The empress who wanted to be a queen and the count who did not want to be a king

There were two deaths on this date that matter to me and readers of my books. On September 10th, 1167, the Empress Maude, AKA Matilda, the mother of Henry II, died at the age of 65. She’d failed to claim the English crown for herself, but she’d done everything in her power to secure it for her eldest son, and she lived long enough to see it come to pass. She was buried in the abbey church of Bec Hellouin, in accordance with her wishes. The church was later destroyed by Napoleon, but her remains were discovered in 1846 and she was reburied at Rouen Cathedral. Her epitaph became famous for the lines: “Great by birth, greater by marriage, greatest in her offspring, here lies Matilda, the daughter, wife, and mother of Henry.” The epitaph was in Latin, which is why she was called Matilda, which was the Latin version of Maude. Notice how she expunged Geoffrey, Count of Anjou, from her marital history; the only husband she mentioned was the Holy Roman Emperor.
Maude’s death was not tragic, but the death of Henri, Count of Champagne, certainly was. Henri died at Acre on September 10th, 1197, in a freak accident, falling from a window of the royal palace. There are several accounts of his death; most of them speak of a window balcony or railing giving way. A servant died with him, having tried to save Henri as he fell. He was only thirty-one. He and Isabella, the Queen of Jerusalem, had three daughters during their five year marriage. He never did claim the title King of Jerusalem, continuing to call himself Count of Champagne until his untimely death.
Isabella was given little time to grieve, for a queen needed a strong king to defend their troubled kingdom. She soon wed Amaury de Lusignan, brother of the former King of Jerusalem, Guy de Lusignan. Guy and Amaury had moved to Cyprus after Richard arranged for Guy to buy it from the Templars, and after Guy died in 1194, Amaury managed to get the Holy Roman Emperor, Heinrich, to recognize him as King of Cyprus, a title Guy had not held. After his marriage to Isabella, Amaury became the King of Jerusalem, too. He died in 1205, apparently of food poisoning, and Isabella died a few days afterward. She was only thirty-three, and had been married four times, widowed three times, and had given birth to seven children by three of her husbands—a daughter with Conrad of Montferrat, who would become Queen of Jerusalem, three daughters with Henri, one of whom died young, and three children with Amaury, two daughters and a son, who died at age four, not long before the deaths of his parents.
Maria, Isabella’s daughter by Conrad died of childbed fever at age twenty, and her daughter’s story is even more tragic. Her name was either Isabella or Yolande, and she was wed against her will at age thirteen to Frederick II, the Holy Roman Emperor. Frederick would become known as Stupor Mundi—The Wonder of the World—and he was undoubtedly one of the most interesting and controversial monarchs of the Middle Ages. But he treated his women badly, with the possible exception of his first wife. He certainly was unkind to his thirteen year old bride, who wrote to her father on her honeymoon to complain of Frederick’s seduction of her ladies in waiting. We recently discussed medieval child brides and how the consummation of the marriage was normally not done till the bride was of a suitable age. Frederick did not wait, I am sorry to say, for they were wed in November of 1225, and she gave birth the following year to a daughter, who lived less than a year. Frederick kept her in seclusion in his Palermo harem, and she died in 1228, giving birth to a second child, a son; she was only sixteen. I have no desire whatsoever to write about Frederick, but I still hope to be able to write about Henri of Champagne.