Matilda of Flanders

I promised a friend that I would start this thing off with a new post about Matilda of Flanders, so here we go.

*daughter of Baldwin V, Count of Flanders, and Adela, whose father and brother were kings of France

*highly educated – possibly couldn’t write, it wasn’t a common skill, but knew Flemish, Latin, French and maybe English

*probably met Emma of Normandy during that queen’s exile, as Emma fled to Bruges from England and stayed with the Count and his family until her son Harthacnut finally got off his ass and went to claim the crown

*married William of Normandy, Emma’s great-nephew, around about 1051

*there’s a story that says Matilda initially refused to marry William because he was illegitimate and therefore beneath her; when William heard the reason he supposedly got on his horse, rode to wherever Matilda was (the location varies depending on the source) and beat the hell out of her, at which point she decided oh actually, I will marry him after all. Let’s break down why this is bullshit.

1. That’s not how women work.
2. The sources that claim this aren’t contemporary; nothing from the period mentions this, and you’d think SOMEBODY would have been like ummmm wtf
3. I’ve had a hard time pinning down the dating for the earliest source to make this claim, but it appears to be one that dates from either the end of King John’s reign or during the reign of Henry III. If it’s from John’s reign, it’s not hard to imagine why someone would want to make his ancestor look like a dick. If it’s from Henry’s reign, there’s that plus his mother, Isabella of Angouleme, was NOT well regarded. Representations of women in chronicles often change and distort depending upon the circumstances under which they were written, so an abrupt and wholly new appearance of a queen of England who needed to be beaten into submission at a time when the queen mother was acting like trash should be side-eyed like hell.
4. This theme of ‘William gets mad and beats (or even kills) Matilda’ crops up over and over in later chronicles, except the circumstances change (she was cheating, she said something he didn’t like, she thought *he* was cheating when he wasn’t). The details are largely the same (the dudes writing this shit were really into the idea of her being pulled from a horse to be hit or tied to a horse and dragged, maybe there’s a kink there), it’s just the timing and motivation that shifts. Seems unlikely that he spent like 30 years repeatedly pulling the same shit and somehow NO contemporary chronicle or letter recorded it. The more plausible explanation is that it’s a made-up scenario that got twisted further over time, like historical telephone.
5. We’ll come back to this one.

ANYWAY. Matilda probably DID refuse to marry William at first, she WAS keenly aware of her status, and then had a change of heart, we just don’t know why.

*So they get married and that in itself is a whole thing, because the pope said actually they couldn’t get married for Reasons and we don’t know what those were either, but they forged ahead and did it anyway and had the wrinkles ironed out later and she became duchess of Normandy

*She’s often lauded as the first consecrated queen of England, which she was not, but she WAS the first queen whose coronation ceremony explicitly positioned her as nearly equal to the king, so that’s cool

*When William went off to invade England in 1066, he left Matilda behind as regent of Normandy, a position she’d hold over and over again when he was over there being an ass to the English. And she was very good at it! Her career as regent is quite impressive, she handled that shit like a boss and kept the duchy together through skill and earned respect, and when things did start to slide sideways sometimes she called in whoever she needed to to get shit back on track and operating smoothly.

*Ensured that her daughters received excellent educations, just like her mother had done for her. Cecilia would have a respectable career as a nun and later abbess, and Adela would marry the Count of Blois and basically run that joint, acting as regent when her husband went off on Crusade and then again after he died and their son was too young to run the place himself. Even after he was old enough Adela stayed involved in the admin. She did so much for the church that she’s a saint. (Adela’s son Stephen was the same Stephen who would take the throne after his uncle/Adela’s brother Henry I died and then basically get outshone by his better wife, which, I mean, with a mother like Adela and a grandmother like Matilda was kind of inevitable, he knew how to pick a woman.)

*When Matilda’s son Robert rebelled against his father, Matilda sent him money to fund his troops, got in trouble for it, and then did it AGAIN because, you know, that’s her son. She did a whole performative public apology thing to beg William’s forgiveness, and he did not punish her? Which is where that point number 5 from before comes in. She committed treason. William imprisoned his own fucking brother for the rest of his life for less. But like, nothing happened to her? If the stories that William beat her for pettier things were even remotely true, you’d think they’d include this incident as one where he lost his shit. But they don’t. Interesting.

*Donated the modern equivalent of millions of dollars to various religious houses, out of what seems to have been genuine devotion and concern

*May have exacted revenge on an Englishman who spurned her advances before she met William? It’s unclear. The story goes that he said no and she stewed on it until she was queen and had the opportunity to toss his ass in jail and take all his lands. Probably didn’t happen? It’s possible he died of natural causes and she got his lands after because that’s what queens did. Still, it’s a story that was told about her that may reflect some aspects of her character, so we’re gonna note it.

*When she died the whole fucking family fell apart, and even though they weren’t doing so hot before her death, it does look like her influence over William and their sons is what kept shit mostly together. Once she was gone, all bets were off.

*It’s almost certainly her fault that we have so many fucking Matildas to deal with while trying to parse what the hell was going on in the 11th and 12th centuries. Edith of Scotland was her goddaughter and took the name Matilda after marrying Matilda’s son Henry I (which on the one hand, that’s cool, but on the other hand, taking the name of your husband’s mom is kind of? Ick?). Matilda of Boulogne was named either after her aunt Matilda (Edith/Matilda) or Matilda of Flanders. The Empress Matilda was her granddaughter and probably named after her (calm the fuck DOWN Henry).

So anyway that’s Matilda, I like her a lot.