William X, Duke of Aquitaine
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William X (1099 – 9 April 1137), called the Saint, was Duke of Aquitaine, Duke of Gascony, and Count of Poitou (as William VIII) between 1126 and 1137. He was the son of William IX by his second wife, Philippa of Toulouse.
William was born in Toulouse during the brief period when his parents ruled the capital. His birth is recorded in the Chronicle of Saint-Maixent for the year 1099: Willelmo comiti natus est filius, equivoce Guillelmus vocatus ("a son was born to Count William, named William like himself"). Later that same year, much to his wife's ire, Duke William mortgaged Toulouse to Philippa's cousin, Bertrand of Toulouse, and then left on Crusade. thumb|left|100px|Coin of William X, 8.90g. Philippa and her infant son were left in Poitiers. Long after Duke William's return, he took up with Dangereuse, the wife of one of his vassals, and set aside his rightful wife, Philippa. This caused strain between father and son, until William married Aenor de Châtellerault, daughter of his father's mistress, in 1121.
He had three children with her:
- Eleanor, who later became heiress to the Duchy;
- Petronilla, who married Raoul I of Vermandois;
- William Aigret, who died at age 4 in 1130, about the time their mother Aenor de Châtellerault died.
He also had two natural sons, William and Joscelin. These half brothers of Eleanor, along with Petronilla, accompanied Eleanor and Henry II to England when they left to claim the crown after Stephen died . According to the Pipe Rolls, which recorded wine bought for them and Petronilla, they were still part of Eleanor's court in 1156. After that, Eleanor's siblings drop from the record.
As his father before him, William X was a patron of troubadours, music and literature. He was an educated man and strove to give his two daughters an excellent education, in a time when Europe's rulers were hardly literate.
When Eleanor succeeded him as Duchess, she continued William's tradition and transformed the Aquitanian court into Europe's centre of knowledge.
William was both a lover of the arts and a warrior. He became involved in conflicts with Normandy (which he raided in 1136, in alliance with Geoffrey le Bel of Anjou who claimed it in his wife's name) and France.
Even inside his borders, William faced an alliance of the Lusignans and the Parthenays against him, an issue resolved with total destruction of the enemies. In international politics, William X initially supported antipope Anacletus II in the schism of 1130, opposite to Pope Innocent II, against the will of his own bishops. In 1134 Saint Bernard of Clairvaux convinced William to drop his support to Anacletus and join Innocent.
In 1137 William joined the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, but died of suspected food poisoning during the trip. On his deathbed, he expressed his wish to see king Louis VI of France as protector of his fifteen-year-old daughter Eleanor, and to find her a suitable husband. Louis VI naturally accepted this guardianship and married the heiress of Aquitaine to his own son, Louis VII.
See also
