Entry taken from the book The Plantagenets
That of Berengaria of Navarre, wife of Richard the Lionheart and Queen of England, is a peculiar case in history. Always in the shadow of her charismatic husband, for most historians she has not deserved more than a line to highlight that she is the only queen of England who did not set foot on English soil and who did not give her husband an heir with whom he did not have a marital life (which in turn is used as an argument about the alleged homosexuality of Richard I that we talked about in a blog post). As usual, this simplification is unfair and leads to wrong conclusions.
Her approach to the figure of Berengaria encounters the difficulty of the scarcity of historical sources on her circumstances prior to her marriage commitment to Ricardo. She was the daughter of the King of Navarre Sancho VI the Wise and the sister of the also Navarrese King Sancho VII the Strong, one of the winners of the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa, but we do not even know the year of her birth; the best approximation we can make is that when she married the English king in Limassol in 1191 she would have been between 21 and 26 years old.
At that time Richard was the "golden bachelor" of European royalty. King of England, Duke of Normandy, Count of Anjou, Duke of Aquitaine and Count of Poitou, he enjoyed (in addition to the enormous properties associated with those titles) a deserved prestige as a warrior and military leader. These virtues were accompanied by a powerful and attractive physique and his fame as a minstrel in the courts he visited. He was also about to embark on the adventure of reconquering the holy city of Jerusalem, lost years before. What then led this dazzling star of the European marriage market to arrange her marriage to the unknown daughter of the monarch of a small kingdom on the Iberian Peninsula?
In the last years of the reign of Richard's father, Henry II mediated in different conflicts between the peninsular kingdoms. In addition, both Berengaria's father and brother had interests in the ultra-Pyrenean territories closest to Navarre, so it is very likely that they came into contact with Ricardo in his capacity as Count of Poitou. The sources that suggest that Ricardo fell in love with her when he visited Pamplona in his youth (according to some as a minstrel, according to others as a pilgrim to Santiago) have no support in any historical document that collects said visit. But an authoritative author, named Ambroise (who accompanied Richard on the crusades) points out in his Estoire de la guerre sainte, that "the king loved her very much, for since he was count of Poitou he had desired her." This would imply that the couple had met before Richard became King of England in 1189, as the passage refers to him as Earl of Poitou. It is true that a good part of Ambroise's work is an exaggerated praise of Ricardo's virtues, but at this point it does not seem to make much sense that the author was not telling the truth, since nothing adds to his idealized image of Ricardo who whether or not he knew Berengaria previously.
There is also no evidence that Richard and Sancho VII of Navarre knew each other and became friends, although the battle-hardened character and military fame of both means that this hypothesis cannot be ruled out. Some sources point to the year 1185 as the year of the marriage between Ricardo and Berengaria, pointing out that in that year Ricardo met Alfonso II of Aragon in Gascony and that in that meeting the Aragonese requested the help of the Angevin in relation to a conflict with Sancho VII of Navarre, which could indicate that Ricardo had some kind of ascendancy over the Navarrese. And this ascendancy could derive from the marriage commitment to Berenguela, to whom in that same year his brother granted some land in Navarra (which these sources interpret as recognition of her new status as Ricardo's fiancée).
What is certain is that in 1190, while Richard was preparing to embark for the Holy Land, his mother Eleanor of Aquitaine traveled to Navarre to take care of Berengaria of Navarre and accompany her to meet her son for marriage. Leonor has been considered the main person responsible for this decision and various arguments have been given:the urgency of marrying off her son so that she would produce an heir before embarking on an adventure that could very well cost her life; her desire to separate Ricardo from the "sick" relationship with Philip of France and find a wife outside the circle of the Gallic monarch; or that Ricardo had confided in her about an adolescent attraction in a previous meeting with Berenguela that Leonor decided to revive.
For others, such as John Guillingham, the initiative came from the English king himself, referring to a period of great activity in Gascony and a meeting in February 1190 in La Réole as elements significant to close the negotiations of the link, which could well have been the closure of the conversations started in 1185. It was, in any case, a more than advantageous proposal for Sancho de Navarra, who thus saw his position on the other side of the Pyrenees strengthened, which would allow him to focus on his problems with his Castilian and Aragonese neighbors.
Be that as it may, Eleanor traveled in September 1190 to Navarre, where she picked up Berengaria and together they undertook an arduous journey crossing the Pyrenees and the Alps, through Lombardy, Pisa, Rome and Naples all the way to Sicily. The chroniclers of the time describe Richard's fiancée as wise, noble, brave, educated and beautiful.
From Sicily, Richard's forces set out for the Holy Land, where the couple would marry. But because of a storm, the ship in which Berengaria and Juana, Ricardo's sister who had taken over from his mother Leonor, were traveling, had to land in Cyprus. There, the Byzantine governor of the island intended to take the crew and their noble passengers hostage, but Richard's arrival thwarted his plans. In less than forty-eight hours the English king took the island, which he would later sell to the Templars.
In the capital of Cyprus, Limassol, Richard I of England and Berengaria of Navarre were married on May 12, 1191. In the same ceremony, the bride was crowned Queen of England. Obviously, there is no evidence about the consummation or not of the marriage and the sources that speak of the Third Crusade focus on Ricardo's military movements with hardly any mention of his wife. What is certain is that when they returned to the Holy Land they did so on different ships and that, once overseas, Berengaria did not participate in her husband's military campaigns and changed residence from one military fortress to another.
Fifteen days after the capture of Acre on July 6, 1191, the spouses met in the castle of the fortress. But Ricardo's situation was not the most appropriate to devote attention to his wife:sick, confronted with the king of France and other leaders of the crusade, weighing the decision to execute more than two thousand Muslim prisoners from Acre...
Only a month after Berengaria arrived in Acre, Richard set out south for Jerusalem, leaving his wife behind. It is impossible to know if the couple lived together maritally during that time, but the truth is that Berenguela did not become pregnant. In September Ricardo took Jafa and a month later Berengaria settled there. The couple would stay six months in Jafa (although Ricardo spent a good part of them fighting to try to take Jerusalem and at Christmas Berengaria joined him in the Latrun camp where she was, for the celebrations).
After the failure of the crusade and the signing of the truce with Saladin in 1192, the couple set out to return to Europe. Berenguela and Juana, Ricardo's sister, did so on September 29 from Acre, but Ricardo was not accompanying them. Well known is what happened to the Lionheart after leaving Palestine on October 9, 1192:he was captured by Leopold of Austria and handed over to Emperor Henry VI who demanded a large ransom for him and remained captive until he was satisfied. in February 1194.
As for Berengaria, after passing through Cyprus and Naples, she arrived in December 1192 in Rome, where she stayed for six months. There she joined those, led by Eleanor of Aquitaine, calling for the pope's intervention to free Richard from his captivity. In June 1193, escorted by Alfonso de Aragón and Raimundo de Tolosa, Berengaria and Juana traveled to Poitou.
Despite having been crowned queen of England at her wedding, throughout Richard Berengaria's captivity she remained in Poitou. Both in one place and in another the situation was delicate. In England Juan sin Tierra conspired to seize power while his mother Eleanor thoroughly squeezed all of Ricardo's subjects to collect the enormous ransom demanded by the emperor. In Poitou Berenguela faced the Aquitaine nobility, traditionally rebellious and not given to obeying its dukes. Henry II had finally managed to subdue them with great effort, but in the new situation they were ready to go back to their old ways.
When Richard returned to England after his release, he did his best to reassert his power. Among other symbolic actions, he was once again crowned king in Winchester. His mother Leonor accompanied him in this ceremony, but not his wife. It is difficult to determine whether this absence evidenced a previous estrangement between the couple or was simply due to Richard's rush to show that he was once again on the throne and that there was no time for Berengaria to travel from France. Possibly Richard felt that it was not worth his already crowned wife making the dangerous crossing of the channel when he himself planned to leave England a few days later. Whatever the cause, Berengaria did not accompany Ricardo in his new coronation.
Indeed, Richard only stayed in England for three weeks after the Winchester ceremony. It would be the last time he would set foot on the island. The remaining five years of his life were spent battling Philip of France for his continental possessions. His military campaigns in those years are widely documented, but unfortunately in these documents (as was usual at the time, in which the queens were invisible except to verify their marriages and the births of their children) the activities of Berengaria are not reported.
When we say that Richard spent his last five years battling Philip, it should not be interpreted to mean that he spent all that time in continuous clashes throughout France without setting foot on a castle . At that time wars had a very limited scope, both in time and space; they were limited to sporadic encounters on the battlefield that usually ended with long truces designed to avoid the worst of times and the periods when foot soldiers had to return to their lands to take care of the crops.
That is to say, if Ricardo and Berengaria did not have children either in those five years, it was not because he was all that time in a tent surrounded by his troops and besieged or besieging the French.
In the year 1195, according to the chronicler Roger de Howeden, a hermit addressed Richard, reminding him of the destruction of Sodom, reproaching him for his sinful life and compelling him to repent and straighten his life. life of him The implications of this passage on Ricardo's sexual orientation were already studied at the time; what interests us at this point is that according to Howeden, a repentant Richard “after accepting penance, received his wife, whom he had not recognized for a long time; and, renouncing illicit intercourse, he joined himself to his wife, and they both became one flesh." Whether or not what is narrated in this passage is true, Berengaria did not get pregnant this time either.
There are few references to Berengaria's activities in the years remaining until Richard's death in 1199. She must have been present in October 1196 at Poitiers at the wedding of Joan, the king's sister; not in vain both women had been partners in the journey through the crusades. But Richard's most time-consuming project in his later years was the construction of Gaillard Castle, and there is no reference to Berengaria ever visiting the fortress, not even when it was finished.
In April 1199 Richard received a mortal wound at the siege of Chalus. He was in bed for ten days until he died and his mother Leonor and the gentleman William Marshal were called to be by his side but not Berengaria. What some consider as further proof of the couple's disagreements and others justify as a measure to hide the seriousness of the king's wounds (Berenguela never accompanied him to his camps and it would have been suspicious if he did), may rather have been simply medical advice (as reflected in a 14th-century chronicle by Walter de Guiseborough:"The wound on his shoulder was deep and dangerous and for that reason his doctors forbade him to embrace or even see and touch his wife", although according to the same chronicle the libidinous character of the king made him not repress his pleasures with other women).
After Richard's death, Bishop Hugh of Lincoln, who was going to meet the king on various matters, decided to make a detour to see Berengaria at Beaufort and found her "grief-stricken and almost heartbroken," according to the bishop's biographer.
When Richard died, both Eleanor and the new English king, Juan sin Tierra, completely disregarded Berengaria. Pope Innocent III, who always defended the Navarrese, describes her situation as that of a poor and humiliated beggar. Even so, the widow of Richard I would still live more than thirty years… but that is another story, to which I dedicate the second entry in this series.
Those who want more information about this historical figure can read the recommendable book Berenguela de Navarra, Reina de Inglaterra. Looking for the consort of Richard the Lionheart by Ann Trindade, who has served as the source for this entry. It is not easy to find it in stores, but the publisher responsible for its publication, Mintzoa, sends it quickly and efficiently to whoever contacts them.