Marriage
In 1164, William married Eléonore de Vermandois, later Eléonore, Countess of Vermandois in her own right from 1183 to 1214. His wife was a daughter of Raoul I, Count of Vermandois and his second wife Petronilla of Aquitaine, who was a daughter of William X of Aquitaine and Aenor of Châtellerault; therefore Eléonore was a niece of Eleanor of Aquitaine.
His wife was previously married to Godfrey of Hainaut, Count of Ostervant, son of Baldwin IV, Count of Hainaut and Alice of Namur, who died on 7 April 1163, while preparing for a journey to Palestine. Eléonore went on to marry Matthew of Alsace, Mathieu III of Beaumont-sur-Oise and (possibly) Etienne II of Blois. She never had children and her designated heir to her realms was Philip II of France, a paternal second cousin, once removed.
Read more about this topic: William IV, Count Of Nevers
Famous quotes containing the word marriage:
“We lov’d, and we lov’d, as long as we could,
Till our love was lov’d out in us both;
But our marriage is dead, when the pleasure is fled:
‘Twas pleasure first made it an oath.”
—John Dryden (1631–1700)
“Christianity as an organized religion has not always had a harmonious relationship with the family. Unlike Judaism, it kept almost no rituals that took place in private homes. The esteem that monasticism and priestly celibacy enjoyed implied a denigration of marriage and parenthood.”
—Beatrice Gottlieb, U.S. historian. The Family in the Western World from the Black Death to the Industrial Age, ch. 12, Oxford University Press (1993)