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Unfortunately when the prince drowned the following year the Count wanted his daughter back and matters got even worse when the leader of the Norman rebels, William Clito, married another of Fulk’s daughters, Sibyl in 1123. Henry took this so seriously that he paid much money to the Pope Calixtus II to make him more amenable to issue a bull annulling the marriage on the grounds that it was within the prohibited seven degrees while at the same time ignoring that his own son’s marriage could as easily have been objected to.
In the following year the duke’s only legitimate child the Empress Matilda became available on the marriage market when her husband the German Emperor Henry V, who was thirty five years her senior, conveniently died. She had lived in Germany for the previous 17 years and was reluctant to return. She was even less impressed with what the Duke had planned for her, a marriage to the heir of a mere Count, Fulk’s son Geoffrey who was only 14 and eleven years younger than her.
Nevertheless the marriage took place at Le Mans cathedral in June 1128 and the couple took an instant dislike to each other with Matilda soon leaving her husband. The next year Geoffrey became Count of Anjou when his father left the country to marry the heiress of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Geoffrey was to never meet the Duke Henry again and his role in the succession of his father in law would appear to have been kept deliberately vague to avoid upsetting the Norman barons who loathed the Angevins for their past violent raids on Normandy.
Matilda was encouraged by her father to return to Geoffrey a few years later and patch up their differences. This they did well enough to have three sons Henry, Geoffrey and William.
The Duke had made the Norman barons proclaim three times oaths of loyalty to Matilda as his successor but Geoffrey wanted several strategic castles to be held as security. This led to a dispute with the king and a conflict arose. This was not well timed for in 1135 Henry died and the conflict gave the opportunity for his nephew Stephen to claim that on his deathbed the duke had renounced his daughter and claim the throne for himself.
While Matilda went over to England Geoffrey stayed in France for he had no interest in English affairs and wanted control of Normandy. Although Norman nobles loyal to Matilda gave him the southern castles of Alencon, Domfront, Argentan and Seez, he only faced Stephen for one Summer in 1137 and was given Caen and Bayeux by Earl Robert the following year it was to take Geoffrey ten years to become Duke.
He also had revolts in Anjou to worry about which limited his progress and when his wife found herself besieged in Oxford in 1142 and appealed for help Geoffrey replied ‘that he would do his best to meet her wishes’. Matilda had to rely on a white cloak to hide in during her escape from the city in a snowstorm when all he sent was his nine year old son Henry with 300 knights while he stayed in Normandy to complete his conquest..
This occurred when Rouen fell in 1144 and the following year Geoffrey was recognised as Duke by the French King Louis VII, who had been encouraged to do this by being given Gisors in the Vexin. The Norman chroniclers were too shamed to tell the story of how their Duchy fell to their old rivals so not much is known but a lack of leadership had sapped their will to resist and those who had lost their land in past revolts had seen their chance.
The situation posed a dilemma for barons who held land on both sides of the channel and Geoffrey eased opposition by stating he would step down when Henry reached his majority. If Henry were to become King the land would be reunified and this was a big incentive to support the Angevins and Geoffrey was true to his word for in January 1150 he stepped down as Duke when Henry became sixteen.
Geoffrey’s charm was unlike his ancestors whose violent reputations had made matters so much more difficult for him and in the absence of his wife had a string of mistresses. These included, it is said by several sources, the young Queen of France, Eleanor of Aquitaine, who met Geoffrey during a visit to her Capital of Poitiers in the Autumn of 1146 but matters were treated discretely especially as six years later she was to become the wife of his son Henry.
He was said to have preferred reading to hunting and this had it’s advantages for when the castle of Montreuil- Bellay defied him he began to read Re de Militia by Vegetius Renatus and learnt the means of capturing it. He also wore a sprig of broom flower (planta genista) in his helmet which gave name to the royal dynasty he was to found, the Plantagenets, though the name was to only become in common usage to emphasise the Yorkist claim to the throne during the War of the Roses.
In his last campaign against Louis in August 1151 the king was taken ill and left for Paris calling on Geoffrey to join him and discuss peace. When he bluntly refused the King’s official Bernard of Clairvaux told Geoffrey he would die within a month. This had the effect intended and the talks went ahead, however, on his journey back to Angers through the Loire one warm evening Geoffrey took a swim in a tributary of the river and caught a chill and two days later he was dead.