The line of Melusina (feat. Jacquetta of Luxembourg and Elizabeth Woodville)
The family city of Luxembourg was founded around a castle developed from a Roman fort built on a rock called “the Bock” dominating the roads and rivers between France, Germany and the Low Countries. It was famous as one of the most powerful and defensibles castles in Europe. The counts of Luxembourg traced their ancestry back to the first count, Siegfried, who bought the site of the castle in 963 and was said to have married the water goddess Melusina. It was she who made the castle of Bock magically appear, the morning after her wedding. Their happy marriage lasted until Count Siegfried broke his vow of allowing her absolute privacy each month. Spying on her in her bath, he discovered that his wife was a magical being: half woman, half fish, something like a mermaid. He cried out in understandable shock, and Melusina and her bath inmediately sank through the solid rock beneath the castle and disappeared. […] In adult life Jacquetta owned a copy of a rare manuscrit of the history of Melusina, her ancestress, and Melusina may have been a theme at her daughter Elizabeth’s wedding, and at royal jousts. - The Women of the Cousins’ War: The Duchess, the Queen, and the King’s Mother by Philippa Gregory, David Baldwin, Michael Jones
