Berenguelade León

Berengaria of Leon (1204 - 12 April 1237) was the third wife but only empress consort of John of Brienne, Latin Emperor of Constantinople.

Contents [hide] 1 Family 2 Marriage 3 Empress 4 Children 5 External links 6 References

[edit] Family According to the chronicle of Alberic of Trois-Fontaines, Berengaria was a daughter of King Alfonso IX of León and Queen Berengaria I of Castile. She was a younger sister of Ferdinand III of Castile and Alfonso of Molina.

Their paternal grandparents were Ferdinand II of León and Urraca of Portugal. Their maternal grandparents were Alfonso VIII of Castile and Eleanor of England.

[edit] Marriage In 1217, Berengaria's brother Ferdinand III had inherited the throne of the Kingdom of Castile through abdication of their mother.

In 1223, John of Brienne, aged 53, visited Santiago de Compostela, as a supposed pilgrim. He was by then twice a widower: first, in 1213 of Queen Maria of Jerusalem and then of Stephanie, daughter of Leo II of Armenia, (1150 - king of Cilicia in Armenia 1199 - 1219).

As a consequence of his visit to Santiago de Compostela, Alfonso IX invited him to marry Sancha and, presumably, through her inherit the Leonese throne.

However Berengaria of Castile, a long time divorced and an inheritor in her own right of the Castilian throne, main advisor of her son Ferdinand III, offered one of her own daughters to John instead.

Aging John chose Berengaria of Leon, from Alfonso IX's second doomed marriage, who was a decade younger than her half-sister Sancha, from Alfonso IX's first doomed marriage.

The marriage took place at Toledo in 1224.