Margaret of France, Queen of England and Hungary

Margaret of France
Queen Margaret being given in marriage to the king of Hungary by her brother Philip
Junior Queen consort of England
Tenure	1170 – 11 June 1183
Coronation	27 August 1172 (Westminster Abbey)
Queen consort of Hungary and Croatia
Tenure	1186–1196
Born	1157
Died	after 10 September 1197 (aged 40) St John of Acre
Burial	Cathedral of Tyre
Spouse	Henry the Young King Béla III of Hungary
House	Capet
Father	Louis VII of France
Mother	Constance of Castile

Margaret of France (1157 – aft. 10 September 1197) was, by her two marriages, queen of England, Hungary and Croatia.

She was the eldest daughter of Louis VII of France by his second wife Constance of Castile. Her older half-sisters, Marie and Alix, were also older half-sisters of her future husband.

First marriage

She was betrothed to Henry the Young King on 2 November 1160. Henry was the second of five sons born to King Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine. He was five years old at the time of this agreement while Margaret was three. Margaret's dowry was the vital and much disputed territory of Vexin.^[1][2]

Her husband became co-ruler with his father in 1170. Because Archbishop Thomas Becket was in exile, Margaret was not crowned along with her husband on 14 July 1170. This omission and the coronation being handled by a surrogate greatly angered her father. To please the French King, Henry II had his son and Margaret crowned together in Winchester Cathedral on 27 August 1172.^[3] When Margaret became pregnant, she did her confinement period in Paris, where she gave birth prematurely to their only son William on 19 June 1177, who died three days later on 22 June.

She was accused in 1182 of having a love affair with William Marshal, 1st Earl of Pembroke, although contemporary chroniclers doubted the truth of these accusations. Henry may have started the process to have their marriage annulled, ostensibly due to her adultery but in reality because she could not conceive an heir. Margaret was sent back to France, according to E. Hallam (The Plantagenets) and Amy Kelly (Eleonore of Aquitaine and the Four Kings), to ensure her safety during the civil war with Young Henry's brother Richard the Lionheart. Her husband died in 1183 while on campaign in the Dordogne region of France. By virtue of her marriage to Young King Henry, duke of Anjou, she was installed as the duchess. The coronet he and she would have worn was chronicled in about 1218 as "the traditional ring-of-roses coronet of the house of Anjou".^[4] Margaret may have taken her coronet to Hungary in 1186 when she married King Bela III. A ring-of-roses coronet was discovered in a convent grave in Budapest in 1838, which may be the same one.

Second marriage

After receiving a substantial pension in exchange for surrendering her dowry of Gisors and the Vexin, she became the second wife of Béla III of Hungary in 1186.^[5] The difficult delivery of her only known child in 1177 seems to have rendered her sterile, as she had no further children.

Later life

She was widowed for a second time in 1196 and died on pilgrimage to the Holy Land at St John of Acre in 1197, having only arrived eight days prior to her death.^[6] She was buried at the Cathedral of Tyre, according to Ernoul, the chronicler who continued the chronicles of William of Tyre.

Fictional portrayal

Margaret was portrayed by Lucy Durham-Matthews (as a young girl) and Tracey Childs (as a teenager) in the 1978 BBC TV drama series The Devil's Crown, which dramatised the reigns of Henry II, Richard I and John.

Ancestry

Ancestors of Margaret of France, Queen of England and Hungary

16. Henry I of France               8. Philip I of France                       17. Anne of Kiev               4. Louis VI of France                             18. Floris I, Count of Holland               9. Bertha of Holland                       19. Gertrude of Saxony               2. Louis VII of France                                   20. Amadeus II of Savoy               10. Humbert II of Savoy                       21. Joan of Geneva               5. Adelaide of Maurienne                             22. William I, Count of Burgundy (=24)               11. Gisela of Burgundy                       23. Etiennette (=25)               1. Margaret of France                                         24. William I, Count of Burgundy (=22)               12. Raymond of Burgundy                       25. Etiennette (=23)               6. Alfonso VII of León and Castile                             26. Alfonso VI of León and Castile               13. Urraca of León and Castile                       27. Constance of Burgundy               3. Constance of Castile                                   28. Ramon Berenguer II, Count of Barcelona               14. Ramon Berenguer III, Count of Barcelona                       29. Maud of Apulia               7. Berengaria of Barcelona                             30. Gilbert I, Count of Gévaudan               15. Douce I, Countess of Provence                       31. Gerberga, Countess of Provence

References

1. Gilbert of Mons, Gislebertus, Laura Napran; Chronicle of Hainaut; Boydell Press, 2005
2. Elizabeth M. Hallam, Judith Everard; Capetian France, 987-1328; Pearson Education, 2001
3. W. L. Warren, Henry II, (Univ. of California Press, 1973), 111
4. Monk, Unknown (1218). Life of William Earl Marshall.
5. Local Tradition or European Patterns? The grave of Gertrude in the Pilis Cistercian Abbey, Jozsef Laszlovszky, Medieval East Central Europe in a Comparative Perspective, ed. Gerhard Jaritz, Katalin Szende, (Routledge, 2016), 84.
6. The Chronicle of Ernoul records the arrival of "une reine en Hongrie...veve sans hoir" at Tyre [in 1197] and her death eight days later, specifying that she was the sister of the mother of Henri Comte de Champagne King of Jerusalem and had been "feme...le jouene roi d'Englietere…et suer…le roi Phelippe de France". Louis de Mas Latrie (ed.) (1871) Chronique d'Ernoul et de Bernard le Trésorier (Paris) (“Ernoul”) 26, p. 302.