Plantagenet Chronicles

A daughter's alliance

Negotiations for the marriage of Matilda, Henry II's eldest daughter, to Henry the Lion, duke of Bavaria and Saxony, started in 1165 when Archbishop Reginald of Cologne, close adviser of the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, led a delegation to Henry II at Rouen. The proposal was that one of the king's daughters should marry Frederick's young son while another (Matilda) should marry the duke, the emperor's most powerful subject and -- at this stage -- his close ally. Frederick, whose rule theoretically extended throughout Germany and northern Italy, needed support in conflicts with the papacy -- he had just extablished an antipope as a rival to the hostile Alexander III -- and the cities of northern Italy. Henry II, for his part, was embarrassed by the dispute with Thomas Becket, who had gone into exile at the end of 1164 and had appealed for the pope's assistance. Henry saw friendship with the empire as a means of putting pressure on Pope Alexander in order to influence him against Becket.

Since Henry II annoyed Barbarossa when he finally refused to transfer his allegiance to his antipope Victor IV, the marriage between Duke Henry and Matilda was the only one to take place. The ceremony took place in February 1168 at Brunswick. Henry, in his late 30s, had been married before, but the marriage had produced no male heir and was dissolved on the usual grounds of consanguinity. Matilda, who had been born in 1156, was either 11 or 12 when she married. She bore her husband two sons, and until her death in 1189, administered her husband's vast lands during absences such as his pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1172-3.

The political consequences of the marriage were totally unexpected, eventually involving Henry II and his sons deeply in German politics. Duke Henry and the Emperor Frederick quarrelled in the late 1170s and in the autumn of 1182 Henry and his family arrived at the court of Henry II, his father-in-law, as exiles. The king gave them his protection and tried to secure their return to Saxony through diplomatic pressure against Frederick. The children, notably Otto, the second son, became protégés of the Plantagenets and stayed at their court when Henry and Matilda returned to Germany in 1185.
henry_matilda
Above The tomb and effigies of Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony, and his second wife Matilda, daughter of Henry II of England. There had been long links between the English and German royal families: Henry II's mother, the Empress Matilda, had lived for more than 20 years in Germany before she married Geoffrey of Anjou, and she kept her imperial title until she died. Matilda, her grandchild, had a son, Otto, by Henry the Lion. He was brought up at Richard the Lionheart's court and eventually became German emperor from 1209 to 1218, as Otto IV. His coat of arms was derived appropriately from the Plantagenet emblem of three lions. Duke Henry used a naturalistic picture of a lion as a seal, and there was a monumental bronze lion outside his castle in Bavaria.
Although the tomb shows a young and peaceful couple, Henry was an able, if not always successful, military leader.