Alphonse II the Chaste , son of queen Petronila de Aragón and the count of Barcelona and prince of Aragón Ramón Berenguer IV ascended to the Aragonese throne in 1164. Like all the monarchs of the time, one of the main concerns was the choice of a wife who would serve the game of dynastic alliances and friendship treaties between medieval Christian kingdoms.
In the case of Alfonso, already in his father's life he had selected for him as his wife a princess from the kingdom most common in the marriage alliances of Aragon:Sancha de Castile. Sancha was the daughter of King Alfonso VII and sister of the Castilian monarch Alfonso VIII.
But at that time marriage commitments between Castile and Aragon were as common as conflicts between the two kingdoms; In 1170 Alfonso II of Aragon laid siege to the city of Calahorra, in possession of Castile, and was in turn attacked and defeated by Count Pedro of Portugal, tutor of the young King Alfonso VIII of Castile, who took the flags of Aragon. After various reconciliations and new confrontations in 1172, the Aragonese king decided to annul the marriage agreement with Sancha de Castilla agreed by his father and set his sights on a daughter of the Byzantine emperor Manuel Commeno, named Eudoxia.
In 1174 the emperor of Byzantium sent his daughter on a trip to Aragon, but when Eudoxia's entourage arrived in Montpellier in February, he found the unpleasant news that relations between Aragon and Castile had been redirected again and that the marriage between Alfonso II of Aragon and Sancha of Castile had been celebrated in Zaragoza on January 18 of that same year.
It seemed that Eudoxia had no alternative but to return to Byzantium and that, in this way, the family connection between the imperial family and the Aragonese monarchy was frustrated. However, due to a strange set of circumstances, Eudoxia Commena was destined not only to end up marrying Aragon, but also to become the grandmother of one of her most charismatic kings:Jaime I the Conqueror.
When Eudoxia and her retinue received the news of the annulment of the engagement with Alfonso II of Aragon, her host was Count William of Montpellier. He decided that the presence in his territory of a snubbed Byzantine princess was too important an opportunity to pass up. Although Eudoxia's advisors protested her, the Byzantine princess finally married William VIII of Montpellier.
Before the lord of Montpellier decided to divorce her by not giving her a male heir, Eudoxia had a daughter with him:Maria de Montpellier. What nobody could suppose at that time is that over time Maria would become an appetizing marriage partner, being able to contribute as a dowry the lordship of Montpellier, of which she had been declared holder after a rebellion in 1204 against the previous lord of Montpellier. , William IX.
It is not clear whether King Pedro II of Aragon (son of Alfonso II the Chaste) it had something to do with that rebellion, but the truth is that Montpellier was a very interesting possession for the strategic and territorial interests of the Aragonese monarch in the south of France; In addition, Pedro had not shown the slightest interest in Eudoxia's daughter before said rebellion, but had held talks with the kingdom of Navarre and Jerusalem to marry one of his princesses,
Be that as it may, on June 15, 1204 (less than two months after the proclamation of Mary as Lady of Montpellier on April 25) the couple married, between whose capitulations included the commitment of the husband never to repudiate his wife. A few days later Pedro II of Aragon proclaimed himself Lord of Montpellier and, after the birth in 1205 of a daughter of the couple named Constanza, he made María renounce her lordship, donating it as a dowry to her daughter. Pedro's attempt in 1206 to divorce his wife ran up against the threat of the city of Montpellier to name Mary lady to the detriment of the Aragonese.
Pedro de Aragón continued trying to divorce his wife and courting other ladies, to the point that, according to legend, she had to resort to the trick of pretending to be the king's mistress in a dark room to get pregnant. Beyond this story, worthy of the Arthurian legends, the fact is that finally María de Montpellier became pregnant and on February 2, 1208 the fruit of their union was born:the future King Jaime I of Aragon, called the Conqueror for having incorporated such important places as Valencia or the Balearic Islands into the Aragonese crown... But that's another story.
As for the protagonist of this post, the Byzantine princess Eudoxia Commena, after her husband William VIII of Montpellier divorced her in 1187, she was sent to the Monastery of Aniane, in the Languedoc. She died there in 1203 without knowing that, even if she did not get to wear the crown of Aragon for which she seemed destined, a grandson of hers would not only sit on the throne of Aragon, but would take the kingdom to heights never before reached.
Font| Adela Rubio Calatayud:Brief history of the kings of Aragon.