♀Berenguela of Castile

Berenguela of Castile (died 8 November 1246) was Queen of Castile and Toledo, called “la Grande”, a king’s eldest daughter who governed Castile as regent for her young brother and, when its crown passed to her, handed it to her son. She was the twenty-fourth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her son Fernando of Castile (1201–1252).

Early life

Berenguela was the eldest daughter of Alfonso of Castile, King of Castile^W, and Eleanor of England^W. She was probably born about 1179–80. By a contract dated 23 April 1188, at Seligenstadt, she was married to Konrad, Duke of Swabia^W, a son of the emperor Friedrich Barbarossa^W. They had no children and were later divorced.

Queen of Leon

In December 1197, at Valladolid, Berenguela of Castile married Alfonso of Leon, King of Leon, Galicia and Badajoz^W, as his second wife. They had two sons, Fernando and Alfonso, and three daughters, Leonor, Berenguela and Constanza. A papal dispensation for the marriage was refused, and Leon was placed under an interdict^W from 1202 to 1204, a ban that suspended most of the Church’s sacraments across the kingdom. In 1204 the couple separated because of their kinship, and Berenguela went back to her father’s kingdom.

Regent and queen

Her father and mother both died in 1214, and Berenguela became regent for her younger brother, Enrique I^W. In 1217 the crown of Castile came to her as his heir, and on 31 August 1217 she abdicated the throne in favor of her son, Fernando. A charter that Fernando and his brother Alfonso granted that year was made with the consent of their mother, Queen Berenguela.

Later years

Alfonso of Leon died at Villanueva de Sarria on 24 September 1230. That same year Berenguela was appointed to negotiate with Teresa of Portugal, Alfonso’s first wife, for the renunciation by Teresa’s two daughters of their rights to the crown of Leon in favor of Berenguela’s son, Fernando, who had been King of Castile since 1217. Berenguela died at Las Huelgas near Burgos on 8 November 1246 and was buried there, in the Cistercian monastery of Santa María la Real^W, where her parents also lay.

Notes

Sources

Berenguela’s parentage, birth, both marriages, her children, the interdict, her regency and abdication, the settlement of 1230 and her death and burial are from Douglas Richardson, Plantagenet Ancestry (2nd ed., 2011), vol. I, CASTILE 3–4, pp. 491–494. This is a printed genealogy of the medieval royal families, which cites the Spanish chronicles, the charters and the modern histories, among them a biography of her in George, Annals of the Queens of Spain (1850). The charter of 1217 is cited there from the cartulary of the abbeys of Tulle and Rocamadour. Her title as Queen of Castile and Toledo is also given at ENGLAND 3, pp. 23–28, in the same volume.

Her birth

Richardson gives her birth only as “about 1179-80”; no day or place is stated.

Her name

She is better known in English as Berengaria of Castile, and as Berenguela I.