Geoffrey and Philippe

August 21, 1165 was a day of great happiness for the French king, Louis VII, for after four daughters, his third wife gave birth to his longed-for son. So joyful was Louis that Philippe was known as Dieu-donne, God-given. Philippe must be considered one of the great French kings, for he vastly expanded the territory of the French Crown during his long reign of 43 years. I have been able to find little to admire about the man himself, though. While not a soldier of Richard’s caliber, he was effective at sieges, and he was undeniably intelligent, if not as well educated as the Angevins. He was also utterly unsentimental, pragmatic, and stubborn. Henry II had saved his throne for him on several occasions early in his reign, but he did all he could to turn Henry’s sons against him and, with Richard’s help, hounded Henry to his miserable death at Chinon. He was more anti-Semitic than his contemporary monarchs, said to have believed in the Blood Libel, expelling the Jews from Paris at the start of his reign, and burning eighty Jews to death in Bray in 1192 after the Countess of Champagne (his half-sister Marie) had hanged a Christian who’d murdered a Jew. His reputation was then in tatters because of his abandonment of the crusade, and cynical medieval rulers often found that persecuting Jews was one way to regain public favor. He showed no honor whatsoever after Richard was captured and turned over to the Holy Roman Emperor, scheming and conniving and doing his utmost to make sure the crusader king never saw the light of day again. He wanted to repudiate his first wife ostensibly because she had failed to give him an heir—she was fourteen at the time! He treated his second wife, the Danish princess Ingeborg, with deliberate brutality after disavowing her the day after their marriage, at times even denying her the right to attend Mass. He deserves recognition for his accomplishments, leaving the French monarchy much stronger than he’d found it, but I think he’d have been a difficult man to love.
Philippe’s birth was not a source of joy to Henry, who naturally wanted Louis to remain without a male heir. In Time and Chance, Henry has just had to retreat after a failed campaign in Wales when he gets the news that Louis has finally sired a son. Fortunately for Henry, a sweet young thing named Rosamund Clifford happens to be there to offer him comfort. When they meet in the gardens at Chester Castle, she says shyly, “I was worried about you, my lord. That letter seemed to trouble you so….”
“This letter I was just ripping to shreds?” Henry at once regretted the sarcasm; why take out his temper on the lass? “You might as well be the first to know. All of Paris is re-joicing; it’s a wonder we cannot hear the church bells pealing across the Channel. The Al-mighty has finally taken pity upon the French king. On the fourth Sunday of August, his queen gave him a son.” Of course Henry could not have guessed that this little boy would eventually destroy the Angevin empire.
Moving ahead twenty-one years and we have the death of my own favorite of the Devil’s Brood, Geoffrey, Duke of Brittany, Henry and Eleanor’s “forgotten” son. He died after being trampled in a French tournament, just a month shy of his twenty-eighth birthday in 1186. Geoffrey has been as ignored by historians as he was by his own parents, for he was the only one of their sons not to become a king, and his successful career in Brittany was not brought to light until the publication of Dr Judith Everard’s excellent Brittany and the Angevins. I owe her such a huge debt, for it was her research that enabled me to do justice to Geoffrey in Devil’s Brood. It is too sad to quote from Geoffrey’s death scene in my novel, so I’d rather close with a brief passage from his wedding night. He’d been betrothed to Constance, the heiress to Brittany, since childhood, and she was a reluctant bride, for she blamed Henry for deposing her father. But Geoffrey wins her over, much to her surprise, and their marriage gets off to a promising start.
* * *
She awoke the next morning just before dawn, with a dull headache, a dry mouth, and total recall of the extraordinary events of her wedding night. Propping herself up on her elbow, she studied the man beside her. He looked younger in his sleep, less guarded, and she realized that the flighty Enora was right, after all; her new husband was easy on the eye. Best of all, he was quick-witted and clever and ambitious. We will make effective partners. We will be good for Brittany and good for each other, and who would ever have imagined it?
* * *
And they were—good for Brittany and for each other. Sadly, they had so little time together—just five years. I have no doubt that English, Breton, and French history would have been changed if Geoffrey had not chosen to ride in that tourney on that hot August afternoon.