Read Louis: The French Prince Who Invaded England for Free Online

it was a code which regulated the behaviour of knights towards other knights . Even the most cursory glance at contemporary events demonstrates that there was no particular requirement to behave respectfully towards commoners, women, non-Christians or heretics, as we shall see. However, there were by this stage some implicit rules regarding the keeping of one’s word and the importance of companionship among knights, of being loyal to one’s comrades, and this is a lesson which Louis took to heart, and which was later to have profound consequences for the kingdom of England.
    In learning to be a knight Louis was not alone. It was the custom to gather together noble youths from the great houses into the royal household, so a number of companions of similar age were brought to Paris to be educated alongside him, among them Arthur, duke of Brittany and heir presumptive to the English throne; Louis’s second cousins Robert and Peter de Dreux, sons of Robert II, count of Dreux, whose father had been a younger brother of Louis VII; and their cousin Guy de Châtillon, eldest son and heir of Walter III, count of St Pol. This gathering of noble boys served a dual purpose: not only would Louis have companions with whom he could practise his skills, but these boys would be the great lords of the realm when he was king, so they would develop a personal loyalty to him.
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    Meanwhile, events at court took a new turn. In 1196 King Philip married again, this time to Agnes, daughter of the duke of Merania in Bavaria (then part of the Holy Roman Empire), so Louis at last gained a new stepmother. The only problem was that the pope, Innocent III, had not recognised Philip’s repudiation of and separation from Ingeborg, and he declared the new marriage bigamous. So when Agnes gave birth in 1198 to a daughter, Marie, and in 1200 to Philip, a long-awaited second son for the king (known throughout his life as Philip Hurepel for his wild hair), their legitimacy was widely called into question. Again, the chroniclers expressed their disapproval: William the Breton dares to refer to Agnes as a ‘concubine’ and Rigord saw the marriage as ‘against the law and the will of God’. Eventually, with France under papal Interdict – the most severe punishment the Church could inflict, meaning that Mass could not be celebrated anywhere in the realm, and that the sacraments including weddings and burials in consecrated ground were forbidden to everyone – Philip caved in and sent Agnes away to a convent, where her death in 1201, in giving birth to a stillborn child, solved the question of bigamy. Much later, when as part of a negotiated settlement with the pope Philip would agree to restore Ingeborg to her official position as queen – though he never accepted her back personally as his wife – Innocent agreed to legitimise Marie and Philip Hurepel. King Philip would never marry again, though he did father at least one illegitimate son, known as Peter Charlot, sometime between 1205 and 1209. Peter was tutored by William the Breton; destined for a career in the Church, he later became bishop of Noyon. As the eldest son of Philip’s first and undisputed queen, Louis’s position as heir to the French throne was not affected by the births of his much younger half-siblings, but the legitimisation of Philip Hurepel (albeit surrounded by murmurs that he would never be ‘properly’ legitimate, as there were questions over the validity of his parents’ marriage at the time of his birth) meant that King Philip now had a second heir, which eased worries over the succession.
    As Louis continued his scholarly pursuits and his chivalric training, his father began the momentous task of finding a bride for him. Matrimonial alliances were the best way of securing the ties between different houses and the control of lands, and Philip’s inclination was to find a suitable granddaughter of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine – and therefore niece of the