Royal: Beatrice of England, Countess of Richmond, 1242-1275

Marriage among royal and noble families was a constant game of pregnancy roulette.  Each baby who lived to grow up was a potential heir to the throne, or a useful political alliance.  Many children didn't make it, which meant that the lucky ones who did had to take on adult responsibilities early, usually in the form of marriage to an aligned royal house.  The children of Henry III of England and Eleanor of Provence were no exception.  Eleanor and Henry had 9 children, of whom four died in infancy.  The others, including the future Edward I, his sister Margaret, Queen of Scotland, and their brother, Edmund of Lancaster, had to take the Plantagenet dynasty one more generation forward.

Beatrice was born in the family territory of Bordeaux, France.  She is sometimes known as Beatrice of Dreux, based on the town of her birth.  Her father's early reign was marked by continuous struggles with his barons and the loss of much of the Plantagenet patrimony in France.  Complicating the situation was his wife Eleanor's unpopularity with the English people.  On one occasion, Eleanor's barge on the River Thames was attacked by a mob of angry Londoners.  This, combined with the deaths of so many other siblings would have brought tragedy into her daughter Beatrice's life at a young age.  Henry negotiated her marriage with several royal houses, included the Kings of France and Norway, but none of these engagements panned out.  Instead, when she was 18, Beatrice married John, the heir to the Duke of Brittany.  It became a love match, as both partners developed a love and respect for each other.  But it was also a critical alliance for Beatrice's family.  Her father made John and Beatrice Earl and Countess of Richmond on her marriage, a title that would pass on to her second son.

The couple had six children.  Like many women of the era, Beatrice died young.  Grief-stricken, John of Brittany erected a chantry chapel in his wife's honor.  Beatrice was buried in the Greyfriars Church in Greenwich.  Her eldest son Arthur succeeded his father as Duke of Brittany.  Her second son, John, became Earl of Richmond.  Through her great-granddaughter, Jaquetta of Luxembourg, she is an ancestress of the Tudors, Stuarts and subsequent English monarchs.