André de Chauvigny made another trip to Rome in April 1202, and Pope Innocent was more sympathetic than Celestine, ruling that André and Denise had been married for more than a dozen years, had five children by then, and there was no valid reason for challenging their marriage. Sadly, André was one of the men seized by John in his one great military triumph, when he captured Arthur and the leading Breton lords at the siege of Mirebeau in August 1202. John refused to ransom André and he was dead before the year was out. Some of the prisoners were said to have been starved to death and it has been suggested that he was one of them; he’d have been about fifty-two. Denise was then pregnant with their sixth child. She married again in 1205 to the Count of Sancerre, but died herself in 1207, when she was only thirty-five.
Constance, Duchess of Brittany, seems to have had a happy marriage with her third husband, Guy de Thouars. But her happiness was short-lived, as she died in early September 1201. It has occasionally been claimed that she died of leprosy, but that has been discredited and it is most likely that she died of the complications of childbirth; she was forty at the time of her death and the birthing chamber would have posed greater dangers for her. There is some confusion about her children with Guy. We know she gave birth to two daughters, Alix and Katherine, but I’ve seen it reported that Alix was born in 1200 and that Constance died after giving birth to twin daughters in 1201. Other histories say that Alix was born in 1201, and if so, she and Katherine would have been the twins. At least Constance was spared knowing the tragic fate of her children by Geoffrey. Arthur is believed to have been murdered at John’s command in April of 1203, and his sister, Eleanor (Aenor), was held prisoner in England for thirty-nine years, first by John and then by his son, Henry III, finally dying in August 1241. Once Arthur was believed dead, the Breton barons crowned his half sister Alix and Guy de Thouars served as regent until the French king assumed control of the little heiress, whom he would marry to his cousin when she was twelve. She died in childbirth like her mother, only twenty-two at the time. Guy wed again and his second wife gave him a son.
Baldwin de Bethune died in 1212 and his wife, Hawisa, Countess of Aumale, paid John the vast sum of five thousand marks so she’d not have to marry again; she died two years later. A few historians have suggested she may have been John’s mistress, but I’ve never been convinced of that.
William Marshal was a prominent figure during John’s reign, serving as regent to the latter’s underaged son, dying full of years and honors in 1219. The Earl of Chester wed another Breton heiress, Clemence de Fougères, but this marriage was childless, too; he died in 1232, having become a valuable ally of our favorite Welsh prince, Llywelyn Fawr. The Earl of Leicester was not blessed with a long life, dying in 1205. He and his wife, Loretta, had no children, and the earldom of Leicester was inherited by his sisters. The elder sister, Amicia, was wed to the French baron, Simon de Montfort, and eventually the earldom of Leicester would pass to Amicia’s grandson, another Simon de Montfort, featured in my novel Falls the Shadow. Mercadier survived Richard by just a year. He was murdered in the streets of Bordeaux in April 1200 by one of the men of a rival mercenary, who was now seneschal of Gascony.
Geoffrey, Archbishop of York, had an even more turbulent relationship with John than he had with Richard, and he fled to France in 1207. He died in exile in December 1212. I changed the name of Richard’s loyal clerk and subsequent Bishop of Durham, Master Fulk of Poitiers, as it was really Philip and I had a surfeit of Philips. He died in April 1208. Hugh, the Bishop of Lincoln, died in November 1200; he would soon be canonized by the Catholic Church and is the patron saint of sick children, the sick, and swans.
Philippe Capet lived long enough to overcome the stain upon his reputation caused by his abandonment of the Third Crusade and his humiliating defeats at Richard’s hands. He was much more successful against John and French historians consider him one of their great medieval kings. He seemed to be happy with Agnes of Meran, but he finally yielded to papal pressure and put her aside in 1200, making peace with the Church by effecting a sham reconciliation with Ingeborg. He continued to treat Ingeborg very badly, but Agnes spared him the awkwardness of having two crowned queens by dying in July 1201. Philippe died in 1223, at age fifty-eight, and was succeeded by his son, Louis VIII, who’d wed Eleanor’s granddaughter Blanche. Philippe’s abused queen Ingeborg outlived him by fourteen years, and was treated much more kindly by Philippe’s son and his grandson, Louis IX.
It seems likely that in marrying Alys to the young Count of Ponthieu, Philippe hoped that the marriage would be childless and Ponthieu would then revert to the French Crown. I am happy to report that Alys gave birth to an heir, though, a daughter, Marie. Alys is one of history’s sadder figures, but in a nice turn of irony, her great-granddaughter would become Queen of England, Eleanora of Castile, who wed Edward I.