Fantastic Metropolis

Why would the Templars be so interested in the Plantagenet dynasty? Was it merely to check the power of the Capetians (who would, indeed, require checking, as the Templars would learn to their sorrow) or was it a subtle Templar way of pointing the Papacy away from themselves and checking the power of the Languedoc descendants of the original crusader lords? The Blois family were balked in their hopes of becoming kings of England, and the lords of Toulouse would be destroyed or forced to forswear Catharism. If so, we have to consider that, by the end of the Albigensian crusade, the house of Plantagenet was firmly entangled in Catharism.

It only becomes more interesting to consider the union of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine. In one swoop, Louis VII and his Capetian dynasty were set back by the loss of the rich lands of the Aquitaine in southern France (not tremendously far from the Languedoc region) which were heir to a rich legacy of piety and unconventional thought living side by side. Eleanor herself was a most fascinating woman, possibly the most impressive and powerful woman to rule in her own right in the entirety of Medieval history. Had she been born a man, she may well have taken up the cross and fought in the crusades like her ancestors: deprived of that, she still went on a crusade, even if only to torment her then-husband Louis VII (who ultimately divorced her, as much due to her inability to provide him with a male heir as her numerous affairs—interesting that she provided Henry II with several sons one right after the other) and shock an easily confounded European society. The troubador culture she imported into England, in conjunction with Henry’s attempt to standardize English law, led to some difficulties with the Church (as Archbishop à Becket could have told you—appointed because of his long friendship with Henry, he became a very independent-minded defender of the Church’s ancient prerogatives, a vassal the Papacy was lucky to have… his death at the hands of four knights caused Henry to lose a battle with Rome, much to King John’s later sorrow) but ultimately would create a stronger England with a richer court life, even if it would have to endure the loss of its continental lands and the ascendency of the Capetians. Richly appointed with cathedrals and troubadors, the Aquitaine came into the Plantagenet dynasty alongside Eleanor, and for a half-century, the Kings of England were more French than British, high-stomached Norman lords with high-stomached Norman vassals owing allegiance both to them and to the French monarchs, vassals like Simon de Montfort.

Simon, who killed for God, and for his own glory.

In 1207 Innocent III had begun to preach the Albigensian Crusade, hoping that Philip Augustus would take the lead and prevent any excesses of behaviour. The latter’s involvement in the war with England prevented him from taking the cross, but he did permit his barons to do so: Simon de Montfort was elected as their leader. A soldier of great courage, he was also a skilled diplomat. He defeated Raymond VI, count of Toulouse, in 1212, and Raymond’s ally Peter II of Aragon the following year. It seemed to many that de Montfort and his allies were set on dispossessing the southern nobility and seizing their lands. Provence rose in revolt against the crusaders, and Toulouse was retaken in 1217 by Raymond’s son, while de Montfort was in Paris; he laid siege to the city 1217–18, and was killed in a skirmish with the enemy.

—H. R. Loyn, The Middle Ages: A Concise Encyclopedia

In the end, Count Raymond VII joined the hunt. Having failed to ride to the rescue of Montségur, the epigone of the once-tolerant Saint Gilles family helped persecute his own people. In June of 1249, he shocked his friends among the surviving Cathar gentry by ordering eighty people burned in Agen, a city on the Garonne to the northwest of Toulouse. By September of that same year he was dead at 52, shortly after having contracted a fever in the back country town of Millau. His body was taken to Fontevrault, the abbey in the Loire Valley founded by Robert of Arbrissel, the charismatic preacher of the early 12th century. In death Raymond deserted Toulouse, to lie in Fontevrault alongside his mother, Joan of England, his uncle Richard Lionheart, and his grandparents King Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine.

—Stephen O’Shea, The Perfect Heresy