In-Laws: Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony 1129-1195

In a storied royal family like the Plantagenets, the in-laws are every bit as colorful as the members of the family they married.  Henry the Lion (do we see a theme here?), Duke of Saxony and husband of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine's daughter Matilda was no exception.

Henry was born in Ravensburg, c 1129.  He was the son of Henry the Proud, Duke of Bavaria and Saxony, of the Welf dynasty.  The Welfs or Guelphs and their numerous rivals are worth a blog in themselves, as are the various nicknames and sobriquets these men used in the eras before last names.  Henry the Proud died when Little Henry was still a boy.  The King of Germany had dispossessed Henry's father of both of his duchies of Bavaria and Saxony.  If Henry, Jr., wanted them, he would have to fight for them.  The King of Germany returned Saxony in 1142 and, after the installation of a new Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick Barbarosa, he got a piece of Bavaria back in 1156.  This was with the exception of portions of Bavaria that became Austria and remained the domain of Leopold of Austria.  Thus, there was drama between Henry and Leopold even before Leopold became a Plantagenet by extension.

Henry founded many now iconic Bavarian or North German cities, including Munich, Augsburg, Kassel, Schwerin and Brunswick.  He established his capital in Brunswick and had a bronze lion installed in courtyard of his castle there.  The Lion was his heraldric device and became his nickname as well.  He also had built Brunswick Cathedral.  He married twice, his first wife being a German princess, Clementia of Zahringen, by whom he had a daughter who later became Queen of Denmark.  In 1165, he married Mathilda, daughter of Henry and Eleanor.  She bore him three children who survived, including his namesake, Henry, Count Palatine of the Rhine and Otto IV, whom we've already run across.  Henry's power stretched from the Baltic to the Alps, from Westphalia to Pomerania, but trouble was never far away.

Henry supported Frederick Barbarossa, who was his cousin, in his claim to the Holy Roman Empire.  That is, until his own borders came under threat and he had to back out of a joint invasion of Lombardy.  The Lombardy expedition was a disaster and Frederick blamed Henry.  Frederick had Henry tried for insubordination to his overlord and stripped of both his duchies.  Henry's allies turned against him and he had to seek refuge at his father-in-law Henry II's court in Normandy.  He returned to Germany to fight for his inheritance, but was exiled again in 1188, losing Matilda in death in 1189.  When Frederick departed for the Third Crusade in 1189, Henry made a bid for his lost inheritance, but that quickly crumbled into nothing.  Henry was able to hold on to Brunswick and remained there the rest of his life.  It was to Henry's
dominions in Brunswick that Richard I was trying to flee in 1192, on returning from the Third Crusade, before he was nabbed by agents of Leopold of Austria, who had no reason to like either Richard or Henry.