This chapter is a bit different, because it actually focus on events occurring in contemporary Europe, but which are somewhat related to the alt-Outremer. This will serve to explore important divergences of the TL, so that we see the formation of a more complex and refined alternate world.
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56. HERESIES AND PILGRIMAGES (1147 - 1153 C.E.)
I. The Questions of Faith
A rare contemporary illustration of Bernard of Clairvaux, before his accession as Pope Stephen X, from the Psalm of Rheims (1148 A.D.)
Those many scores of Crusader soldiers and pilgrims that returned to France, Germany, Flanders and Hungary after the disastrous conclusion of the Second Crusade, not had brought but a handful of spoils and relics of these lands of the Orient and Egypt, that the Europeans by then reputed to be fabulous and opulent, but also carried with them baneful pestilences. Many of them perished in the inland roads of Asia Minor and of Greece, which became unspecified graveyards.
Between the years of 1145 and 1147 A.D., the septentrional reaches of the European continent were ravaged by vicious epidemics of camp fever [
Epidemic Typhus] and humorly flux [
Dysentery], and they claimed the lives of hundreds, specially in the heavily populated urban centers of Flanders, of Rhineland, of Saxony and of Franconia. The most afflicted populations were the poorer ones, those who lived in filth and among vermin, but also those living in the shambles of port cities such as Antwerp and Hamburg. The expansion of the epidemic followed the flows of commerce, considering that the merchants now had easy venues to carry their goods and commodities by land and by sea, and of human migrations, often carried by pilgrims, who would move across countries to reach sanctuaries that received the holy relics from fabled Jerusalem.
In times of hardship, as we often see, mankind turns to the supernatural for deliverance against their earthly miseries, and, in these very years, the various panoramas of death, by disease and by famine in other places, these events were seen as presages of the imminent apocalypse. Preachers abounded, in the cities too, but mostly in the villages and parishes, and claimed that these were clear signs of divine wrath by their failure in the war against the infidels. Now, due to the influence of the Crusading ideology to the peasants of the hinterlands of Germany and France, the threat of the Saracens was known, but it was nonetheless a remote one; no, their enemies were nearer, as these heralds of the apocalypse argued, and they were either Jews or lepers.
Sometimes they even targeted Christian communities, arguing that they had been enraptured by heresies of various kinds. Persecutions against the Jewry and against the lepers materialized in the form of armed mobs of paupers, who defined themselves as Crusaders, with the most notable cases being those of Amiens, in northern France - whose local baron was even ousted by a host of pitchfork-armed peasants, and forced to plead for royal intervention - and of Paderborn - where a band of knights-errant joined the mobs and ransacked a synagogue, resulting in hundreds of deaths for the local Jewish community.
In the eyes of the Roman Church, however, the gravest concern was not directed solely to those unvirtuous crusaders, but also to the heresies that became increasingly popular in the period, most notably the
Petrobrusians - who were the followers of
Peter of Bruys [Pierre de Bruys], a Flemish heresiarch who was slain by a mob in St. Giles - and the
Henricians - who were the adepts of the preaching of
Henry of Lausanne [Henri de Lausanne]. Both of these heresies refused infant baptism, and condemned the usage of crosses as religious symbols. Their gravest offense, however, was the refusal to acknowledge the Church’s authority and central hierarchy, arguing that the Scriptures could and should be interpreted by each of the faithful. They were duly opposed in theological debate by contemporaries such as Peter the Venerable and Peter Abelard, while the most dedicated champion against their doctrines was Bernard of Clairvaux, who convinced Pope Victor IV to hold an ecumenical council in Nice, in 1149, to ratify the denouncement already made in Pisa, in 1134.
In between these years, Bernard tirelessly voyaged through the Francies and through western Germany to preach against their heresies, and successfully convinced the peoples of Besançon and Mâcon to return to orthodoxy and thus reject the acceptance of the Henrician teaching. Afterwards, he, as a representative of the Cistercians, was invited by
Norbert of Xanten, founder of the
Premonstratensian order, to debate in a synod held in Cologne, in which they condemned the
“Manichees”, a Gnostic entity descended from the Bulgarian Bogomils, which had recently come from Italy to the Rhineland. Hundreds of them, established in an ancient hill-fort in Nürburg, were imprisoned under orders of the Archbishop of Cologne, and were condemned for heresy.
These episodes not only illustrate the spirit of the era, of intense religious fervor, but also demonstrates the influence of the monastic orders, most notably the Cluniac, the Cistercian and the Premonstratensian, as well as of their respective abbots, who were well-regarded in the realms of the Francies and of Germany. In the case of Bernard, his own personal “Crusade” against the heresies of his time would pave the way to his unexpected ascension to the Papacy.
II. The Pilgrimage of Saint Didier
A non-contemporary illustration of the "Chronica Duci Gallicorum Aquitannorum" (c. 1280), depicting Duke William X of Aquitaine and Gascony and his wife Matilda of England, permitting the marriage of two young aristocrats.
In the chapters that described the events of the Crusade of the Faint-Hearted, we have addressed how one of its most distinguished characters was Duke William IX “the Troubadour” of Aquitaine and of Gascony, and who died in the year of 1127 A.D.
In spite of his immense prestige and piety, in the grand scheme of feudal liaisons, he had become weak in his elder years, having lost authority over his various insubordinate vassals and fallen out of favor of the Church. Having been excommunicated twice, after various quarrels with the Church, and scandalizing many of his own vassals and most of the clergy by repudiating his wife Phillipa of Toulouse in favor of a mistress, Dangerouse of L’Isle-Bouchard, late William’s reputation was in shambles, and now the very counts and viscounts who had marched with him in the Outremer and in Hispania scorned their feudal dues to the suzerain.
Now, the new Duke of Aquitaine and Gascony saw it was time to enforce his own authority over the recalcitrant lords, and this endeavor would exact almost ten years of his life, ever since his accession.
By ascribing various appanages in Saintonge to his younger brother
Raymond, William X hoped to preserve his allegiance against the local Saintois nobles. This he did, and in the early part of his reign, he consolidated the resources of his demesne, and secured an important ally in the person of
Fulk of Anjou, by promising the hand of his infant daughter
Eleanor to his son
Geoffrey, and also forged treaties with
King Alfonso VII of León and with
Count Raymond Berengar III of Barcelona. After the death of his wife Aenor, in early 1130 A.D., he married
Matilda of England, the former Queen of the Romans [Holy Roman Empress], and daughter of
King Henry I of England. In spite of the fact that she was beyond 30 years, the match was a very prestigious one for the Duke of Aquitaine, who married into a royal house that could support his ambitions in the Francies, and to a woman of the highest status in contemporary Europe. To her family, and more specially to her father Henry, it was a worthy settlement, even if she despised the idea of being “demoted” from Empress to a mere Duchess, but the fact remained that Aquitaine was the most powerful feudatory of western Europe, and would serve as a counterbalance against the French Kings in Paris, whose constant interference in Normandy threatened the English dominion. Soon enough, Duchess Matilda became fond of the sophisticated and cultured Aquitanian court, and proved her fertility by giving William two other sons, brothers to his firstborn William “the Eagle”, named Henry [
Henri/Enric] and Theobald [
Thibaut/Teobald], as well as another daughter, Melisende [
Millicent], sister to Eleanor and Petronilla.
Fulk of Anjou proved to be a reliable and formidable ally, and, by marshaling the levies of Anjou, Tourainne and Maine, he assisted Duke William in vanquishing a large rebellion by the families of the Parthenays and of the Lusignans in 1130 A.D., in the fiefs of Poitou. In the span of a few years, William curbed the quasi-independence of the Poitevin aristocracy, and secured his dominion over the lands south of the Loire.
The alliance with Castille was also a beneficial one, and served to secure the southern borders. When the ambitious
King of Aragon, Alfonso “the Battler”, crossed the Pyrenees in 1131 A.D. with the intent of
annexing Bayonne [Baiona], supported by the seditious Count of Bigorre and of the Viscount of Béarn, his namesake Alfonso of León and Castille immediately attacked Aragon. Now, the various Gascon nobles sided with their liege lord, and the ducal host expelled the invading forces after they prosecuted a four-month-long siege.
Centule II of Bigorre and
Gaston IV of Béarn were made prisoners in the battlefield, but, later on, in a demonstration of magnanimity, William pardoned them. A few years later, he would face another rebellion, in 1137 A.D., this one in Dax [
D’Acs], once again with Aragonese support, but by then his hold over Gascony had been strengthened, and thus the insurgence was short-lived.
Now, in his relations to the Church, William realized that the disputes protagonized by his father and by his grandfather had only served to diminish the ducal power, and resolved that he would have the clergymen as his allies instead of as his adversaries. For many years, he posed as a dedicated patron of the ecclesiastic institutions - most notably that of Cluny, whose founder was his own forefather, Duke William I of Aquitaine. Carefully respecting the terms of the “Truce of God”, he also ensured that his wars against insubordinate vassals were seen as rightful and legitimate, and always respected the holy days and the ecclesiastic patrimony. And by voyaging four times in his life to Santiago de Compostela, he demonstrated a serious commitment to pilgrimage. Even more, between 1138 and 1142, he went to Hispania during each of the campaigning seasons, and assisted Alfonso of León in the capture of Oreja, near Toledo, and of Coria. Emulating his father, who had passed to History with the epithet “the Crusader”, William X wanted to be known as a champion of Christendom.
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The ultimate goal of William’s life, however, was the acquisition of Toulouse, which he believed to be his birthright - and not for any other reason he was known to his contemporaries as William “the Toulousain”. Indeed, Toulouse had been conquered by his father decades ago, soon after Raymond of St. Giles departed for the First Crusade, having claimed it as an inheritance of his wife (and William X’s mother) Phillipa. A couple years later, however, William IX mortgaged the county to Bertrand, future Count of Caesarea, to pay for the expenses of his own voyage to the Orient in the Crusade of 1101. In this period, Phillipa gave birth to William in the palace of Toulouse. William IX did attempt to reconquer Toulouse in 1114 A.D., but it was a short-lived conquest. In a few years, the young son of St. Giles,
Alfonso-Jordan, recovered the fief. Now, ever since his infancy, William X knew he was fated to recover it for his dynasty’s patrimony.
William voyaged to Paris shortly before the Second Crusade, in 1140 A.D., and pleaded for his suzerain, *Phillip II, to recognize his claim and ascribe him the titles, rights and lands of Toulouse, but the King outright refused and even insulted him. Unsatisfied, he appealed to the Bishop of Paris, Stephen of Senlis [
Etiénne de Senlis], but this one, of a cowardly and deferential disposition, believing that this would antagonize Phillip, produced a legal argument against William’s claim: that the Salic Law prevented matrilineal inheritance, and thus sustained that he could not pretend to any lands that might have pertained to his mother, even if
de suo jure. Infuriated, Duke William reneged his promise of joining the King’s Crusade under his banner, a reason by which he almost faced excommunication. A pilgrimage to Rome dressed as a penitent, coupled with a hefty donation to the Holy See, however, prevented the Papal condemnation.
After returning from Italy, the Duke appealed to the one ecclesiastic authority that he believed was above the Parisian clergy, the Archbishop of Lyon. Ever since the age of the Roman Empire, the dignitary of former
Lugdunum was recognized as the “
Primate of the Gauls” - a status which had been ratified in the Council of Clermont, the same one where Pope Urban II had summoned the First Crusade. Then, to the surprise of many French prelates, including the Archbishop of Sens,
Amadeus of Lyon [
Amédée de Lyon], actually recognized the Aquitanian claim in late 1141 A.D., in spite of the fact that the feudal disputes were often disregarded as questions beyond the canonical jurisdiction. The episode provoked a scandal among the French clergy, with some, most notably the prelates of Paris and Orléans, arguing that Amadeus might have been bribed or corrupted by the Aquitanian prince, and they immediately took the matter to the Pope.
Nonetheless, the Duke of Aquitaine, having given the Count of Toulouse, Alfonso-Jordan, an ultimatum to surrender Toulouse and the subordinated fiefs, declared war to press his own claim, and this he did in early 1142 A.D., during winter season. The Count of Toulouse had only recently returned from Santiago of Compostela, and was surprised by the aggression. By then, he had become the undisputed master of the region between the Pyrenees, and held the western parts of Provence in his capacity as Marquis of Provence, while Raymond Berengar of Barcelona held the other parts as Count of Provence. He had seized the Viscounty of Narbonne eight years before, in the pretext of ruling it during the minority of
Viscountess Ermengarde, but had yet to relinquish the rule.
The war was a quick one; the Provençals, surprised by William’s rapid maneuvers, offered almost no resistance, and were routed by William’s larger army in the outskirts of Toulouse. After reducing the castles of the Garonne valley, in the span of a single season, he maintained the siege and stormed the stronghold of Toulouse itself, while Alfonso-Jordan was mustering his levies and retinues in Carcassone [
Carcassona], together with his vassal,
Raymond I Trencavel. When Alfonso-Jordan retaliated, he failed to take Toulouse, but William, seemingly satisfied with the outcome, did not venture beyond the occupied territory, and even sent envoys to Narbonne, Montpellier and Arles to reaffirm their own rights.
By the time the royal army of King *Phillip II returned from the Outremer, the Duke of Aquitaine had consolidated the rule over Toulouse, and Alfonso-Jordan pleaded for the monarch’s intervention. Phillip gave William an ultimatum, demanding the return of Toulouse to the Provençal vassal, but he made no advance to enforce it until late 1148 A.D., having disbanded his exhausted army as soon as they returned to their homeland.
Now, when Phillip II did went to war with William, to restore status quo between Aquitaine and Toulouse, he concentrated his campaigning efforts in the heavily fortified regions of Poitou and Limousin. The fact that he claimed some victories by reducing a few castles in the Loire valley served him little, because William’s vassals, many of which had either been too enfeebled by his retaliation, or too favored by the spoils of the conquest of Toulouse, remained loyal to him. The King did never try to retake Toulouse itself, while Alfonso-Jordan, having been expelled from Narbonne by Viscountess Ermengarde in 1144 A.D., decided to plead for a truce with the Aquitanians.
The war came to an end not by King Phillip’s volition, but rather due to the timely intervention of the Papacy, stirred by Archbishop Amadeus of Lyon. An armistice was imposed between the warring magnates, but to Phillip’s surprise and indignation, the Lateran Palace recognized the Aquitanian claim over Toulouse - meaning that the monarch’s prerogative of arbitrating disputes between the feudal lords was, for the first time in recorded History, overruled by the Church.
As part of the terms of the truce enforced by the Holy See, both the Duke of Aquitaine and the dispossessed Count of Toulouse agreed to join in a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, in another example of the “trucial crusades”. Its popular name at the time was “
Crusade of Saint Didier”, because it was supposedly blessed by this one, the patron saint of Moissac.
Contemporary depiction of Duke William X of Aquitaine and Count Alfonso of Toulouse in the "Chronica Ducis Williamus Aquitannorum"
Due to the fact that they were not going actually to war in the Outremer, but rather to visit the holy places, both Duke William and Count Alfonso restricted the numbers of adherents of their respective corteges. Nobles, from barons to bound-knights, were expected to afford their own expenses, and donations from monasteries were supposed to make for the travels of their own canons regular and of impoverished parochians. Among commoners and villeins, only burghers, merchants and craftsmen could pay for the expenses, and, even them, it were usually the wealthier of their own villages. During the preparations for the pilgrimage, Empress Matilda was universally lauded in the Catholic realms for providing funds to allow for the participation of destitute yeomen from the hinterland of Poitou and Saintonge, and, for this act, she would eventually become a cherished character in the Aquitanian troubadour literature. Centuries later, she would become a revered personage in folkloric cycles of the Matter of Aguyenne, usually described as a saintly and wise queen who provides alms to the poor.
The pilgrimage was indeed a peaceful one, and held no military significance whatsoever, in spite of an initial promise by Duke William of Aquitanian and Gascon troops to join in a Crusade against the Fatimids in Egypt, an idea of which Archbishop Suger was not really supportive, seeing the Earthly Kingdom attempt to regain its prosperity after years of consecutive military endeavors.
The dispossessed Count of Toulouse, after visiting the River Jordan - where he had been baptized, more than four decades before - went to Nazareth and to Bethlehem, and from there to the court of his great-nephew Raymond II, in Caesarea, where he enjoyed the Oriental idyll for a month before sailing back to Europe, bringing a captive animals from the fringes of Syria and Persia, such as a lion, a bear and exotic birds, as well as various relics, which he gifted to the churches of Avignon and Orange.
The Guyennan pilgrims, on the other hand, followed the Archbishop in a more complex itinerary, visiting almost all of the Levantine emporia, as well as Damascus and Balbac. In Acre, Duke William confirmed
Bernard-William of Montpellier [
Bernard-Guilhèm de Montpelhièr], as the sole inheritor of the fiefs, vassal to the County of Beirut. Then, he saw his infant son,
Henry of Saintes [
Enric de Xainctes] be formally invested in the referred County by Archbishop Suger. From there, they voyaged to Antioch by sea, and then overland across Asia Minor to Constantinople, once again, by ship, this time crossing the Aegean back to Italy.
Their pilgrimage did make quite an impression in the local Levantine communities. Duke William’s display of opulence and magnanimity towards the local monasteries and churches would be remembered in the decades to come, more specifically the fact that he donated a thousand Moorish dinars plundered from Hispania to the Archdiocese of Jerusalem and to the Templarians, as they had recently established a commandery in Saintes. Alfonso-Jordan, on the other hand, financed the construction of a new Benedictine monastery in the Jordan valley, which would be established by Provençal monks from Arles.
III. The Pilgrimages of Saint George and of Saint Margaret
Non-contemporary depiction of King William III of England served by his father Henry in the banquet after the coronation that acceded him as co-king (c. 1200)
In 1150 A.D., not long after her return from the Outremer, Empress Matilda went to England, and visited the court of her brother,
King *William III, and set across the land in the company of
Theobald of Bec, the Archbishop of Canterbury, to spread the word, to the aristocrats and peasants alike, about the joys of "to adore the Lord in the lands where He had throd His feet". According to Theobald's own report, the pious Empress dowager shared the worries of the many prelates of England about the fact that the races of Britain had never endeavored to undertake the most exalted expedition to the Holy Land. While she could hardly forget that her uncle Robert Curthose had been one of the lieutenants of the First Crusade, his army was mostly of Norman stock, and thus they saw that the English people as a whole lacked any meaningful participation in the Crusades. Indeed, her father Henry had spent the better part of his reign at war with his own brothers, Robert included, but also William Clito, and also with the French kings, and with the Welsh, and even in his late years he did not show much of an interest in taking the cross.
*William III, called “Adelin” before the accession, was more concerned with affairs of non-military nature, even more in the recent years, after he suffered a disastrous defeat against
Owain Gwynedd, the self-proclaimed King of Wales, in the battle of Rhuddlan, in 1148, in which he was imprisoned and forced to relinquish recent conquests by the English Marcher Lords, and thus almost provoked a baronial rebellion.
While some modern scholars argue that Matilda could care less about Crusading, and that she was actually a convenient figurehead used by the Anglo-Norman clergy to further their own agenda, the fact remains that she traversed through various provinces of the Kingdom of England, from London to Winchester, and from there to Gloucester, and northwards to Chester and from there to York, and did seem to kindle the flames of Crusadist fervor in her home country. She was accompanied by King William, by her youngest son, also named Theobald, and an entourage of Angevin and Saintois aristocrats and canons.
Archbishop Theobald’s chronicle of their travels, despite being the only available source of the period, is not the most reliable one, because it intersects mundane episodes with otherworldly apparitions and fantastic episodes, such as the meeting of Duchess Matilda and King William with a Cumbrian giant who converted to Christianity and agreed to go to Jerusalem, or their finding of the mantle of Saint Joseph of Arimathea in the outskirts of Bristol.
Their voyage to the north led them to the court of Scotland, in Perth, where Matilda and William were welcomed by their maternal uncle,
King David I of the Scots, who, in spite of his very advanced age, showed a surprising enthusiasm for the idea of setting to the Outremer as a pilgrim, and even provisioned, in his testament, for the Scottish lords to take his embalmed heart to be buried in Jerusalem after his death. David had grown as a hostage in King Henry’s court, and, after becoming King of Scotland, in 1124 A.D., imported many of the English and Norman institutions and legal frameworks back to his own home kingdom. By 1150, shortly before his death, Scotland had become more similar to England, with a relatively centralized state, with the various feudal magnates and clans brought into the royal sphere after he had spent the better part of the 1120s and 1130s warring to consolidate his kingship. Now that the kingdom saw a long period of peace, with the Cumbrians vassalized and the Norwegians in the Orkneys submitted, the Scottish equestrian class was eager for new wars to prove their valor and to increase their fortunes.
Thus, we see, after the pacification and feudalization of Scotland, and the impediment of English advance into Wales by the efforts of Owain Gwynedd, why many minor noblemen from England and Scotland adhered to the so-called “Crusade of Saint George” (to the English) or the “Crusade of Queen Margaret” (to the Scots), together with commoners, peasants and burghers, in early 1152 A.D. Similar to the Aquitanian and Provençal one, this was but a pilgrimage, with little military personnel, and, in spite of the popular denomination of “Crusade”, it was only sanctioned by Pope Stephen X after it was already in undertaking. It was not exactly a “pauper’s crusade”, because most of its participants had their own means to travel, or were individuals financed by whole communities to undertake the pilgrimage by proxy, a phenomenon called “
scutage peregrination”.
The English company departed from Canterbury, led by Theobald himself in the spring of 1152 A.D. After disembarking in Antwerp, where they rendezvoused with
Theodorich of Flanders, who desired once again to go to the Holy Land, they went overland through the
Via Francigena to Italy, and from Ancona they crossed the Adriatic into Greece, as thousands had done before them. In the fulfillment of a treaty assumed with late Pope Victor IV, the Basileus, having committed to support Latin pilgrims and crusaders, furnished transport ships to bring the pilgrims from Thessalonica directly to Tortosa, and from there they went overland to Jerusalem, arriving in the end of the year. Theobald himself perished in the travels, stricken with malaria while in Italy, but his protégé and future Archbishop-elect of Canterbury,
Thomas of London, assumed the leadership of the pilgrimage together with
Reginald FitzRoy, Earl of Cornwall (one King Henry’s bastard sons). They departed in the first week of 1153 A.D., by the same way they came, but hundreds of them would die in a shipwreck near Crete. After he was elevated as the Primate of England, Archbishop Thomas Beckett beatified all those who died, and the stone tablet containing the names of various dead pilgrims is even today a popular spot of visitation in the pilgrimages to Canterbury.
The Scottish column, on the other hand, departed in the later part of spring of 1152 A.D., because they, numbering a few hundred, sailed directly from Renfrew, led by
Walter FitzAlan, the Steward of the Kingdom, and by Herbert of Selkirk, Bishop of Glasgow. Their first stop was in Leinster, where they joined with an Irish group led by
Dermot MacMurrough [Diarmait Mac Murchada], the King of Leinster. They found safe harbors in the western coast of Hispania, where they received by the self-proclaimed
King of Portugal, Alfonso, in Porto, but, seeing that they might face aggression in the Islamic cities of al-Andalus, they sailed into the Mediterranean and only stopped in Tarragona. Surprisingly, they were later welcomed by the Muslim prince Muhammad ibn Ganiya in the Baleares, the last Almoravid scion, who had been deposed by the Moroccan Almohads and even tried to coopt the Christians to fight Hispania as his mercenaries. While the Scots refused and continued their voyage, the Irish King of Leinster accepted the deal, and would later on be slain in battle, with his many compatriots, while attempting to take Valencia from the Almohads.
The remaining pilgrims arrived in Jerusalem in late 1152, and for a brief period rendezvoused with the English ones, spending Christmas in Jerusalem. They would return to their distant islands by the same way they arrived, bringing a (supposed) piece of the True Cross, which nowadays adorns the palace of Scone.
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Notes and comments: the Henricians and Petrobrusians were real heresies of the period. I might have perhaps understated their extent and influence, especially because Henry of Lausanne spent many years as an itinerant preacher in southern France before being imprisoned in Toulouse. Considering that there is a LOT already happening in the region in the period, I figured that, given the circumstances, he might have gone further to the north, or remained in a strong base in the region of modern Switzerland.
William X of Aquitaine really existed, but IOTL he died prematurely in the very first pilgrimage he did to Santiago of Compostela. ITTL, considering my already well-known intent of exploring a more relevant Aquitaine in the grand scheme of European geopolitics, I opted to give him a longer live (in this case, I believe that his obscure death, likely of illness, could have easily been avoided if he lived in different circumstances). In his case, I might have perhaps exaggerated the extent of his power, considering that the Dukes of Aquitaine were known for their weakness and lack of control over their vassals. This is why I went to explain in some detail how he might have consolidated the Ducal rule over his various vassals. Even beyond that, the fact that his eldest son, also named William, and his other two fictional sons will all survive into adulthood, this means that Aquitaine is never incorporated into the Angevin "Empire", while Toulouse will avoid falling into the Capetian Royal domain.
Alfonso-Jordan is also historical, and even here his life is not unsimilar to what happened IOTL, for he did actually go to the Outremer during the historical Second Crusade, and died in there. ITTL he does returns to Europe, but will never recover his ancestral domain in Toulouse. With time, his dynasty will lose relevance in the continent, but might remain significant in the alt-Jerusalem, similar to what happened, IOTL, to the Lusignans and the Hautevilles.
William and Matilda's marriage is a fictional one, as is Eleanor and Geoffrey Plantagenet's (we recently had a thread here about this). I figured that, if William Adelin survived, being married to the House of Anjou, there would be no incentive for Matilda to marry Geoffrey, but rather someone of a higher standing, and William seemed like the perfect candidate, while he himself would be interested in marrying into the Angevin house for the reasons above explained.
The English, Scottish and Irish pilgrimages here depicted are wholly fictional, but all the characters mentioned are historical. Excepting William Adelin and Empress Matilda, however, none of them will any other relevance in TL. Thomas Becket's martyrdom will most certainly be butterflied away, considering that OTL Henry II will not exist. Rest assured, the continuation of the House of Normandy in the English throne might spell interesting possibilities for their History, considering that their interests will be always focused in preserving their continental holdings in Normandy, unlike the Plantagenets, who had plenty of other stuff to be concerned about.
Finally, it is worth mentioning that at the time Margaret of Scotland had yet to be canonized, but, considering that she was elevated to sainthood less than a century after her death, I figured that among the Scottish she might have cherished local adoration, and thus I maintained the idea that she is (even if undeclared as of now) a saint.
