Gone Medieval - England & France: Two Houses, Two Kingdoms

Episode Date: July 16, 2022

The twelfth and thirteenth centuries were a time when the close friendship or petty feuding between monarchs could determine the course of history. The Capetians of France and the Angevins of England waged war, made peace, and intermarried. The lands under English control once reached to within a few miles of Paris, and those ruled by the French, at their peak, crossed the Channel and encompassed London itself. Influential women of the two royal families - including Eleanor of Aquitaine and Blanche of Castille - helped create the familial bonds that shaped the fate of the two countries.In this episode of Gone Medieval, Matt Lewis talks with Dr. Catherine Hanley to trace the great clashes and occasional friendships of two intertwined dynasties that shaped the present and the future of England and France.The Senior Producer on this episode was Elena Guthrie, the Producer is Rob Weinberg. Edited and Mixed by Seyi Adaobi.For more Gone Medieval content, subscribe to our Medieval Mondays newsletter here.If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today!To download, go to Android or Apple store. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries

with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world, to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Welcome to this episode of Gone Medieval. I'm Matt Lewis. England and France spent much of the high and late medieval period at war for one reason or another. I'm delighted to welcome back today to Gone Medieval Catherine Hanley, who you may remember joined us when the podcast was but a wee babe to talk about Empress Matilda. Kath has a new book out entitled Two Houses, Two Kingdoms, A History of History.

history of France and England from 1,100 to 1,300, which offers a fresh look at two centuries of entwined relations that often spilled into fighting, and Kath focuses on the people involved to take a very different viewpoint that's frequently enlightening, but always entertaining and beautifully written. Thank you very much for joining us again, Kath. Hello, very pleased to be here. So the book covers the period from 1,100 to 1,300. Why do you think that was an important period to look at more closely? What is it about that period that drew you in? Well, it's such an important period for the development of both kingdoms. It was really the period during which France stopped being just a little loose collection of counties

and duchies and became a real kingdom. And there was an awful lot going on in England as well. And the relationship between them, you know, they were fighting over Normandy and fighting over the different bits of France and England. So it's just a really important period for the development of the kingdoms. And it's also kind of sandwiched in between the Norman conquest and the 100 years war, both of which get an awful lot more attention. So I thought it was time to bring out this important period in the middle. And the book is really the story of the people that are involved rather than it being about two states.

Because I think dynasty and personality are so entwined with the state during this period. Do we sometimes forget how important personality was in medieval politics? Yeah, I mean, I honestly think that we do. So this is an age where the king of each realm was the sole head of state. I wouldn't go as far as calling it absolute monarchy, but I choose to call it personal monarchy. So it's the person of the king is in charge. And his personality and his likes and dislikes can have an enormous effect on policy,

domestic policy, international policy. And then to look at it more widely than just the kings, you know, these kings are being influenced by their wives, their mothers, their brothers, sometimes also their children. You know, so these individual personalities were really, really important. And my goodness, there are some exciting personalities around in England and France, between 1,100 and 1,300. But it must make for interesting kind of unpredictability and policy and development when it can be driven by the whim of one person. I'm not sure I'd exactly go quite. as far as whim, because there were some checks, you know, kings couldn't rule without the support of their nobles, as more than one of them found out during this period. But yeah, certainly their personal likes and dislikes could have a huge effect. If the king just takes against

somebody that he doesn't like, this could have quite an effect on how he deals with that person. And do you have a favourite example from the book of where a kind of a really big personality impacts or drives events in a certain direction? Yeah. Well, several, but I'm just going to actually pick up on one that's not one of the obvious candidates that you might expect. Okay, normally you think of this period, your mind probably immediately goes to somebody like Henry II or Eleanor of Aquitaine. But really, if you want to know why France ended up being so powerful, you have to go right back to the period right at the beginning of my book, the early 12th century, and to the outsized personality of Louis X. right there's probably not many people in England have heard of Louis the 6th he suffers from having the nickname louis the fat i do love some of the ways the french gave all their king's nicknames you know we don't do it and they give them such abusive nicknames the bald the fat and it's not far off the useless sometimes but yeah of all the nicknames that were possible to end up with that but no he was incredibly effective and he was the one who sort of turned france from this very small you know a few counties and a few kingdom being nominal overlord of these you know in terms of a real kind of cohesive unit. I don't think it's too much of an exaggeration to say that he actually

started the nation of France and that people in France started seeing themselves as this sort of collective whole rather than just, you know, this is champagne or this is Burgundy or things like that. And he's one of my favourite characters. There always seems to be those characters and people who disappear under the radar. You know, we forget the massive impact that they had and they don't really get the credit for what they did. So I think what this book is really great at is because it follows the whole story, you have to go right back to those beginnings and pick out some of those people who really had a huge impact but don't get written about as much as lots of other people who,

you know, kind of sometimes just explode on the scene and disappear as quickly. But there's an awful lot of ink spilled about them, but not so much about Louis the fat. Yeah, exactly. We should all be more Louis the fat. I'm working on it. Definitely the fat part. Actually, there is some talk it may have been, because the Latin word for great and the Latin word for fat

are actually quite similar. And it may have been that his biographer was trying to write a story called the Deeds of Louis the Great. And at some point it got mistranslated as the Deeds of Louis the Fat. But yeah, he's stuck with it now. Yeah, he's stuck with it now. There was an effort to kind of align in with Charlemagne, maybe, Charles the Great and brand him as Louis the Great.

And it turned accidentally into being branded Louis the fat. fat. I quite like that idea, a huge PR cock-up. So the two centuries of the book kind of sit, as you mentioned, in this gap between the conquest, which is still quite raw in England, and there's uncertainty on both sides of the channel about what that means and boundaries haven't been set yet, and it doesn't quite stretch to the hundred years war. But I think even in that gap, we sort of always view England and France as somehow natural and permanent rivals, at least from 1066 onwards. Do you think that's true? Do you think that's fair? Or is it more about the interpersonal relationships between the dynasties on either side? Yeah, kind of, yes, I know, really. They are natural enemies. I suppose if you control, if two people or two houses control the pieces of land on either side of the channel, they're always going to be sort of natural enemies. And there's particularly, you know, there was a lot of towing and throwing. At one point, the land's controlled by the English king reached within about 15 miles of Paris.

And at the other end of the scale, in the early 13th century, the French controlled quite a lot of England, including London. So it sort of goes backwards and forwards. And there is a tendency to think that this rivalry was permanent. But as I hope that I've shown, within this 200 years, there were also long periods when there were decades of peace. And it was all love and flowers. And everybody really got on very well.

And actually, a lot of that comes back to my main point, that this was due to the personalities of the leaders at the time. So it's not a coincidence, for example, that Richard Leyenhart and Philip Augustus, who couldn't stand the sight of each other, oversaw years and years of mainly war, while Henry III and Louis 9th, who got on really well, experienced a long period of peace.

I don't think that's a coincidence. And, of course, members of each dynasty were often quite good at exploits, exploiting the weaknesses and the cracks within the other dynasty. So sometimes it was one dynasty fighting amongst itself, if you like, while the other side was either kind of sitting back going, well, hey, this is great, or just knowing where to sort of stick the pin in to really aggravate it. Yeah, I get the impression very much that kind of Louis the 7th of France

and then his son, Philippe Augustus, I mean, they were obviously terrified of Henry II and his Angevin dynasty dominating a lot of what they were. would have considered their territory in France, but they seem to have this absolute refined knack of, like you say, putting a tiny little pin in, tapping it with a hammer and just watching the cracks spread throughout Henry II. And I think Henry II was aware of it, but his sons fell for it sort of almost every time. Yeah, hook line and sinker. I mean, Philip Augustus genuinely was psychologically, he was a genius with all the things that he did. And actually, Louis the 7th was a very effective king as well. I mean, in sort of anglophone literature and really,

at least from a British point of view, we tend to see Louis the 7th only through the sort of prism of his failed marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine. And I think a lot of English people have sort of written him off as a bit of a wimp, you know. But actually, you know, there was a lot more to him than that. And it was he who started opening these cracks by, you know, his daughter was married to Henry the Young King, who was Henry the second's eldest son. And he was constantly, oh, why don't you and Margaret, just come over to Paris for a while? stay with me, and especially now that Margaret is pregnant, why don't we have the air to the English throne born in Paris while I'm here? And so he was very clever. And then, of course, Philip Augustus just took that a step further. And the sons of Henry II just fell for it,

hookline and sink one after the other. He played when Henry the young king was the eldest. He played off Richard and Geoffrey against Henry. After Henry was died, he played off Geoffrey and John against Richard when Geoffrey was dead. And then even when Richard was dead, and John was the only one that was left, he managed to find a nephew to play off against him. And it's just, you know, exactly like you say, he could just sit back and having hammered this pin in and watch the consequences of his actions while they just imploded and he can just put his feet up and have a nice glass of wine. Yeah, like the idea of Louis sort of receiving Henry the young king and sort of saying to him, oh, but you've been crowned, surely you're a king. Why aren't you being treated like

a king? Why don't you have the powers of the king? Why don't you just ask your dad if you can have all this power. Yeah, ask your dad if you can have Normandy. That was what he said, yeah. And Louis knows full well what the situation is with a junior king, because it's a capetian thing that the Angevin's have pinched the idea from. So there's no way Louis would have tolerated Philip behaving that way, but he kind of eggs Henry's children on to do this.

Yeah, absolutely. And when Henry II sent envoys to Paris to try and talk him out of it, Louis said, well, who are you representing? And they said, the king of England. And he said, no, no, no, no, no. the king of England's already here. But yeah, like you say, it wouldn't have worked if Philip had tried to do that, but the way they could play them off against each other.

Yeah. It's this kind of wicked mischief being part of statecraft is fascinating, I think. I think we're guilty as well of quite often viewing successful kings of England, if we have this anglophile view of things quite often. As the ones who defeat the French the most, that's kind of how you define success quite often. But do you think this story of the kind of interwoven, and personal relationships, strip away that idea of conquest as a form of success. I'm thinking about

what you mentioned earlier, particularly about Henry III and Louis the 9th, having this really close, friendly relationship, sharing an awful lot of interest and a prolonged period of peace between the two countries that we ought to view as something successful today, but we don't. Yeah, I mean, it absolutely depends on what your definition is of success, and I'm saying that in air quotes here, is your definition of success making more and more conquests? Or is your definition of success making sure your people can live in peace and prosperity? Because yeah, probably the most quote, successful king that appears in this book in terms of being loved by his people and overseeing long periods of peace is Louis the 9th. And although, yes, he did spend quite a lot of time on

sort of crusades and things like that within France, he did spend quite a lot of time on the sort boring administrative things. He oversaw a lot of things like judicial reform and administrative reform and wanted to make sure that the people of his kingdom could live in peace. I think it was he who introduced the concept of innocent until proven guilty into the legal system, actually, because in the earlier Middle Ages, if you were accused of something, you were assumed to be guilty and you had to try and find witnesses to prove your innocence. So yeah, and he could fight when he needed to, but he didn't start loads of massive wars of conquest. And on the other hand, you've got somebody like Richard the Lionheart, whose idea of success is, let's go and beat a few more

people up and see what other land we can take. Again, it comes down to personalities. Yeah, Richard didn't seem to know any way to govern other than to be at war, really, did he? Which is in a stark contrast to Henry the third, who just wasn't very good at war and ended up doing his best to avoid it. And we get all these long periods of peace. So I think it's a really good example of where personality kind of drives national policy, if you like. Yeah. And the particular thing with Henry the 3rd and Louis 9th is also a very good way into talking about the influence of women. Because for anyone who's listening to this, who doesn't know, which probably is most people, Henry the 3rd, the King of England and his contemporary Louis 9th, the King of France, were brothers-in-law because they were married to two

sisters. And this had an enormous impact on the relationship between the two kingdoms because suddenly there was quite a lot of, oh, why don't you come over to Paris for Christmas and we'll all have a lovely family time? And these two sisters had two other sisters who were married to Louis's younger brother and Henry's younger brother. So it was like this massive kind of family get together. And we do see quite a lot of the things that these kings are saying at the time are things like, well, we need to have peace because the King of England is my brother-in-law and our sons will be first cousins when they're on the throne. And a lot of this comes down to also the relationship between those sisters, Queen Margaret of France and Queen Eleanor of England, who were sisters who were encouraging their husbands to get on well with each other.

And although it's kind of a good example of the way that women had to exert power differently, I suppose it's what we might call soft. power now. You know, they weren't in charge of running the kingdom, but they had an enormous amount of influence, probably more influence than anyone else, on the man who was running the kingdom. I think obviously women are most often very poorly documented during this period, which can make them hard to see. But did you find that looking at this whole period rather than looking at a single event or a single man's life perhaps was a better way at getting the women so that you could kind of wrap them up in this ongoing narrative rather than hanging them off somebody else's life or an event that they're poorly documented within. Did that give you more insight

about the women in the story? Yes, definitely. So, you know, women, you'll be shocked to discover, had lives of their own. So they were born. They learnt politics at the court. They grew up. Some of them made political alliances. Some of them ruled as regents or mothers or widows. And others influenced events in these rather. more subtle ways. Now, it is, as you say, quite badly documented. You have to read the sources really kind of quite carefully and read between the lines and extrapolate little bits. But yeah, when you put it together, you can see that these women had a great effect on what was going on, either very obviously, you know, in the case of somebody like Empress Matilda or Blanche

of Castile or Eleanor of Aquitaine, but often in more sort of subtle ways, you know, there were an enormous amount of women that I talk about in the book who were. would fight tooth and nail for the rights of their children. And they had these ambitions of their own. And with having this much bigger picture of a book, I could actually explore, I had the time and the space to explore their backgrounds and where these women came from

and what happened to them and what their life courses were, rather than them just sort of appearing in the middle of nowhere as the wife of somebody. So many women had so much influence on these two dynasties. most of them realized that the rules were different. They were playing this game of power by different rules from the men who were destined to be the kings. But just because the rules were different

doesn't mean they weren't playing the game. Yeah, and I think that's, I mean, we've obviously talked about Empress Matilda previously, but she's a good example of where a woman sort of steps outside those accepted norms of behaviour for a woman and it causes her problems. But there are lots of examples of women who were able to operate brilliantly

within the sphere that they had. They knew how to apply that soft pressure in the right places at the right times to have as big an effect as a man on a battlefield would have, but without necessarily being so visible and loud about it. Exactly, exactly. They played by the rules that they were given. And if you look at somebody like Eleanor of Aquitaine or Blanche of Castile, who instead of saying, this is my power,

they said, well, I'm going to exert this power on behalf of my husband or my son or my grandson or something like that. And that was the way for women to play the game. And I mean, I think I'm in danger of bringing it back to men here as well, but you can quite often see the impact of a change in a man when a wife has gone, particularly Edward I guess, right at the end of the period we're talking about when his wife Eleanor dies, I think we see quite a drastic change in him.

And there's perhaps a sense that sometimes the wives are good influences on the men and once they're gone, you see the worst of the man. Yeah, steadying influence. Yeah, I mean, to go back to the era of Empress Matilda again, King Stephen's wife, who was also called Matilda? Do you know, if I had a quid for every time I've written the words, who was also called Matilda in the last few years. But she was the steadying influence that kept him on his throne as long as he did. And yes, Henry the third's wife and his son, Edward, the first wife, who were both called Eleanor. As we go on, women stop being called Matilda and they

start being called Eleanor. And also in France, King Philip the Fair, who is the king of France towards the end of the book. He was widowed. His wife, Joan of Navarre, died, and he was only in his early 30s, and he chose never to get married again because he kind of missed her so much and he already had children,

and so there wasn't a sort of dynastic imperative. And, yeah, you can see this. These arranged marriages did often end in quite deep bonds of affection being developed. And actually, the course of the history of these dynasties has been changed several times by various people deciding against what everyone else wanted for them to marry somebody terribly unsuitable for affection. And that comes up a few times.

And you look at the sources and you think, well, there's no political reason whatsoever why those two people should have got married. And the only conclusion you can come to is that they fell in love. They liked each other and they decided to get married. What's interesting is that in all of those cases, for the, woman concerned, it is her second or subsequent marriage. So it's kind of like I've done my duty in my first marriage. I've married who my dad's told me or who my brother's told me and now I'm widowed and I can sort of choose for myself. Yeah, I've done the job bit. I'm having a bit of

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most impactful ideas. Each episode, I'll be recruiting the help of experts, scientists, historians, and even a few real-life inventors. Subscribe to patented history of inventions wherever you listen to your podcasts. So if this was a really good good way to get at the women. Was it also a good way to explore and discover a bit more about some of the

children that appear in the story? Yeah. So so much of the story of these two dynasties and these two kingdoms in this period is the story of children. You don't realize, you know, if you just look at names, you think, Henry the 3rd, Louis, the 9th, whatever, just like the names of kings. And then you look more carefully and you think, wow, these people were playing roles on the international stage at really young ages, you know, and a lot of them were bereaved when they were young, or married when they were young, or crowned when they're young. And, you know, there's only so many times you can write about a 14-year-old widow or a 12-year-old king or a 10-year-old queen before this kind of really starts to bring it home to you. I mean, even the very young, sort of,

you're 10 and 11-year-olds, but quite a lot of the kings during this period were kings when they were in their teens. And you think, wow, you know, what's it like to be suddenly, told you're in sole charge of a kingdom with four or five million people in it and you're 14. It's not an orphaned. It's not ideal, is it? And the ways in which the childhood experiences of some of these individuals were shaped actually does give you a real insight into how they behaved later on. So just to take an example, I've sort of always considered Henry III to be a bit of a rubbish king, sorry to all the Henry

the third fans out there, a bit sort of weak, bit insipid. But honestly, when you understand the horrendous events of his childhood, his relationships or lack of relationship with both of his parents and the knock-on effects of

what happened to him with his father dying in those circumstances and his mother leaving the country straight away. And then it's like, oh, you're the king now. How old are you? Nine. And the knock-on effects he had later on. actually, with his wife and his brother and his brother-in-law, you can actually see kind of what he was up against. You know, he didn't appear fully formed as an adult. He had all these experiences when he

was a child, and when you really take all that into account, you can see that actually he did no worse and probably better than you might have expected. And there are several examples of things like that. And I've just honestly, I've got a new respect for these people when you hear of what sort of trauma in their childhood that they've had to overcome. Yeah, I think as you say, we see their names on paper and it's easy to forget all of these things

that they went through, that they were people just like us. They go through things, and those are the things that form them and affect them. So I think in Henry III, you see someone who becomes a really committed family man. He's almost the antithesis of his father

because, you know, his father's left the kingdom in a complete mess. His mother, like you say, she pretty much abandons him as soon as his father dies, and he's left with a French invaded kingdom, half of it out of his control at the age of nine, not knowing what to do. But with four younger siblings to look after as well.

Yeah. So you have to think that that has an impact on the man he grows into. And I think sometimes the most impressive thing about Henry is just that he dies with the crown still on his head. You know, of all the child kings that England have had during this period, probably the only one who dies with the crown on his head. Yeah, absolutely. And the other thing is that what I learnt, you know, as I was writing this, is as we look back

on events, it's quite tempting to look at it as though the events as they happened were in some way kind of preordained. But actually, these people were living through these events as they happened and the choices that they made, history could have gone that way or this way or, you know, and the fact that it ended up going the way that it did is because of the choices they made. And sometimes they were living through things that we don't really think about now. If you look at the list of monarchs of England, you see that Edward I was followed by Edward the second, who was his son. And you think, fair enough, that was probably quite straightforward. Edward the second was his parents' at least 14th child, and may even have been the 15th or 16th child.

And his mother gave birth to 10 or a dozen daughters and three elder sons, all of whom died between the ages of about 6 and 10. And Edward the first, quite apart from forcing his poor, wife to have child after child after child. It's going to be much fun for her. But he was really, really having to give consideration to what was going to happen if he died without leaving a son. And the question of, you know, female inheritance of the throne was going to come up. If he died without leaving a son, was the throne going to go to his eldest daughter and her heirs? Or was it going to ignore all them because they were women and it was going to go to his brother? And this is all disguised in this list of Edward I was followed on the throne by his son Edward the second.

These were real people living through these real dilemmas at the time. Did you find that focusing on the relationships between the dynasties of England and France offered a fresh, a different perspective on the events of those two centuries, rather than looking at an individual or a pivotal event? Yeah, it gave me much more of a chance to just look at the bigger picture. So before this, my last two books were both biographies of individuals, Louis Ithe, France and Empress Matilda. But these individuals, they didn't exist in a vacuum.

They were the product of everything else around them. And it's when you get to look at the background, or anyone, I mean, not just Louis the eighth or Empress Matilda, but anyone, you know, they didn't exist in isolation. And looking at this bigger picture, you look at the whole background and how there was all this buildup to what happened. And suddenly you go, ha! that's why that happened because you understand it more because you've got this much bigger picture and because it's not just the kings and queens,

it's their brothers and cousins and their nobles and their churchmen and it all just builds up to the way things happened and it just gives you the chance to understand it much better than just looking at one person in isolation. Is there a good example you can think of where a relationship between perhaps two individuals changed your perspective or your view on something that happened? Yeah, I mean, you've got to kind of go back a bit to sort of Philip Augustus and Richard and Lionheart here.

So, for example, when they went on Crusade, they were supposed to be allies. They were supposed to be going together and fighting for the glory of Christendom and all the rest of it on the same side. But they just hated each other and they just couldn't do it. And Philip was always thinking about what was best for France. Richard was always thinking about what was best for Richard, and they just couldn't do it. And it's interesting to sort of speculate if you'd paired them up with different contemporary kings or rulers, how it might have worked really, really differently. I mean, if you paired Richard the Lionheart, for example, with his good friend Sancho the 7th of Navarre, who was his brother-in-law, Raringhire of Navar's brother, and incidentally seven feet three inches tall, as I found out during the course of my research, and a famed warrior, if you'd put those. two together on a crusade, you know, things would have turned out very, very differently. And on the

other hand, if you'd paired Philip Augustus, rather than with Richard, with the emperor, Henry the 6th, who was around at that time, you know, they would have been a really, really effective partnership, not necessarily my favourite dinner party combination. But they would have been really effective. And it was the fact of these clashing personalities that meant that the crusade just didn't work the way that it was planned. And I guess there's an element, too, of there are the stories of all of the other people that surrounded them. So we talk a lot about kings and queens, but there are a lot of nobles at all sorts of various ranks in both kingdoms who are stirring the pot as well,

possibly for their own benefit, but there are some strong personalities there that can often drive events. Yes, absolutely. So the nobility had a great deal of influence on the course of how these kingdoms were. So you couldn't be an effective king of either England or France without the support of your nobles. And in fact, the relationships of various kings with their nobles had a great effect on, you know, how the history of the two kingdoms played out. So in France, the French kings had a much more established custom of consulting with their nobles. They were needed to make a big decision. It was traditional that they would get a council of their nobles together and they would consult them and everyone could have their say.

and therefore there was never any really serious unrest in that sort of court. You got the odd rogue lord who rebelled, but everyone else would help the king to sort of put him back in his place. Whereas over in England, King John, for example, just ignored and overrode his nobles, and then they turned to overthrow him. At which point Louis, the son of Philip Augustus of France, sat down with his nobles and put a case before them, and they all wholeheartedly supported his invasion of England. So the way these nobles, I mean, you can't, they're not acting out of pure motives. They're not acting out of the glory of England or the glory of fact.

They're all self-interested as well. But it is really interesting to see the way that each different sort of monarch interacted with nobles and how that worked out for them. Because in some cases, not very well. Who would you say either impressed or surprised you the most amongst the people that you were covered in the book? I'll go through them very, very briefly. Okay, two men, two women, not the obvious candidates. Okay, first William Clito, hands up, who's heard of William Clito? He was the eldest son, I know you have, he was the eldest son of the eldest son of William the Conqueror.

And therefore, you might think a reasonable candidate to sit on the English throne, never did, spent his entire life fighting for the rights of him and his father, narrowly escaped being executed when he was four, and grew up to be this sort of, almost a bit like Bonnie Prince Charlie, sort of tragic, romantic hero that was. fighting for his rights and never got on the throne in the first place farther, and then dying tragically in a battle at the age of 28, and everybody mourning him. So he was quite a pivotal character in what was going on, and not many people have heard of him at all. My other man, and anyone who actually knows me will know I was going to pick him, Philippe of Drouet, who was the Bishop of Beauvais in France,

and everyone, you're all sitting there listening now going, who? So Louis X, to go back to Louis the Fat, had quite a lot of sons, and only one of them could be king. So the other ones either got put in the church or given what we call appanages, which is like a bit of land to be the count of something. And one of his youngest sons was the count of drur. And the count of drur, in his turn, had about seven or eight sons.

And he could only leave his land to the eldest. So he decided that his third son was going to go into the church. This took no account whatsoever of the preferences of the individuals concerned, because his third son, Philippe, who became the bishop of Pofé, was an absolute, I think I've written he was a bellicose bull of a man, and that hardly does injustice. Even contemporaries used to say a man more suited to battles than books. And he went everywhere. He went on the third crusade. He fought in battles there. He came back. He fought in the Albujetti crusade. He fought for Philip Augustus, his cousin. And when he was in his 60s, he fought at the Battle of Bovivin on Philip's behalf, at which point he batted. He batted. the Earl of Salisbury off his horse and into the ground, making an Earl of Salisbury shaped dent in the floor as he battered him with his mace and took him into captivity. And so, yeah, this is what we call the church militant.

This is a man who was not going to be, you know, he'd been put into the church as a child with no choice, but he made the most of it. Okay, and two women. The first one is Constance of Brittany. Constance of Brittany was the daughter and heiress of the Duke of British. Brittany. When she was five years old, Henry II, the King of England, made her father abdicate in her favour and then immediately married her to his son Geoffrey. So she had to be brought up at the Plantagenet Court. She was brought up in England, which she absolutely hated. She was determined to get back to Brittany, to exercise her rights. She finally did. She and Geoffrey, when they were in their 20s, went back to Brittany. When she had a son who was at that time, Henry II, only grandson, Henry the second, wanted him called Henry, and she, in a pointed move,

called him Arthur instead, which was a famous name in Brittany. And when Geoffrey died, she fought over and over again for her son's rights. She ended up being kidnapped, imprisoned, attempts at being deposed, and she fought through it all, incidentally marrying when she married for the third time with a completely unsuitable man that she married for, love and fighting continuously for her children and then unexpectedly dying at the age of 40, which threw all Arthur's prospects into oblivion, unfortunately. But she just didn't give up her whole life. She didn't give up at all. She's one of my favourite. And finally, Blanche of Castile. Blanche Castile was married to Louis, the son and heir of Philip Augustus of France when she was

12 years old. He was 12 as well, actually, so it wasn't too bad. And she grew up, she fought on his behalf, she raised troops. When her husband Louis VIII died, she was 39 years old. She was a widow. She had seven children, all aged under 12. She was pregnant with an eighth. And her 12 year old elder son is now the king of France. And she was grieving, you know, because she really cared for Louis. And she absolutely smashed it out of the park. She was her son's regent for many years. She put down the rebellions of the nobles that didn't like him being the king. She incidentally managed to bring to a close the decades-long Albigensian war at the same time, just in a spare time.

And she was just a brilliant regent. Many times when there's a regent for a young king, the relationship gets very strained. And when the young king becomes of age, the regent suddenly comes to a sticky end somewhere. This didn't happen. Even when Louis reached the age of 21 and his majority, He relied on her for everything.

And she's just an outstanding example of how a woman could have power, exert power, and kind of still be really popular as well. Yeah, and her son was that Louis the Ninth that we talked about earlier, who was so successful. That was Louis the Ninth, who became St. Louis. Yeah, yeah. And yeah, she just did everything brilliantly.

And I'll tell you, if you ever time travel to the 13th century, my one piece of advice would be, don't mess with Blanche of Castile. And these are the sort of stories that I'm bringing out in the book. You know, there are so many wonderful individuals that I hope, once you've read this, will actually seem like real people rather than just names that you read in a history book. That's what I was trying to achieve.

Yeah, well, I can certainly vouch for the fact that this is an incredible book that definitely offers a different perspective on this whole period and all of the people involved in it. And I think you will come out of it feeling like you have a much, much better idea of how and why these two centuries of history between these two kingdoms happened. I think it really is a wonderful book. So thank you so much for joining us again today, Cath. Thank you for having me. Two Houses, Two Kingdoms, a history of France and England from 1,100 to 1,300 is out now in the UK from Yale University Press and is heading to the US on

the 9th of August. So grab yourself a copy and explore the lives of some of these fascinating people with Cath. You can join Dr Kat Jarman on Tuesday for a another brand new episode. Don't forget to also subscribe wherever you get your podcasts from and to tell all your friends and family that you've gone medieval. If you get a moment, please drop us a review or rate us wherever you listen to your podcasts, including Spotify now. It really helps new listeners to find us. If you're enjoying this podcast and looking for a bit more medieval goodness in your life, then please do subscribe to our Medieval Monday's newsletter. Just follow the links in the show notes below. Anyway, I've better let you go. I've been Matt Lewis and we've just

gone medieval with history hits.