Joan of England, Queen of Sicily
Joan of England, Johanna Plantagenet (English: Joan of England, French: Jeanne d' Angleterre; * October 1165 in Angers, † September 4, 1199 in Fontevraud L'Abbaye ), was an English princess of the House of Plantagenet and by her marriages Queen of Sicily and Countess of Toulouse.
She was a daughter of the English King Henry II Plantagenet and Duchess Eleanor of Aquitaine. Her full-and half-siblings included the English kings Richard I the Lionheart and John Lackland, and the French Princess Mary of Champagne.
Life
Queen of Sicily
Johanna was born in the castle of Angers in Anjou, the ancestral land of their family, and spent her childhood years in the courts of her mother in Winchester and Poitiers. In 1176 the Sicilian King William II made a legation a request of her father for a marriage with one of his daughters. The engagement was announced on 20 May of the year and on 27 August left Johanna, escorted by the Bishop of Norwich and her uncle Hamelin de Warenne, their home. In southern France, Saint- Gilles, she was taken by a delegation of her fiance in reception and into the Kingdom of Sicily. On February 13, 1177 Marriage and Coronation of the eleven-year old Johanna took place in the Cathedral of Monreale, near Palermo.
The marriage remained childless until the death of her husband in 1189, so the question of succession in Sicily posed several problems. Came to the throne with the support of the Norman barons Count Tancred of Lecce, which was an illegitimate grandson of King Roger II. However, also raised the Roman-German Emperor Henry VI. on behalf of his wife Constance of Sicily, who was a daughter of King Roger II claim to the throne. This led Sicily in a long-running armed conflict with the Emperor. From King Tancred Johanna was treated like a prisoner and locked up in the palace of Palermo.
Third Crusade
In September 1190, King Philip II of France and Richard the Lionheart arrived on their way to Palestine, the Kingdom of Sicily. Richard came for the treatment of his sister immediately with King Tancred in conflict and forced this, let Johanna free. But when Tancred refused to pay their Wittums, Richard stormed with his crusaders on 4 October, the port city of Messina, which Tancred forced to relent. During the winter the Crusaders Herre in southern Italy Richard came to a peaceful agreement with Tancred and even to a common alliance against the Emperor. Johanna saw her mother again, when this arrived with the escorting her to southern Italy fiancé Richard, Berengaria of Navarre, on 30 March 1191 Messina.
Johanna decided to participate in the crusade her brother and traveled together with Berengaria on a ship across the Mediterranean. They were, however, forced into a storm from the main fleet and the first to reach in April 1191, the Cypriot port city of Limassol. The Byzantine rulers of Cyprus, the self-proclaimed Emperor Isaac Comnenus, the two women intended to capture, but Richard the Lionheart reached in time the island and captured Limassol, where Richard and Berengaria were married on May 12, 1191. Shortly afterwards, the English king could conquer the whole of Cyprus; Isaac Comnenus had to surrender. After the conquest of Acre attracted Johanna and her sister around in this city, where they were in the course of the crusade. A report, compiled later the bar hebraeus According 've Saladin ( called by Christians " Saphadin " ) in October 1191 with Richard for the purpose of shared peace to a marriage between Joan and his brother al - Adil Abu Bakr asked the couple should examine the rule be awarded over Jerusalem. This project had but ultimately failed due to the refusal of al - Adils to commit the required conversion to the Christian faith. At the turn of 1191/92 traveled Johanna and Berengaria back to France.
Countess of Toulouse
From her brother Richard Johanna was in 1196 with the Count Raymond VI. betrothed of Toulouse, the marriage took place in October of the year in Rouen. You should primarily serve the peace between Richard and the Count, who had been fighting him. As dowry Johanna were here added the provinces Agenois and Quercy; In July 1197 she gave birth to her only surviving child, the future Count Raymond VII of Toulouse.
Joan's marriage was anything but harmonious, the court of Toulouse one met her with hostility due to the generation -long rivalry between the nobility of the Toulousain and their aquitanisch - Angevin ancestors. When she was pregnant again in 1199, she was left in the face of a revolt of several lords of her husband down. While she led a siege of the castle Les Casses, she was betrayed by her followers and then fled to Aquitaine to ask her brother for help. Richard the Lionheart but was at this time himself in the fight against rebellious vassals, and was wounded at the siege of Châlus. Together they moved to her mother to Chinon, where Richard died of his wounds.
Johanna then asked to join the Fontevraud Abbey, which was rather unusual for a married and pregnant woman was her but still permitted. She died a short time later as a nun in childbirth. She gave birth to a child who lived long enough to be baptized, but it died a few days later and was buried in the Cathedral of Rouen. Joan herself was, as already shortly before her brother, buried in Fontevraud.