Louis VII the Young King of FRANCE, HRH

                   King of France in 1137, married Eleanor of Aquitaine, daughter ofWilliam for
her second marriage to Henry II, King of England.  He divorced herafter she
bore him two daughters.
Louis supported Thomas a Becket in his controversy with Henry II,whose
marriage with Eleanor precipitated recurrent warfare over herinheritance of
Aquitaine.
Sources include but are not limited to;
Ancestral File and the IGI, International Genealogical Index,both
resource systems developed and solely owned by The Church of JesusChrist of
Latter Day Saints.Line in Record @I12345@ (RIN 41816) from GEDCOM file not recognized:
_FA1
See Note Page
BIOGRAPHY
Pierre Goubert:
Louis VII does not have a good reputation among those historians who
deem it their duty to pass judgment.  However, he had some character
traits that were found later in his saintly great-grandson Louis IX
[#3149] - quick intelligence, great desire for justice, and profound
piety; nevertheless he was quite young and remained rather immature,
imprudent, and lacking any great perseverance.  A bit too devoted to
the interests of the church, he cut a poor figure as a husband.
...Eleanor pushed her husband to intervene openly in the appointment
of bishops and in other affairs of the Church, for which she had
little love.  She also incited him to attack his dangerous neighbor
Thibaut of Champagne; the encounter was bloody and ended badly.  Louis
fell back under the influence of the clerics while his wife became
more and more estranged from him.  At the same time and far away, the
Turks who had been contained for half a century by the Christian
kingdoms established in Syria and Palestine attacked vigorously and
took back Edessa in 1144.  From then on, the pious king thought only
about the Crusade that he would lead, after being urged on by the
influential preaching of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux and by the
decision of [the Holy Roman] Emperor Conrad III to accompany him.
By contrast [from the corrupt First Crusade, fifty years earlier],
Louis VII's Christian zeal cannot be doubted.  He departed from
Vezelay on the Second Crusade in 1147.  His failure to take Damascus
the following year and his return to France in 1149 tarnished the
history of the Crusades.  In his absence he had left the kingdom in
the hands of Abbot Suger, who died in 1151.  But for the future of the
monarchy and the kingdom of France, Louis VII's having dragged the
queen along had a more important consequence, for rumor had it she had
behaved very badly, or rather had been too good to a handsome Saracen
who, to make matters worse, was a slave.
Whether or not the affair took place, the frivolous lady from Poitou
had produced only two daughters for the king, and he was tired of her.
In spite of Suger and the pope, he found several bishops who were
accommodating enough to annul the marriage, although it had been
consummated.  After a second and sterile union, a third wife, from
Champagne, at last gave the king a son: the future Philip Augustus
[#3132].
[Eleanor chose as her next husband Henry Plantagenet [#2960, our
ancestor].] Already the count of Anjou and Maine as well as effective
master of Normandy..., he became King of England in 1154.  As vassals
of the king of France, the couple held lands stretching from Dieppe to
the Pyrenees.  Furthermore, they had three sons:  Henry [#2962],
Richard the Lion-Hearted [#2963], and John Lackland [#2958, our
ancestor].  A storm was brewing.
In the face of impending disaster, Louis VII adopted the safe policy
of sowing dissension and avoiding confrontation.  He stirred up
quarrels between Henry II and Eleanor (now herself disappointed), and
between the father and his sons; he also received with great fuss the
chancellor and primate of England Thomas a Becket, who had been exiled
by his master.
Moreover, his piety gave Louis VII a certain distinction.  In Sens he
welcomed Pope Alexander III and his court when they were exposed to
the hostility of the [Holy Roman] Emperor Frederick Barbarossa.
Approaching the lands of Aquitaine from the rear, Louis VII helped
prelates and monks fight warring and brigand lords.  He made his
presence felt at Vezelay, Cluny, and Macon; in Beaujolais, in Forez,
and even in Le Puy against the Polignacs, and in Mende where the
count-bishop of Gevaudan swore homage to him.  Undoubtedly the royal
warriors did not always shine, but the many homages they received were
good omens, and above all, these expeditions foreshadowed the future
penetration of the lands along the Rhone and the border of Languedoc.
All in all, in spite of the false starts and misfortunes (the most
monumental of these was Eleanor, but who could have foreseen that?),
this pious and often wise king deserves more credit than he is usually
given for introducing the thirteenth century: the greatest century of
the Capetians and of the Middle Ages as a whole.
Facts about this person:
Record Change  December 10, 1999