FRANCE, Robert II of

Other Events and Attributes:

• Differentiator: Robert II, known as the Pious, the son of Hugues Capet, was excommunicated for incest by Pope Gregory V after refusing to repudiate his second wife and distant cousin Berthe of Burgundy.
• Relation to Me: 31 GGF
• Name: The Pious or The Wise
• Royalty & Nobility: Between 996 and 1031; King of the Franks

Notes:

Robert distinguished himself with an extraordinarily long reign for the time. His 35-year long reign was marked by his attempts to expand the royal domain by any means, especially by his long struggle to gain the Duchy of Burgundy. His policies earned him many enemies, including three of his sons. He was also known for his difficult marriages: he married three times, annulling two of these and attempting to annul the third, only prevented by the Pope's refusal to accept a third annulment.

The pious Robert made few friends and many enemies, including his own sons: Hugh, Henry, and Robert. They turned against their father in a civil war over power and property. Robert was a devout Catholic, hence his sobriquet "the Pious." He was musically inclined, being a composer, chorister, and poet, and made his palace a place of religious seclusion where he conducted the matins and vespers in his royal robes. Robert's reputation for piety also resulted from his lack of toleration for heretics, whom he harshly punished. He is credited with advocating forced conversions of local Jewry.

Died:
Melun, France

Family/Spouse: ARLES, Constance of. Constance (daughter of PROVENCE, William I of and ANJOU, Adelaide-Blanche of) was born in 968 in Arles, Bouches-du-Rhône, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, France; died on 28 Jul 1032 in Melun, Seine-et-Marne, Île-de-France, France. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

1. FRANCE, Henry I of was born on 4 May 1008; died on 4 Aug 1060; was buried .
2. ROBERT, I was born in 1011; died on 21 Mar 1076.
3. HEDWIG was born in 1003; died in 1063.
4. MAGNUS, Hugh was born in 1007; died on 17 Sep 1025.
5. FRANCE, Adela of was born in 1009; died on 8 Jan 1079.

Other Events and Attributes:

• Relation to Me: 32 GGF
• Royalty & Nobility: Between 987 and 996; 1st King of the Franks of the House of Capet

Notes:

Most historians regard the beginnings of modern France with the coronation of Hugh Capet. This is because, as Count of Paris, he made the city his power centre. The monarch began a long process of exerting control of the rest of the country from there.

He is regarded as the founder of the Capetian dynasty. The direct Capetians, or the House of Capet, ruled France from 987 to 1328; thereafter, the Kingdom was ruled by cadet branches of the dynasty. All French kings through Louis Philippe, and all royals since then, have belonged to the dynasty. Furthermore, cadet branches of the House continue to reign in Spain and Luxembourg.

All monarchs of the Kingdom of France from Hugh Capet to Philip II of France were titled King of the Franks. Philip II of France was the first to use the title of King of France.

Hugh + AQUITAINE, Adelaide of. Adelaide (daughter of WILLIAM, III and NORMANDY, Adele Gerloc of) was born in 945; died in 1004. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Relation to Me: 32 GGM
• Royalty & Nobility: Between 987 and 996; Queen consort of the Franks

Notes:

In 987, after the death of Louis V, the last Carolingian king of France, Hugh was elected the new king with Adelaide as queen. They were proclaimed at Senlis and blessed at Noyon. They were the founders of the Capetian dynasty of France. Hugh apparently trusted in her judgement and allowed her to take part in government: he proposed her to negotiate for him with the regent of the German Empire, empress Theophanu, committing himself beforehand to their agreement

Other Events and Attributes:

• Relation to Me: 33 GGF
• Royalty & Nobility: Duke of the Franks and Count of Paris

Notes:

He was the most powerful man in the kingdom of France (West Francia) during the reign of Louis IV d’Outremer and the early years of King Lothar.

Son of a king (Robert I), father of another (Hugh Capet), and brother-in-law of three more (Rudolf of France, Athelstan of England, and Otto of Germany), Hugh possessed such vast territories that he could easily have assumed the crown on the death of Rudolf in 936, though perhaps at the cost of giving up his numerous counties and abbeys. Preferring to work from behind the throne, he instead suggested the accession of Louis IV, son of the deposed Charles III the Simple, who named him, in return, “duke of the Franks.”

Hugh + SAXONY, Hedwige of. Hedwige (daughter of FOWLER, Henry the and RINGELHEIM, Matilda of) was born in 910; died on 10 May 965. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Relation to Me: 33 GGM
• Royalty & Nobility: Duchess Consort of the Franks

Notes:

When Hedwig's husband died in 956, her son Hugh Capet was still underage. Although Hugh inherited his father's estates, he did not rule independently from the beginning.[2] Along with her brother, Archbishop Bruno, Hedwig acted as Hugh's regent and administrator of the Robertian estates until he came of age.

Other Events and Attributes:

• Relation to Me: 32 GGF
• Royalty & Nobility: Duke of Aquataine
• Name: Towhead

Notes:

Birth:
Poitiers, Aquitaine, France

III + NORMANDY, Adele Gerloc of. Adele (daughter of NORMANDY, Rollo I Robert the Dane and NORMANDY, Poppa de Bayeux de Senlis de) was born in 912 in Rouen, Seine-Maritime, Haute-Normandie, France; died on 14 Oct 962 in Nevers, Nièvre, Bourgogne, France. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Misc: Robert succeeded the Carolingian king Charles the Simple, and before him, Robert's brother Odo. Robert and his brother Odo were from the family known as the Robertians
• Relation to Me: 34 GGF
• Royalty & Nobility: Count of Poitiers, Count of Paris and Marquis of Neustria and Orléans.
• Title: Count of Poitiers, Count of Paris and Marquis of Neustria and Orléans
• Title: King of West Francia
• _MILT: 885; Robert was present at the Siege of Paris
• _MILT: 898; He did not claim the crown when Odo died; instead recognized the supremacy of Charles the Simple. Charles then confirmed Robert in his offices and possessions, after which he continued to defend N. Francia from the attacks of the Norsemen.
• _MILT: Jan 921; Defeated a large band of Norse in the Loire Valley, and the defeated invaders converted to Christianity and settled near Nantes.
• Royalty & Nobility: Between 922 and 923; King of West Francia
• _MILT: 2 Jun 922, Rheims, Marne, Champagne-Ardenne, France; Supported by many of the clergy and by some of the most powerful of the Frankish nobles, Robert took up arms, drove Charles into Lorraine, and was himself crowned king of the Franks
• _MILT: 15 Jun 923, Soissons, Côte-d'Or, Bourgogne, France; Rule was contested by the Viking leader Rollo. W/Rollo, Charles marched against Robert. Robert was killed but his army won the battle. Charles was captured.

Notes:

Robert faithfully served his older brother, King Eudes, during Eudes’s reign (888-898), as margrave. Though on Eudes’s death he became one of the most powerful Frankish lords, inheriting all the family lands between the Seine and the Loire rivers, he swore fealty with other magnates to the new king, the Carolingian Charles III the Simple. From 911 onward, his role became more decisive: his defeat of the Northmen at Chartres paved the way for the Treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte, by which Charles assigned them territory in Normandy. Robert stood as godfather at the baptism of Rollo, the Northmen’s chief.

Robert’s military success greatly enhanced his prestige, and dissension between him and the king became undisguised. When Charles III imprudently offered preferment exclusively to lords from Lorraine, the Neustrian lords, led by Robert, broke into open revolt. They elected Robert king at Reims in June 922, and the East Frankish king Henry I immediately recognized Robert’s kingship and rights to Lorraine. In a battle near Soissons in 923, Charles’s army was routed, but Robert was killed. His grandson was Hugh Capet, founder of the Capetian dynasty.

Died:
Killed in battle defending his crown against Charles the Simple. Succeeded as king by his son-in-law Rudolph, Count of Burgandy, also known as Raoul.

Robert married VERMANDOIS, Beatrice in 895 in Versailles, Yvelines, Île-de-France, France. Beatrice (daughter of HERBERT, Count of Soissons, Count of Meaux, Count of Vermandois, and lay abbot of Saint Quentin. I and MORVOIS, Bertha de) was born in 880; died in 931 in Soissons, Aisne, Picardie, France. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Differentiator: A Carolingian aristocrat, the wife of Robert I, King of France, and mother of Hugh the Great.
• Relation to Me: 34 GGM

Notes:

Birth:
Vermandois, Neustria, Normandie, France

Other Events and Attributes:

• Relation to Me: 34 GGF
• Royalty & Nobility: King of East Francia (Germany) and Duke of Saxony

Notes:

As the first non-Frankish king, he established the Ottonian Dynasty of kings and emperors, he is generally considered to be the founder and first king of the medieval German state, known until then as East Francia. An avid hunter, he obtained the epithet "the Fowler" because he was allegedly fixing his birding nets when messengers arrived to inform him that he was to be king.

Henry + RINGELHEIM, Matilda of. Matilda was born in 894; died on 14 Mar 968. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Relation to Me: 34 GGM
• Royalty & Nobility: Queen of the Franks; Duchess of Saxony

Notes:

Medieval chroniclers celebrated Matilda for her devotion to prayer and almsgiving. Her first biographer depicted her leaving her husband's side in the middle of the night and sneaking off to church to pray. St. Matilda founded many religious institutions, including the canonry of Quedlinburg, which became a center of ecclesiastical and secular life in Germany under the rule of the Ottonian dynasty. She also founded the convents of St. Wigbert in Quedlinburg, in Pöhlde, Enger, and Nordhausen, likely the source of at least one of her vitae. She was later canonized, with her cult largely confined to Saxony and Bavaria. St. Matilda's feast day according to the regional German calendar of saints is 14 March.

Other Events and Attributes:

• Royalty & Nobility: Count of Poitou and Duke of Aquitaine

Ebalus married Living [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Differentiator: Viking who became the first ruler of Normandy, a region of France.
• Name: Gaange Rolf
• Name: Rollo of Normandy

Notes:

The offspring of Rollo and his followers became known as the Normans. After the Norman conquest of England and their conquest of southern Italy and Sicily over the following two centuries, their descendants came to rule Norman England (the House of Normandy), the Kingdom of Sicily (the Kings of Sicily) as well as the Principality of Antioch from the 10th to 12th century, leaving behind an enduring legacy in the historical developments of Europe and the Near East.

Rollo is the great-great-great-grandfather of William the Conqueror, or William I of England. Through William, he is one of the ancestors of the present-day British royal family, as well as an ancestor of all current European monarchs and a great many claimants to abolished European thrones.

Rollo married NORMANDY, Poppa de Bayeux de Senlis de in 909. Poppa was born in 872 in Évreux, Eure, Haute-Normandie, France; died in Rouen, Seine-Maritime, Haute-Normandie, France. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

The Christian wife or mistress (perhaps more danico) of the Viking conqueror Rollo. She was the mother of William I Longsword, Gerloc and grandmother of Richard the Fearless, who forged the Duchy of Normandy into a great fief of medieval France.

Notes:

Married:
Castle St Cler, , Normandy, France