page_title: Béla III of Hungary
section_title: Family
hierarchical_section_title: Béla III of Hungary / Family
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Ruhestätte Béla III.
context_page_description: Béla III was King of Hungary and Croatia between 1172 and 1196. He was the second son of King Géza II and Géza's wife, Euphrosyne of Kiev. Around 1161, Géza granted Béla a duchy, which included Croatia, central Dalmatia and possibly Sirmium. In accordance with a peace treaty between his elder brother, Stephen III, who succeeded their father in 1162, and the Byzantine Emperor Manuel I Komnenos, Béla moved to Constantinople in 1163. He was renamed to Alexios, and the emperor granted him the newly created senior court title of despotes. He was betrothed to the Emperor's daughter, Maria. Béla's patrimony caused armed conflicts between the Byzantine Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary between 1164 and 1167, because Stephen III attempted to hinder the Byzantines from taking control of Croatia, Dalmatia and Sirmium. Béla-Alexios, who was designated as Emperor Manuel's heir in 1165, took part in three Byzantine campaigns against Hungary. His betrothal to the emperor's daughter was dissolved after her brother, Alexios, was born in 1169. The emperor deprived Béla of his high title, granting him the inferior rank of kaisar.
context_section_description: Béla's first wife, Agnes, was the daughter of Raynald of Châtillon, Prince of Antioch, and Raynald's wife, Constance of Antioch. Agnes was born around 1149 and died around 1184. At the time of her marriage in 1170, she was renamed Anna in Constantinople.
  Béla's and Agnes-Anna's first child, Emeric, was born in 1174. Emeric's sister, Margaret, who was renamed Maria in Constantinople, was born in 1175. At the age of nine or ten, she was given in marriage to the Byzantine Emperor Isaac II Angelos, who was about 30 the time. Maria's husband died in 1204, before the Sack of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade. Margaret–Maria married one of the leaders of the Crusade, Boniface of Montferrat, who seized Thessaloniki after the fall of the Byzantine Empire. Historian Makk writes that in about 1210, Maria married Nicholas I of Saint Omer after the death of Boniface, but scholar Peter Lock says that Saint Omer's wife and Margaret–Maria were not identical.
  The second son of Béla and Agnes-Anna, Andrew, was born around 1177. His two younger brothers, Solomon and Stephen, did not survive infancy. Their younger sister, Constance, married King Ottokar I of Bohemia in about 1198. A third daughter of Béla and Agnes-Anna, whose name is unknown, died in infancy.
  After the death of Agnes-Anna, Béla proposed to Theodora, a granddaughter of Emperor Manuel I's sister, Theodora Komnene. However, a synod of the Byzantine Church forbade the marriage in 1185, because Theodora had entered a nunnery. In late 1185 or at the beginning of 1186, Béla asked for the hand of Matilda of Saxony, a daughter of Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony, but Henry II of England, Matilda's grandfather, hindered this marriage. Finally, Béla married Henry II's widowed daughter-in-law, Margaret of France, in the summer of 1186. She was the daughter of Louis VII of France. Queen Margaret outlived Béla, and moved to the Holy Land after his death.
caption: King Béla's III tomb
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA", "Image Make": "OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP.", "Image Model": "D595Z,C500Z", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Version 1.1", "Image DateTime": "0000:00:00 00:00:00", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "1066", "Image CustomRendered": "Normal", "Image ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "Image WhiteBalance": "Auto", "Image DigitalZoomRatio": "0", "Image SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "Image GainControl": "Low gain up", "Image Contrast": "Normal", "Image Saturation": "Normal", "Image Sharpness": "Normal", "Image PrintIM": "[80, 114, 105, 110, 116, 73, 77, 0, 48, 51, 48, 48, 0, 0, 37, 0, 1, 0, 20, 0, ... ]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "2734", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "6611", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/3", "EXIF FNumber": "14/5", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Creative", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "100", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "0000:00:00 00:00:00", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "0000:00:00 00:00:00", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "2", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "297/100", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "63/10", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1920", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2560", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed"}