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Berenguela and Blanche of Castile

Daughters of Alfonso VIII of Castile and Eleanor of England, Berenguela maintained strong connections with her sister Blanche, Queen of France. Their letters are in Latin. Latin was still, at the beginning of the 13th century, the language of writing, while French and Castilian became the languages ​​commonly spoken, even at court. Berenguela and Blanche were well-educated, competent and forceful like their formidable grandmother Eleanor of Aquitaine.

The two sisters will also lead a parallel existence, each exerting, in their own country, a comparable influence. Much like her younger sister Blanche in France, Berenguela presents an interesting case of co-rulership with her son in Castile. Furthermore, both have ties with warfare and played determinant roles in the success of military campaigns as well as access to – and maintenance of – the throne.

Berenguela and Blanche directed a great deal of their personal energy into assuring that all of their children were appropriately married. It was Blanche who suggested sending Joan of Ponthieu as a bride for her nephew Fernando after his first wife's death. Berenguela and Blanche became the mothers of fighting saints King Fernando III and King Louis IX.

In the Archives Nationales de France are nine letters written to King Louis VIII and his wife Blanche of Castile, during Louis’s brief reign from 1223 to 1226. These letters informed Louis VIII that Alfonso VIII of Castile had intended his throne to pass to a son of Louis and Blanche, if his own son Enrique died without heirs. Louis VIII should therefore immediately send his son to Castile, where his correspondents—the scions of several major Castilian noble houses—would take up arms to set him on the throne and overthrow the “foreigner” (alienus) who was in power. The most prominent of these Castilian magnates were Rodrigo Díaz de Cameros and Gonzalo Pérez de Molina. This conspiracy was an explicit attempt to dispose of the current Castilian monarchy and replace it with a new configuration of rulers. It was therefore a far more serious threat than either Rodrigo Díaz’s or Gonzalo Pérez’s earlier revolts had been. And it was aimed squarely at the legitimacy of the reigning monarchs.

The letters’ most perplexing feature is the suggestion that Blanche’s claim to the Castilian throne superseded Berenguela’s. Some historians have even taken this as evidence that Blanche was the elder sister, though that claim is patently false. Yet the plot to overthrow Fernando III was first of all an attempt to unseat Berenguela. It was through her that Fernando III claimed hereditary right and legitimate descent from Alfonso VIII. To say that Alfonso VIII had excluded Berenguela from the succession, and to describe Fernando as a “foreigner,” was to reject the Castilian identity that Berenguela had tried to reclaim during her ten years as a solitary queen in her father’s court, and that she had negotiated with varying success during her regency and the subsequent wars. It was to define her not as the daughter and sister of the latest kings of Castile, but as the cast-off wife of the king of León.

To be sure, Blanche and her sons were at least as French as Berenguela and Fernando III were Leonese. But the rebels were apparently willing to overlook this quibble; their appeal was directed as much to Louis VIII as to his queen. Besides, the threat of union with France was diminished by the fact that Blanche and Louis VIII had no fewer than five living sons at the time that they ruled France. The rebels never insisted that the son sent to them should be Louis VIII’s firstborn, and a younger brother’s accession in Castile considerably reduced the risk of union between the crowns. All five French princes were underage, but so much the better; the minorities of Alfonso VIII and Enrique I had proved how much power nobles could gain in a regency. Louis VIII was sufficiently intrigued by the rebels’ offer to have asked them for proof of their promised support. His wife, however, was likely to be less sympathetic. A combination of Blanche’s unwillingness to contribute to her older sister’s overthrow and Fernando III’s military successes after 1224 probably quashed the plot.

Sources:

JANNA BIANCHINI,THE QUEEN'S HAND: POWER AND AUTHORITY IN THE REIGN OF BERENGUELA OF CASTILE

This fur-lined cloak was first seen on Rodolfo Sancho as King Fernando II in both the 2014 television show Isabel, and again in the 2016 movie La Corona Partida (The Broken Crown). The piece was spotted again on Benedict Cumberbatch as King Richard III in 2016 in The Hollow Crown: Richard III.

Costume Credit: Mim

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1230: El Pacto de Las Dos Madres

In December of 1230, two mothers met to negotiate the succession of a kingdom. They were Theresa of Portugal and Berenguela of Castile, the first and second wives of Alfonso IX of Leon respectively. Both had been capable wives and queens, and continued to be fierce mothers, dedicated to the fates of their children.

Prior to his death, their ex-husband, Alfonso IX had changed his will, leaving his kingdom to his daughters, Sancha and Dulce, born to him by Theresa, rather than his son by Berenguela, Fernando III, who likewise ruled the kingdom of Castile. However on Alfonso’s death, Leon declared for Fernando while the infantas rallied what forces they could.

The Age of the Queen Mother

From the late twelfth to early thirteenth century three of the major kingdoms in Europe would be dominated by powerful women, mothers and often regents on behalf of their reigning sons. What’s more, the most prominent of these ruling mothers were related by blood, Eleanor of Aquitaine and her two granddaughters, themselves sisters, Blanche and Berenguela, revealing a network of powerful female relations stretching across decades and kingdoms.

Eleanor of Aquitaine (1189-1204): one of the most famous queens of the medieval period, Eleanor of Aquitaine was, by her successive marriages, queen of France and England as well as duchess of Aquitaine in her own right. Though she enjoyed periods of great influence and authority (as well as conflict) as queen consort, it was during the reigns of her sons that Eleanor would exercise her greatest power. Firstly, Eleanor would act on behalf of her beloved son, Richard, securing the baron’s fealty to him prior to his coronation and ruling England alongside the Regency Council during his absence on crusade. When he was captured in Germany, Eleanor played a key role in raising and transporting his ransom and securing his release. Following Richard’s death, she played a similar role for her youngest son, John, aiding him in securing the English throne and supporting his rule against the pretensions of her grandson, Arthur of Brittany, and Philip Augustus of France, prior to her death.

Berenguela of Castile (1217-1246): the eldest child of Alfonso VIII of Castile and Leonor of England, daughter of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry II, Berenguela served first as queen consort of Leon, marrying her father’s cousin, Alfonso IX, in order to secure peace between the two kingdoms. Following the dissolution of that marriage and her parents’ deaths, Berenguela served as regent to her younger brother, Enrique I, actually inheriting the throne of Castile upon his death. However, immediately after her ascension, Berenguela ceded the title to her teenage son, Fernando III, at Valladolid, in what some have termed an “abdication”, however, she continued to remain her son’s most influential adviser and occupied a position almost as co-ruler for the remainder of her life. She was integral in Fernando’s successes against the Muslim kingdoms of Spain and securing his succession to the throne of Leon following the death of his father and her ex-husband, bringing about the ultimate union of the kingdoms of Leon and Castile. She would later become known as “Berenguela the Great” and her son, Fernando, would be canonized in the seventeenth century.

Blanche of Castile (1226-1234, 1248-1252): the third daughter of Alfonso VIII and Queen Leonor, Blanche was betrothed to Prince Louis (later Louis VIII of France) in the Treaty of Le Goulet, an agreement between her uncle, King John, and Philip Augustus of France. Blanche was personally escorted from Castile to France by her then-eighty-year-old grandmother, Eleanor of Aquitaine. Blanche became queen consort of France after her father-in-law’s death, however was left widowed three years later. She ruled as regent for her twelve-year-old son, Louis IX, protecting his throne and raising armies against discontented French barons and her cousin, Henry III of England. Blanche maintained contact and collaborated with her sister, Berenguela, in Castile. Even after her son reached his majority, Blanche continued to exercise great influence over him, and would be appointed regent once more upon his departure on the Seventh Crusade, during which time she died. Blanche’s son too would be canonized as St. Louis in 1297 along with her daughter, Isabelle.