Adeliza of Louvain

Adeliza of Louvain
Detail of a Shaftesbury manuscript, most likely depicting Adeliza
Queen consort of England
Tenure	24 January 1121 – 1 December 1135
Coronation	30 January 1121
Born	c. 1103
Died	23 April 1151(1151-04-23) (aged 48) Affligem Abbey, Brabant
Burial	Affligem Abbey, Brabant
Spouse	Henry I of England William d'Aubigny, 1st Earl of Arundel
Issue more...	William d'Aubigny, 2nd Earl of Arundel
House	House of Louvain
Father	Godfrey I, Count of Louvain
Mother	Ida of Namur

Adeliza of Louvain, sometimes known in England as Adelicia of Louvain, also called Adela and Aleidis; (c. 1103 – 23 April 1151) was Queen of England from 1121 to 1135, as the second wife of King Henry I. She was the daughter of Godfrey I, Count of Louvain.

Henry was some 35 years older than his bride, who was about 18 when they married. He already had children, though no surviving son, from his first marriage to Matilda of Scotland, as well as several illegitimate ones. As his second marriage produced no children he was to leave his throne to his daughter the Empress Matilda. After his death Adeliza spent three years based in a convent, then married again and had seven children by William d'Aubigny, 1st Earl of Arundel. But a year before her death at the age of 48 she left her husband to move to a monastery in Flanders, where at least one of her brothers also lived.

Adeliza's marriage seems to have been successful, apart from the failure to produce a new heir. The flow of Henry's illegitimate children seems already to have ceased by the time of the marriage, and they spent most of their marriage together, which was by no means inevitable in royal marriages of the period. She seems to have been influential in the promotion of French poetry and other arts in the court, but to have played little part in politics.

Adeliza of Louvain was born in 1105 in Leuven, present-day Belgium. She was renowned for her beauty, reflected in the epithet ‘the fair maiden of Brabant'. The chronicler Henry of Huntingdon also mentions Adeliza’s beauty in an interlude in his Historia Anglorum, stating, “A jewel grows pale on you, a crown does not shine. Put adornment aside, for nature provides your adornment...”

Her father was Godfrey I, Count of Louvain (1095–1139), Landgrave of Brabant, and Duke of Lower Lotharingia (1106–1128), an ally of Henry V, Holy Roman Emperor. After the death of Adeliza’s mother, Ida of Chiny, Godfrey married Clementia of Burgundy, the mother of Baldwin VII, Count of Flanders who had fought with the French against the Normans in 1118. Adeliza's brother, Joscelin of Louvain, married the heiress to the Percy fortune. He is often referred to as an “opportunist”.