Constance of Castile

Constance of Castile (1136 or 1140 – 4 October 1160)^[1] was Queen of France as the second wife of Louis VII, who married her following the annulment of his marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine.^[2] She was a daughter of Alfonso VII of León and Berengaria of Barcelona,^[3] but her year of birth is not known.

Life

The official reason for her husband's annulment from Eleanor of Aquitaine had been that he was too close a relative of Eleanor for the marriage to be legal by Church standards; however, he was even more closely related to Constance. They were second cousins through William I, Count of Burgundy.

Constance died giving birth to her second child. Desperate for a son, her husband remarried a mere five weeks after her death.

Constance was buried in the Basilica of Saint-Denis, Paris.

Children

Constance had two children:

1. Margaret, 1157–1197, who married first Henry the Young King of England,^[4] and then Béla III of Hungary^[5]
2. Alys, 1160–1220, who married William IV of Ponthieu^[6]

References

Sources

• Bouchard, Constance (2001). Those of My Blood: Creating Noble Families in Medieval Francia. University of Pennsylvania Press.
• Bradbury, Jim (2007). The Capetians. Hambledon Continuum.
• Jaritz, Gerhard; Szende, Katalin, eds. (2016). Medieval East Central Europe in a Comparative Perspective. Routledge.
• Warren, W. L. (1978). King John. University of California Press.