Talk:Constance, Duchess of Brittany

message: I think it would be preferable to remove the mention of Maud, since her existence is not attested. I have read on French Wikipedia that only Guy Alexis Lobineau wrote about her in his Histoire de Bretagne (History of Brittany):
“Geffroi avoit eu deux filles de Constance, Eleonor surnommée la Brette, & Matilde ; quelques auteurs ne lui en donnent qu’une.”
“Geoffrey had had two daughters with Constance: Eleanor, known as the Breton girl, & Maud; a few authors say he had only one.”
(Histoire de Bretagne, I, p. 171, CLIX).
See on Googlebooks
I have never seen any other mention of Mat(h)ilde/Maud/Matilda, daughter of Constance. Does anyone know something about her?
Aziliz Breizh (talk) 15:03, 5 July 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Maud of Brittany, Constance's daughter 

message: I wonder if the date of Constance's third marriage is really accurate.
I saw in Jones and Everard's The Charters of Duchess Constance of Brittany and her Family (1171-1221) that she must have married Guy of Thouars between August and October 1199, as "the first occasion on which the names of Constance and Guy are linked is at Angiers in October 1199. (...) cf. also the date of Gu2 [a grant for the monks of Buzay], which records that on 27 August 1201, Guy was still only in his second regnal year." (The Charters of Duchess Constance of Brittany and her Family (1171-1221), p 135).
The year 1199 is also mentioned as the time of their marriage on French Wikipedia and on Guy of Thouars's article.--Aziliz Breizh (talk) 13:30, 16 June 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Constance's third marriage 

message: The article states that Constance was Conan IV's only surviving child. I don't want to make a critique (I thought so myself) but Judith Everard seems to be of a different mind. So I wonder if it would be possible to mention William clericus, who seems to be Constance's brother. He is mentioned by Everard in her book Brittany and the Angevins. Here's an excerpt:
"Conan and Margaret had been married for nearly six years, yet apparently had produced only one child. The chronicles unanimously recite that Constance was Conan's only daughter (`unica filia'). But Constance was not the heiress in 1166; her father was still alive, and contemporaries could not have been certain that Conan and Margaret would not produce a son in the future, assuming they were permitted to continue to cohabit. Margaret, at least, was capable of childbearing after 1166, since she gave birth to a son in her second marriage. In fact, there may have been sons of her marriage to Conan. A charter of Margaret's includes a prayer for the souls of Conan and of `our boys', possibly `our children' (puerorum nostrorum). (...) One can only assume that these did not survive infancy and were not alive in 1166, but who was William clericus, described in two charters of c. 1200 as the brother of Duchess Constance? (...) Although the obvious conclusion is that he was an illegitimate son of Duke Conan, William would have been an appropriate name for a son of Margaret, celebrating her royal kin. Whether or not any legitimate son was born or survived after 1166, the effect of the agreement of 1166 was to disinherit him, although possibly Conan retained the barony of Tréguier for this purpose. In short, it suited Henry II's purposes that Conan IV should be succeeded by a sole heiress, and this was arranged without waiting for Conan's actual death."
The charters Everard mentions are not very explicit: they only mention William clericus and state that he is the Countess' (Constance) brother. Maybe we might mention him as one Constance's siblings, who was still alive at the time? Aziliz Breizh (talk) 17:49, 18 November 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Constance's brother 

message: @Celia Homeford, regarding the succession laws in 12th-century Brittany, I checked Judith Everard's book on Brittany and the Angevins: she says that "Constance was not the heiress in 1166; her father was still alive, and contemporaries could not have been certain that Conan and Margaret would not produce a son in the future", which implies that Brittany followed male-preference primogeniture at the time. Aziliz Breizh (talk) 10:10, 8 March 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: Does it? Male-preference primogeniture means that an eldest daughter is heiress presumptive until or unless a son is born. Everard says Constance 'was not the heiress'. Celia Homeford (talk) 10:15, 8 March 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: I think Everard means that as long as her father was alive, married and could father a legitimate son, Constance could still be displaced from the status of heiress presumptive to that of 'spare' and so couldn't be considered as the undisputed heiress of Brittany, especially as it is now known that she had siblings who died young (although it isn't known when they died). Her brother William's exact birth date isn't known either but since he was named after William the Lion, not Malcolm IV, it can be assumed that he was born after the latter's death, so between early 1166 and late 1171 (if he was a posthumous child).--Aziliz Breizh (talk) 10:58, 8 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Succession in the Duchy of Brittany