Tea at Trianon: Urraca of Castile and León: Empress of All the Spains

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, March 18, 2022

Urraca of Castile and León: Empress of All the Spains

From The Monstrous Regiment of Women:

Urraca was married very young--as biographer Bernard Reilly notes, the "cumulative documentary evidence" suggests that she was "at most" eight years old at the time of her marriage. Given her significance in the succession, as her father's only legitimate child, she was married in 1086 to Count Raymond of Burgundy, her mother's great-nephew. (The date of the marriage isn't known, but in 1086 Raymond appears in documents as Alfonso's son-in-law.) While Reilly notes that canon law "sets the minimum age for marriage at twelve for women," he also adds that "the breach of canon law in the face of dire political necessity was hardly unknown"--and since Alfonso was busy in the Reconquista (Toledo fell in 1085, Zaragoza was under siege in 1086), Alfonso had a great "need" for the foreign assistance offered by strengthening his alliance with "a powerful southern French nexus."

The marriage was probably not consummated right away--or at least Reilly believes it was not, since Urraca was under the guardianship of a "powerful and trusted Leonese magnate" rather than her husband. The marriage may have been consummated in 1090, when the king's younger brother died, leaving him without a male heir, and certainly by the time Urraca was fifteen, because in 1095 she had given birth to her first child, a daughter named Sancha. A son, Alfonso, was born in 1105. Her husband Raymond died in 1107.

When Alfonso's son and heir, Sancho Alfónsez, died in 1108, the king turned to his eldest daughter, Urraca, as his successor. As the widow of Count Raymond of Burgundy, she had already succeeded her husband as ruler of his territories. In order to secure his daughter's succession in Castile and León as well, Alfonso VI arranged a second marriage for her, to Alfonso I of Aragon.

Instead of a peaceful and profitable union, however, husband and wife went to war. After the death of her father in 1109, Urraca returned to Castile, where she ruled in her own right. In 1112, her marriage to Alfonso of Aragon was annulled. In 1116, she recognized her eleven-year-old son by her first marriage as her co-ruler and heir. Throughout the rest of her life, Urraca fought to maintain control of her kingdom. Only after her death in 1126, when her son became Alfonso VII, did Alfonso of Aragon end his fight for Castile and León. (Read more.)