“Petronella and Raoul were married quietly at Christmastide in the chapel of Saint Nicholas in the royal palace, the nuptials absorbed into the general Nativity celebrations. (…) Raoul was plainly besotted by his nubile young bride, as well he might be. What the bride saw in a one-eyed man beyond his fiftieth year was not quite as obvious to the court, but she seemed just as infatuated as he was.”
From The Summer Queen, by Elizabeth Chadwick, a novel based on the life of Petronilla’s sister Eleanor of Aquaitaine.
She is variously called Alix, or Aelith, or in this case as of the novel, Petronilla. If any of you have any suggestions to where one might dig a little deeper on Petronilla/Alix please message me.
Petronilla/Alix was wed to Raoul de Vermandois, a man thrice her age albeit for all we know of their records, it seemed to have been a marriage forged in passion rather than an arranged marriage.
