♀Marie of Ponthieu

Marie of Ponthieu was Countess of Ponthieu^W and Montreuil in northern France in her own right, the heiress of her father’s two counties. She was the twenty-fourth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her daughter Jeanne de Dammartin (died 1279).

Marriage

Marie was the daughter and heiress of Guillaume II Talvas, Count of Ponthieu and Montreuil, who died on 4 October 1221. She married Simon de Dammartin, also called Simon de Boulogne, a brother of Renaud de Dammartin, Count of Boulogne, and Simon held the two counties as count in her right.

Their daughter Jeanne

Simon and Marie’s eldest daughter, Jeanne de Dammartin, was married by proxy to King Henry III of England in 1235, but the marriage was annulled the next year. She married King Fernando III of Castile^W at Burgos before 31 October 1237, and in a letter of that year Fernando called Simon his father-in-law. Marie died in 1251, and Jeanne succeeded her as Countess of Ponthieu.

Notes

Sources

Marie’s title, her father, her marriage, her daughter Jeanne and Jeanne’s two marriages are from Douglas Richardson, Plantagenet Ancestry (2nd ed., 2011), vol. I, CASTILE 5, pp. 495–496, and ENGLAND 4, p. 42, a printed genealogy of the medieval royal families; her father’s death is from p. 20. Her death year rests on Richardson’s statement that Jeanne “succeeded to Ponthieu in 1251 on her mother’s death”. Fernando’s letter of 1237, in which he styles the count of Ponthieu his “socero” (father-in-law), is among the works Richardson cites on p. 496. That Simon was Renaud’s brother is from the Complete Peerage (2nd ed.), vol. I, p. 354.