Duke William VII Poitiers AQUITAINE

   Other names for William were POITIERS Duke, AQUITAINE Duke, Guillaume and Guilhem.

   Ancestral File Number: 91QZ-W9. User ID: 75638980/302555974.

   General Notes:

Duke of AQUITAINE, Duke of POITOU 1086-1127.

BOOKS
Eleanor of Aquitaine the Mother Queen, Desmond Seward, 1978, Dorset Press, p15:
"The earliest troubadour known by name is Eleanor's grandfather, the fascinating William IX, `Guilhem lo trobador,' who ruled Aquitaine and Poitou from 1086 to 1127. He was the outstanding figure of her early childhood, the first truly bing man in her life, and a hero who must have made an enormous impression upon her, eventhough he died when she was only five. He was a man of extraordinary complexity, alternately idealistic and cynical, ruthless but impractical. He was no statesman and though aggressive and pugnacious, a notably incompetent general. He failed inone scheme after another. He claimed Toulouse as his wife's inheritance, invading it while its count was away on a crusade, but the invasion ended in disaster and humiliation. In 1101 he himself took an army to the Holy Land; ig was cut to pieces near heralea and he escaped with difficulty- he may even have spent some time as a prisoner of the Saracens. In 1114 he made another attempt on Toulouse, occupying the county for several years, but he was eventually driven out. In 1119 he went on an expedition to Aragon, helping its king to defeat a multitude of Moors but receiving little reward. He was always in trouble with the Church, and once threatened a bishop with his sword.
"His private life made a scandalous contrast with his ideals as a troubadour. His most lurid affair was with the dauntingly named Dangerosa of Chatellerault, whom he carried off from her husband, seduced, and then kept in the Maubergeon tower of his palace at Poitiers (from whence she became known as `La Maubergeonne'; and his son rose up in arms at such an insult to his mother. William IX died excommunicated in 1127. For all his talents and his energy, none of his ambitious plans had succeeded. Nevertheless contemporaries undoubtedly respected him as a mighty prince and a brave knight. He successfully cowed and kept in subjection some of the most turbulent vassals in France and he was able to bequeath an undiminished inheritance. Furthermore, even a hostile criticof his own time had to admit that the duke was one of the most courteous people in the world.
"Both his age and posterity have been baffled by William IX. First there is his unexpected gift of versifying, in a mixture of Lemosin and Poitevin. He may have been inspired by Arab songs; his father had fought in Spain and brought back Moorish slave girls, and William himself knew Syria as well as Spain. Whatever his inspiration, he was unquestionably a most competent poet, eleven ofwhose pieces have survived; some are unashamedly licentious, althoug one, `Pos de chantar m'es pres talenz,' pays a melancholy farewell to earthly joys:
`Since now I have a mind to sing
I'll make a song of that which saddens me,
That no more in Poitou or Limousin,
Shall I love's servant be...'
"But the originality of a great lord turning troubadour was accompanied by less admirable eccentricities. In one of the earliest known examplesof heraldry he had his concubine Dangerosa's likeness painted on his shield, explaining repeatedly that he wanted her over him in battle just as he was over her in bed. He announced his intention of building a special whore house for his convenience, just outside Niort, in the shape of a small nunnery. His frivolity, his satirical wit and his cynicism disturbed contemporaries. `Brave and gallant but too much of a jester, behaving like some comedian with joke upon joke', Orderic Vitalis says of him, and Orderic is supported by William of Malmesbury, who speks of the duke as a giddy, unsettled kind of man `finding pleasure only in one nonsense after another, listening to jests with his mouth wide open in a constant guffaw'.Although never a clown herself, Eleanor took after this grandfather in her sarcastic wit and in teh frivolity of her early years.
"There was an uncomfortable legend about William IX that Eleanor seems to have remembered. A holy hermit cameto him, protesting in God's name at the rape of Dangerosa. He was received with the duke's usual mocking banter. The hermit thereupon laid a curse onWilliam; neither he nor his descendants, whether through the male or the female line, would ever know happiness in their children. When Eleanor was old, bishop Hugh of Lincoln (St Hugh) often told this story, saying that he had heard it from her husband, Henry II, and the king must have heard it from Eleanor herself."

A History of thePlantagenets, Vol I, The Conquering Family, Thomas B Costain, Doubleday & Co, Garden City, 1949, p37:
"Extending along the western coast of France from Britanny to the wild barrier of the Pyrenees, taking in the fat meadows and the rich vineyards of Poitou, Lusignan, Angoumois, Saintonge, and Perigord, terminating in the south with the country of shrewd men and valiant fighters called Gascony, and then jutting far over into the midriff of France to include Limousin and Auvergne, was a land of fabulous richness which was then called Aquitaine. The kings of France, hunched over charcoal braziers in their drafty Paris palaces or smarting from the smoke of the reredos in their gaunt castles thereabouts, had accepted the homage of the Duke of Aquitaine but would have changed places with their fortunate vassals who lived in this land where the cattle fat and the trees were laden with figs and the evenings were warm and scented. Aquitaine had become the world center of Courts of Love.
"Duke William ruled Aquitaine and he was very old. He had one son who had gone to the Crusades and who was so good that the people called him St. William. The old man had not been a saint by any means but had spent alarge part of his life wandering up and down his broad domain looking for romance, and always finding it. He now wanted to abdicate and spend his last years as a pilgrim and penitent, having in full degree that fear of the hereafter and the torments of hell which motivated so much of what happened in those days. His saintly son had two daughters only, Eleanor and Petonille, both of whom took after their grandfather."

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1981, Micropaedia, Vo X, p682, William IX: "Also known as Guilhem VII of Poitiers (1071-1126) Duke of Aquitaine."

ANCESTRY.COM
World Ancestral Chart No. 125360 Ancestors of Patricia Ann Kieffer.

ANCESTRAL FILE
EB also William IX, EB Guilhem VII of POITIERS, Duke of AQUITAINE 1071-1126, Ancestral File Ver 4.11 91QZ-W9 Guillaume, 8XPZ-P0 Guillaume IX AQUITAINE Duke, and 8MMC-9L Guillaume IX = William VII AQUITAINE Duke Mar Daughter of Guillaume IV 1094.

   Marriage Information:

William married Duchess Ermengarde De Anjou AQUITAINE, daughter of Count Fulk Rechin IV ANJOU and Queen Bertrade De Montfort FRANCE, in 1089. The marriage ended in divorce. (Duchess Ermengarde De Anjou AQUITAINE was born about 1066-1090 in Anjou, Isere, France and died on 1 Jun 1146.)

   Marriage Information:

William also married Countess Philippa Mathilde TOULOUSE, daughter of Count William TOULOUSE, IV and Mathilde De MORTAIGNE, in 1094 in , , France. (Countess Philippa Mathilde TOULOUSE was born about 1066-1073 in , , France and died on 28 Nov 1117.)

   Marriage Information:

William also married Duchess Hildegarde ACQUITAINE in 1119. (Duchess Hildegarde ACQUITAINE was born about 1073.)