Elvira, the illegitimate daughter of King Alfonso VI of León, the Spanish king. Their son is Alfonso Jordan. From Heresies of the High Middle Ages, we read: “He gained his last name from being baptized in the Jordan River. In 1145, Bernard of Clairvaux send a letter to him concerned about a heretic named Henry in the diocese of Toulouse. Bernard even went there to preach against the heresy, which was an early expression of Catharism.” (33) By his wife since 1125, Faydiva d'Uzès, he left two legitimate sons: Raymond V, who succeeded him, and Alfonso. Raymond V (c. 1134 – c. 1194) was Count of Toulouse from 1148 until his death in 1194. In 1153/6, Raymond married Constance of France, daughter of King Louis VI of France by his second wife Adélaide de Maurienne. Because Raymond was related to her within prohibited degrees, they were separated by ecclesiastical authority in 1165. They had five children, one of whom was Raymond VI, who succeeded his father as Count of Toulouse. (27) Costain, The Conquering Family, pp. 253–254 (28) Thomas A. J. McGinn, Prostitution, Sexuality, and the Law in Ancient Rome, Oxford University 1998 p 170 (29) Natural History Book X, Chapter 83 (30) Satire X, translated by A. S. Kline, lines 329-336 (31) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messalina (32) Duncalf, Frederic (1969). "The First Crusade: Clermont to Constantinople". In Baldwin, Marshall W. The History of the Crusades, Volume I: The First Hundred Years. University of Wisconsin Press. Pp 272 (33) Walter Leggett Wakefield and Austin Patterson Evans, Heresies of the High Middle Ages (Columbia University Press, 1991), 122 |