Family background
If people know of Henry II at all, beyond his classic role in Thomas Becket's martyrdom, it is probably through the Lion in Winter image of a powerful man at odds with his family. This is not incorrect. Henry's relationship with his family was a dramatic and turbulent one that not only shaped the nature of his own reign, but was to have far-reaching effects into the reigns of his successors.
The very nature of Henry's rule was in itself defined by his parentage. Henry was the son of Geoffrey of Anjou and the ex-Empress Matilda of Germany. Matilda was the daughter of Henry I, and was married to Geoffrey in an attempt to recover the marriage alliance between the Anglo-Norman king and the count of Anjou which had been broken when Henry I's son, William Audelin, died with the sinking of the White Ship in 1120. However, the marriage of a daughter into the House of Anjou was a very different thing in the eyes of his Norman barons to the marriage of a son. It meant that instead of Normandy taking over Anjou, Anjou was effectively taking over Normandy.
'Henry's relationship with his family was a dramatic and turbulent one...'
So when Henry I died in 1135, the majority of his barons transferred their loyalty to his nephew Stephen of Blois, against Matilda. Henry, born in 1133, grew up during the civil war that followed. At the age of 9, Matilda's claim to the throne was transferred to him after her singular failure to capture the loyalty of the barons. At the same time, Geoffrey of Anjou conquered Normandy and very astutely passed its patrimony to his son, effectively taking himself (an Angevin usurper) out of the picture. So by 1142, Henry had become the focus for opposition to Stephen's inept reign. By the age of 22, he was king of England, his attitudes forged in the fires of civil war.
Published: 2001-07-01
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