King Louis VII

Louis VII (called the Younger or the Young) (French: Louis le Jeune) (born 1120) is the current King of the Franks. The son and successor of King Louis VI of France, hence his nickname, he married Eleanor of Aquitaine, one of the wealthiest and most powerful women in western Europe. Eleanor came with the vast Duchy of Aquitaine as a dowry for Louis, thus temporarily extending the Capetian lands to the Pyrenees, but their marriage was annulled in 1152 after no male heir was produced.

Immediately after the annulment of her marriage, Eleanor married Henry Plantagenet, Duke of Normandy and Count of Anjou, to whom she gave the Aquitaine. When Henry became King of England in 1154, as Henry II, he ruled over a large empire that spanned from Scotland to the Pyrenees. This was short-lived, however; upon being toppled by the late King Stephen's son Eustace of Boulogne Henry was imprisoned, and Eleanor fled back to France to consolidate her husband's territories and keep them out of the hands of the usurper.

Louis was born in 1120 in Paris, the second son of Louis VI of France and Adelaide of Maurienne. The early education of Prince Louis anticipated an ecclesiastical career. As a result, he became well-learned and exceptionally devout, but his life course changed decisively after the accidental death of his older brother Philip in 1131, when he unexpectedly became the heir to the throne of France. In October 1131, his father had him anointed and crowned by Pope Innocent II in Reims Cathedral. He spent much of his youth in Saint-Denis, where he built a friendship with the Abbot Suger, an advisor to his father who also served Louis well during his early years as king.

Following the death of William X, Duke of Aquitaine, Louis VI moved quickly to have Prince Louis married to Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine, heiress of the late duke, on 25 July 1137. In this way, Louis VI sought to add the large, sprawling territory of the Aquitaine to his family's holdings in France. On 1 August 1137, shortly after the marriage, Louis VI died, and Prince Louis became king of France, reigning as Louis VII. The pairing of the monkish Louis and the high-spirited Eleanor was doomed to failure; she reportedly once declared that she had thought to marry a king, only to find she had married a monk. There was a marked difference between the frosty, reserved culture of the northern court in the Íle de France, where Louis had been raised, and the rich, free-wheeling court life of the Aquitaine with which Eleanor was familiar. Louis and Eleanor had two daughters, Marie and Alix.

Louis' early reign was quite turbulent, the young King finding himself in conflict with his own subjects, powerful vassals and even became embroiled in a bitter dispute with Pope Innocent II over the appointment of the Archbishop of Bruges. The outcome of this result was a massacre in which the royal army burned the town of Vitry-le-François, killing 1000 people who had taken shelter in the church. Overcome with remorse, Louis pledge to make amends by going on Crusade to the Holy Land in 1147. Although the Crusade ended in disaster Louis was held in high regard throughout Europe as a result. However, his decision to abandon Raymond, the Prince of the Crusader state of Antioch, to the Saracen invaders severely damaged his relationship with Eleanor, who was Raymond's niece. Matters were worsened by Eleanor's failure to produce a male heir, and in 1152 their marriage was annulled on the convenient pretext that they were too closely related.

Later that very same year Eleanor married the young Henry Plantagenet, Count of Anjou, an act which outraged many and was seen as an insult to Louis; Henry was Louis' vassal and the marriage was seen to defy every convention of feudalism; worse still, it gave the already immensely powerful Henry control of over half of all the lands in France - the "Angevin Empire" dwarfed the demesne of Henry's liege the King of France and served to fuel tensions between the two. Just two years later in 1154, Louis could but watch in alarm as Henry seized the English throne from the ailing King Stephen, making him one of the most powerful Kings in Europe. It was a relief to the French monarch when Stephen's son Eustace wrested control of England from Henry a few months later, though his relief was short-lived when Eleanor fled back to France to consolidate her husband's holdings and keep them out of the hands of the usurper.

Now Louis finds himself in a curious position - this is potentially a superb opportunity for him to try and bring the unruly Angevins back under royal authority, though the reluctance of the Blesevin King Eustace to come pay homage for his own lands in France is a cause for concern. As liege lord of both claimants to the English throne, Louis may find himself playing reluctant mediator in someone else's civil war...