00:07:49.720So, as far as dynasties go, the Normans were still pretty new in the sense of like William the Conqueror was the first, and then Henry was the second one.
00:07:57.760so much dependent on having a clear line of succession to follow him after he died henry
00:08:03.020because he wanted to continue on having normans being in charge this is like not entirely dissimilar
00:08:08.400from you're familiar with the saga of henry the eighth that whole thing where he was just like i
00:08:12.720have to have the tutors keep going oh no daughters um so what happened here is that so we had
00:08:19.300william the conqueror his wife matilda flanders his ultimate son was henry henry's wife also
00:08:27.160called Matilda but she had her name changed to Edith or her name was Edith and it was changed
00:08:32.580to Matilda because at this point in time just like women had to be called Matilda apparently
00:08:36.540so we're going to call her Edith Matilda sort of like on the hills Justin Bobby Edith Matilda so
00:08:43.020she was incredibly pious and religious to the point that after she had one daughter and one son0.91
00:08:48.020she basically ran off to become a nun literally washing the feet of lepers like wearing a hair0.86
00:08:53.580shirt like just like super religious in this kind of like 1100s sort of way so henry was a norman0.58
00:09:01.000from france and edith matilda was the daughter of the scottish king malcolm the third and also a
00:09:06.740descendant of alfred the great alfred the great being the father of ethelflaed lady of the marshes
00:09:12.740i think so edith matilda had some anglo-saxon to her so it was a beneficial marriage for henry
00:09:17.960because he was the heir of this french guy who took over but edith matilda brought over the
00:09:22.700Anglo-Saxon stuff. So it was a good alliance to sort of solidify them as leaders. So genetically,
00:09:29.800what this meant was that their children were even more legitimate English rulers than either
00:09:34.280Edith Matilda or Henry because they had both sides. So their first child born was our heroine,
00:09:40.620the main Matilda, who's born on or around May 7th, 1102. So this is like 100-ish years later
00:09:50.160than Ethelflaed. So one year later, Matilda's brother was born and he was called William
00:09:54.620Ethling. So the Normans, being a new dynasty, hadn't quite sorted out what their inheritance
00:09:59.800rules would be. Like generally, but they were like, you know what we're going to do? We're
00:10:03.380going to do sons are more important than daughters because that's just kind of what everyone's doing
00:10:07.340all around us. And they also were like, so sons outrank daughters, which means William Ethling
00:10:13.440will be the heir, but also legitimate children outrank illegitimate children. So even though
00:10:18.560we'll get to it but um henry had a lot of illegitimate children but william etheling was0.83
00:10:23.800he was it he was the heir so edith matilda the mom she was super religious basically became a
00:10:31.320after having two children um side note her mother margaret of scotland uh literally was made a saint
00:10:38.240so it's just like a long line of super religious scottish women so everything rested on william
00:10:44.620Etheling's shoulders vis-a-vis inheritance because there was not going to be any more
00:10:48.440sons. Edith Matilda pieced out of childbearing entirely. Henry had 24 illegitimate children
00:10:57.020that we know of, including three other girls also named Matilda. So our Matilda tally is now up to
00:11:04.360five. So we have our Matilda and she has three illegitimate half-sisters also called Matilda.
00:11:09.960her mother also called matilda her grandmother matilda that's just where we're at right now
00:11:15.740um henry's oldest and most important bastard was named robert earl of gloucester and we'll hear0.88
00:11:22.220more about him later but spoiler he's great this is not a story where like men are awful to women
00:11:29.380all the time and then everyone dies like some of our other episodes in this podcast season there's
00:11:35.280some of the good guys in this story. It's a refreshing, Robert of Gloucester being one of
00:11:40.100them. So little is known about Matilda's earliest life, but she probably stayed with her mother,
00:11:46.500was taught to read and was educated in religious morals because God knows Edith Matilda was
00:11:51.380all about religion. Among the nobles at her mother's court where she was raised were her
00:11:56.420uncle David, who was later made King of Scotland. So because remember, Edith Matilda's father was
00:12:02.260the king of scotland so her brother becomes king of scotland later david also an important good
00:12:06.920dude later on uh robert of gloucester good dude her half-brother also there also there her cousin
00:12:12.960stephen of blois blois her cousin stephen and he's going to become important later is he a good guy
00:12:19.820we will see in 1108 when she was six henry left matilda and her brother in the care of anshelm
00:12:26.720the archbishop of canterbury while he traveled to normandy anshelm was a favored cleric of
00:12:32.200Matilda's mother. So Henry was like bopping back and forth, like England, Normandy, like pretty
00:12:37.580regularly, because that's what happens when you're the King of England slash Duke of Normandy. You
00:12:42.380have to keep checking on both parts of what you're in charge of. So as a princess, Matilda's job was
00:12:49.560to marry someone important to help maintain and or grow England and her father's land ownership.
00:12:55.340Luckily, King Heinrich of Rome slash Germany, he's not entirely Holy Roman Emperor.
00:13:03.880So we had ancient Rome in some previous podcasts this season.
00:13:08.740What happened is that Rome sort of fell apart, stopped being Rome.
00:13:13.500And then Charlemagne, this guy came in and he was like, you know, it's great.
00:13:52.480So effectively, Matilda was eight years old and she was shipped off to Germany to marry 24 year old King Heinrich, which is not weird for this situation because they didn't actually like become man and wife at this point.
00:14:05.940When she was eight, she was crowned the queen of Rome, Germany, but she wasn't actually married to Heinrich until four years later when she was 12.
00:14:18.860She became his sort of protege slash wife.
00:14:22.480two years later when she was 14 she accompanied heinrich to rome where he was crowned holy roman
00:14:28.060emperor so that whole thing that he was dealing with sort itself out making her the empress so
00:14:34.220this is controversial because the pope was away that day so a different person actually crowned0.95
00:14:39.620them so it's like is she really the empress but like that's a stupid controversy like obviously0.78
00:14:43.860she's the empress she considered herself the empress from that point on and that's how0.92
00:14:47.780she became known as Empress Matilda. It's from this time. So in 1115, the sixth Matilda enters
00:14:55.100this story. This is Matilda of Tuscany, who was an accomplished military leader slash countess0.80
00:15:00.380in Italy. She died, which spurred on some dynastic struggles for who would be in charge of what0.73
00:15:05.900parts of what, because this is why you want to have like a really strong dynasty. So when you
00:15:09.900die, it's obvious who's going to inherit. So there's not all these scuffles about who's in
00:15:13.220charge of what. At one point during this whole thing, Heinrich ran off to do a campaign and he
00:15:17.420left his wife matilda who is 16 years old at that this point in charge of italy as his regent so
00:15:22.900like she's not a teenage trophy wife here like she's been from the time she was eight she would
00:15:29.060have been sort of raised and taught how to be a ruler how to govern govern things to the point0.66
00:15:34.640that he left her in charge when she was 16 years old like she knew what was going on matilda and
00:15:40.600heinrich didn't have any children so there might have been a child lost in infancy and life just
00:15:45.440kind of continued on like this. They were married. She was growing out of being a teenager and into
00:15:50.360being an adult-sized person. And then 1120, everything changed. So the whole thing where
00:15:58.980England was divided between England and Normandy meant people were going back and forth on ships
00:16:03.160a lot, as I mentioned. So in 1120, what happened is King Henry and his entourage went over on one
00:16:09.200ship, the sort of like grown-up ship, while William Ethling, who's Matilda's brother slash
00:16:13.700henry's heir went across on another ship that was like the party ship so william ethling's ship
00:16:18.900was filled with a bunch of his half siblings remember he had 24 of them as long as his friends
00:16:24.260and his wife um william ethling's wife is the seventh matilda in the story matilda of anjou
00:16:29.480the this ship the party ship was called the white ship and oh also on board the ship was one of the
00:16:37.240half sisters matilda fitzroy their half brother thomas fitz steven so it's just like party ship
00:16:42.940full of illegitimate royals slash William Ethling heir to the throne. So they were drinking and
00:16:47.540partying and whatever. And they were like 300 people on board. Although some disembarked because
00:16:52.280the drinking was a bit much for them, which is like the drinking was a bit much for you,
00:16:56.320like French nobles in the 11th century. Like that's a lot of drink. So one of the passengers
00:17:01.220who got out was Matilda and William Ethling's cousin, Stephen, who I mentioned before,
00:17:07.040foreshadowing he didn't die and then in a sort of titanic scenario the passengers challenged the
00:17:13.460captain to sail faster than the king's ship because there's like the grown-up ship then
00:17:17.180there's the white ship the party ship next to it so they were just like drag racing ships but then
00:17:22.360the the white ship the party ship struck a submerged rock and the rock and i'm not sure why
00:17:27.920i forgot to look this up has a name it's called a kill kill a beautiful kill a buff something beef
00:17:35.440I'm not sure why this rock has a name. Famous rock. So the white ship capsized. William
00:17:40.020Ethling got on an escape raft, a lifeboat. I'm not sure what's up. And he could have
00:17:45.020escaped, but he went back to save his half sister, Matilda, not our Matilda, the other
00:17:50.360Matilda sister. But then he went back in this raft and then others climbed onto the raft
00:17:55.240to try and save themselves. And then they all drowned. Their half brother, Thomas Fitzstephen,
00:18:00.140allegedly survived along with a butcher named Barold by clinging onto the rock, the
00:18:05.260But when Thomas heard that William Esling had died, he let himself drown rather than have to face
00:18:11.140his father, the king, with this bad news. Everyone knew the king was going to freak out.
00:18:15.420In fact, oh, so Barold, the butcher, was the only survivor. So everyone was so afraid of how much
00:18:20.900they knew King Henry was going to freak out that they didn't tell him about the disaster for like
00:18:24.780a few days. And when he found out, he obviously freaked out. So he was like, shit, I need an heir.
00:18:31.980He has these 24 illegitimate children, several, at least three of whom just died in this disaster, but illegitimate children he didn't want them to inherit. His only other legitimate child was Matilda, and it's just like, what, a girl? That's weird.0.99
00:18:46.980So he quickly married another woman who is named Adeliza, which is a great name, not just because it's not Matilda, but also because it's not Matilda.
00:18:57.780And basically he married her to try and have another son and heir so that he could make the succession more straightforward.
00:19:04.960So at this point, that's what everyone assumed would happen.
00:19:06.800So Matilda continued on being empress back in Germany slash Rome.
00:19:10.700So five years pass and now it's 1125 and Matilda's husband Heinrich died.
00:19:16.680and she hadn't had any children with him she didn't stick around there because she wasn't
00:19:20.700the regent to the next emperor and also there's a thing where holy roman emperor was elected
00:19:25.340question mark not i researched a lot about matilda i did not research a lot about holy
00:19:31.520roman empire so other people can fill in those blanks for you if that interest but effectively
00:19:36.120matilda had like holy roman empire germany slash rome was kind of like bye so she she suddenly lost
00:19:43.620her job and her status and the way she'd been living for 15 years. Note, the new Holy Roman
00:19:49.140Emperor was Heinrich's longtime nemesis Lothair, which is a very evil sounding name. That is very
00:19:54.540cool. So Henry hadn't had a child in five years with his new wife Adeliza, so Matilda was starting
00:20:00.720to seem like a much more important sort of person. Henry was still hoping to have a new son with
00:20:05.820Adeliza, but just to make things go more smoothly in general, he held a formal event where all the
00:20:10.340nobles swore to support matilda as his heir until he had a new son so sort of like a stopgap measure
00:20:15.700there's actually some everyone was like this is a great idea because he's the king and they wanted
00:20:19.720to make him think all of his ideas are good and there's actually some fighting among the nobles
00:20:23.980for who got to swear allegiance to matilda first because they're all just so excited to get to
00:20:28.460prove their loyalty the three who all wanted to be first were robert of gloucester matilda's half0.95
00:20:33.820brother, the eldest of the 24 bastards, and good dude. Scotland's King David, who is Matilda's0.94
00:20:41.260uncle, Edith, Matilda's brother, also a good guy. And Stephen, who we're going to hear about later,
00:20:47.800but her goddamn cousin, who almost died on the white ship disaster, but didn't because he didn't0.99
00:20:51.980like to party so hard. So the plan wasn't actually for Matilda to take over. It was more that everyone0.99
00:20:58.640to pledge allegiance to her in anticipation that maybe in case Henry and Adeliza didn't have a
00:21:04.020child, Matilda would have a son and that new son would be the king. And hopefully Henry would live
00:21:09.000long enough to just have that boy be the new king. So to make this happen, Matilda needed a new
00:21:14.300husband for various reasons, including land that they wanted to have control over. The best and
00:21:22.140only option was Geoffrey, the son of the Duke of Anjou. He was also the brother of Matilda of Anjou,
00:21:29.700William Aetheling's wife who died on the party ship. Geoffrey was also 15 years old and Matilda
00:21:35.420was 23. So Matilda had been empress, like empress of the Holy Roman Empire for 15 years, the entire
00:21:42.960lifespan of Geoffrey. So she had a lot of experience and he was a teenager. Apparently he was
00:21:48.840very handsome but he was also 15 years old and a duke so she didn't want to marry a 15 year old
00:21:54.760duke having just come off of being literally the empress and also like that means that she'd be
00:22:01.200sort of downgraded to like duchess which is just like not what she wanted to do she resisted but
00:22:06.100henry didn't care what she thought he personally had jeffrey knighted and despite matilda probably
00:22:11.300still grieving for her husband slash mentor of 15 years her father made her do it and so she married
00:22:17.100jeffrey and i just want to mention that jeffrey's father is called folk which is an amazing name
00:22:23.320f-u-l-k and he quickly left to go to the new to the kingdom at that point it was a new latin
00:22:30.540kingdom of jerusalem where he married melisendi the queen of jerusalem so jeffrey was now duke
00:22:37.700of normandy because his father ran off to become king of jerusalem which is like gotta read about
00:22:43.300that later melisendi sounds amazing so matilda married this teenage boy she didn't want to
00:22:49.140she refused to use her title of duchess and insisted to still be referred to as empress
00:22:54.420by 1129 which is less than two years into their marriage the couple were living in
00:22:59.040separate countries because they hated each other so much henry was like this is not great for the
00:23:06.600plan of you having a child that will be my new heir so he did some mediation and by 1131 he
00:23:13.060got them back in the same place. And two years later, age 31, Matilda gave birth to her first
00:23:20.000child, who was a little redheaded baby son who she named Henry. Less than a year later,
00:23:25.160she was giving birth again, but in a much more challenging experience. The second baby was a boy
00:23:30.500named Jeffrey who survived his birth, but Matilda almost died. Like she was so close to dying that
00:23:35.640she started preparing her will. And just to serve an example of her being amazing, even as she was
00:23:40.980like dying in the year 1130 whatever she forced her father to agree to let her be buried in a
00:23:49.460place of her choosing instead of where he wanted to put her so she's just like negotiating even
00:23:53.740while dying but then she didn't die hooray matilda and jeffrey now the parents of two sons and
00:23:59.400jeffrey being now i think 20 at least not 15 anymore they developed a new relationship based
00:24:05.100on being parents of these two sons and they started to get along on that sort of respect
00:24:09.240But, unfortunately, Geoffrey and King Henry did not get along.
00:24:13.640Matilda was in the middle of all of this, so by 1135, she and her father were fully estranged.
00:24:19.520Matilda and Geoffrey and their sons were off in Anjou,
00:24:22.680and Matilda was pregnant for the third time while Henry hung out in Normandy.
00:24:27.040King Henry went off on a hunting trip one day,
00:24:29.680when he made the mistake against Doctor's orders to eat lampreys for supper,
00:28:37.800Kingdoms were reduced to cinders, and armies scattered like bones in the dust.
00:28:43.420Now the survivors claw to what's left of a broken world, praying the darkness chooses someone else tonight.
00:28:50.920But in the shadow dark, the darkness always wins.
00:28:55.200This is old school adventuring at its most cruel.
00:28:58.680Your torch ticks down in real time, and when that flame dies, something else rises to finish the job.
00:29:04.500This is a brutal rules-light nightmare with a story that emerges organically
00:29:09.500based on the decisions that the characters make.
00:29:12.180This is what it felt like to play RPGs in the 80s, and man, it is so good to be back.
00:29:16.920Join the Glass Cannon podcast as we plunge into the shadow dark
00:29:19.880every Thursday night at 8 p.m. Eastern on youtube.com slash the glass cannon
00:29:24.220with the podcast version dropping the next day.
00:29:27.600See what everybody's talking about and join us in the dark.
00:29:34.500Hi, I'm Whitney. And I'm Katie. And we're the hosts of True Crime Campfire. We set out to make a true crime podcast we'd want to listen to. We get right to the story. We don't do a lot of extra talking, and when we do, it's usually to roast the short hairs off of some loser, murderer, or scammer. You'll laugh, but only at the people who deserve it.
00:29:53.640Like, which serial killer would you most like to shove into a locker? BTK and his awful poetry. Dude got caught because he didn't understand what a floppy disk was.
00:30:03.240we look for the stranger than fiction stories like the case of patty james a killer catfish
00:30:08.740before the internet was even a thing or howard walmsley a sentient wad of damp laundry who
00:30:13.920convinced his town he'd won the lottery fleeced local businesses out of thousands and then became
00:30:19.060a romance scammer we've covered tons of cases you've never heard of cults scammers killers
00:30:24.600so come find your next great binge listen to true crime campfire on apple podcasts spotify
00:30:30.420or wherever you get your podcasts new episodes every friday and we're back also note steven had
00:30:38.260been one of the first nobles back in that previous thing where henry had gotten everybody to pledge
00:30:43.240their support of matilda steven was one of those three guys fighting to be the first ones to pledge
00:30:47.100so betrayal so there hadn't been a woman in charge of england before to the point that there wasn't
00:30:52.500even a word for that because at this point the word queen meant woman married to the king like
00:30:58.740that was why part of why ethel flood was just called lady of the merchant like there wasn't0.80
00:31:03.820so matilda was fighting to become king effectively this is part of the reason why she liked her0.78
00:31:08.960title of empress because it was sort of on par with emperor it wasn't as less than as queen as
00:31:15.760sort of less than the king so stephen set off a chain of events that led to a civil war known as
00:31:22.920the anarchy. So King David of Scotland, who is Matilda's uncle, who had been another one of the
00:31:29.820first ones to pledge to Matilda back in the day, heard what Stephen had done, rushed down to sort
00:31:34.040of defend Matilda, but Stephen had more troops than he did. And they wound up just sort of
00:31:38.480reaching an agreement where King David wouldn't invade anymore. In July 1136, Matilda gave birth
00:31:45.240to her third son, who she named William in her headquarters over there in France. And for the
00:31:52.440next two years Stephen was king and Matilda was presumably tending to her three young children
00:31:58.960slash scheming and her cause was lost like her cause was effectively lost like no one thought
00:32:03.560that she was she had a chance at all until suddenly Robert of Gloucester her oldest half-brother
00:32:09.460good dude switched sides and pledged to be her champion at around the same time her uncle David
00:32:15.200the Scottish king also began fighting on her behalf so suddenly her dead-in-the-water chances
00:32:19.760were revived again with these powerful allies and their forces in 1139 she stepped up personally
00:32:25.900to like make her claim like to say like you know what i am the true monarch it's not just these
00:32:32.460people fighting for her but she's stating this herself that itself is basically an act of war
00:32:37.340slash treason one of her first acts was she sent a messenger to the pope to try and get them on
00:32:41.540her side against stephen but the pope was like what's done is done stephen is the king but
00:32:46.640Mattel was like, ugh, fine. So she set out on foot, well, on a boat. And then she got off the
00:32:52.880boat. And then she set foot on English soil for the first time in eight years, that year, and it
00:32:58.520was on. She also had a surprise new ally. And this is a twist I love, you know, women's, her step
00:33:05.080mother, Adeliza, remember her father's second wife, who had by now remarried and had six children with
00:33:11.540her new husband so clearly she was not the impediment to having a child with Henry at
00:33:16.340Elisa uh invited Matilda to come and stay with her at her her castle in Arendelle and to dock
00:33:23.380her ships there so just to so we know everybody is Jeffrey her former teenage husband now an adult
00:33:29.460husband and the three sons were back in Normandy Matilda was like doing her own thing she's with
00:33:34.920Robert of Gloucester and they're hanging out at Elisa's castle in Arendelle so the thing about
00:33:40.980steven is he is a lot like um stanis baratheon on game of thrones i believe he was actually the
00:33:49.280inspiration for stanis baratheon and game of thrones in terms of like a younger brother who
00:33:52.940takes over and who's also just like really obsessed with um ethics and morality so and
00:33:59.160chivalry so steven was like well i can't attack this castle because adelisa is there and she's
00:34:04.220the former king's wife she's a dowager queen i can't go there because matilda's there she's the
00:34:09.540king's the former king's daughter she's also the empress like i'm a guy i can't invade a castle with
00:34:14.880two queens in it so what he did is he ordered matilda to go and join robert of gloucester so
00:34:20.980robert of gloucester was off camped somewhere nearby so that he could perhaps go and sort of
00:34:26.080attack them there stephen made a lot of like what are you doing sort of moves which makes the story
00:34:32.600more interesting frankly so matilda's like okay i'll go i'll go be with robert of gloucester but
00:34:37.240en route she got even more nobles to join her side and then my notes say battles battles battles
00:34:43.820subterfuge etc other people write about the details of the battles but just bear in mind
00:34:49.100that all happened and then it's 1141 and steven winds up captured in battle by matilda's forces
00:34:54.560he tried to like sweet talk his way out of being in jail by like talking to his guards and like
00:34:59.780being like what if i just go for like a walk in the woods and run away so she ended up having to
00:35:04.040like literally put him in chains but she couldn't kill him because killing him was like a precedent
00:35:08.360of like a monarch can't kill their monarch she but she had the upper hand she had beaten stephen's
00:35:14.440forces but she needed the support of his brother bishop henry who you might remember from he helped
00:35:20.960stephen in the first place and on march 2nd 1141 he gave matilda his blessing to be the new monarch
00:35:27.000there was a ceremonial procession she was declared officially lady of england and normandy but not
00:35:33.140king or queen. For that, she'd have to be crowned at Westminster Abbey. And this is the point at
00:35:39.180which the whole thing just gets like, oh, I hate it. So she had won in battle and she was now a
00:35:45.720lady of England and Normandy. And people were like, but you know what? She's sort of full of
00:35:50.780herself. She's sort of stuck up. She's prideful. She's arrogant, which are like words that no one
00:35:55.620ever uses or used against her father, against her brother, against her grandfather, like
00:36:02.480william the conqueror no one was like oh william the conqueror he's a bit full of himself he's kind
00:36:07.580of stuck up like these are completely gendered insults so and she was she clearly like there
00:36:14.200was no role model for her in this situation there had never been a female monarch of england that0.97
00:36:19.280she knew of um so she probably was emulating her powerful father um and her first husband
00:36:25.980her powerful father Kama and her first husband like these two older men who she saw being these0.64
00:36:32.520like super powerful kings and she would act like that but when people saw a woman acting like that
00:36:36.900they're just like what are you doing people are like why isn't she more like her mother and1.00
00:36:41.060grandmother who were saints like who were like humble and modest like she should be like them
00:36:46.760but then if she was like that then she couldn't rule and so there's just this awful like vicious1.00
00:36:51.300cycle um her haughtiness and insolence was seen as unfeminine and therefore unnatural and then1.00
00:36:58.100she didn't so bishop henry her latest fan who had agreed to crown her was like i'm gonna give
00:37:04.480you suggestions and you should do exactly what i say and she was like take that into consideration
00:37:08.860i was empress for 15 years like i know what i'm doing um and then he was really mad that he that
00:37:15.620she didn't do what what he had said even though no one ever had that expectation of for instance
00:37:20.320her father or her cousin um men didn't have the sort of expectation that they should do what their
00:37:27.000advisor said uh when she spoke um one chronicler said that her voice was not with an unassuming
00:37:33.580gentleness but with a voice of authority um and she with a grim look her forehead wrinkled into
00:37:39.240a frown every trace of a woman's gentleness removed from her face blazed into unbearable0.99
00:37:44.160fury so men were just kind of like she's this woman and she's talking and that's gross to us
00:37:49.720Bishop Henry wanted her, the final straw for him was that he wanted her to endow Stephen's
00:37:55.620personal estates to Stephen's son, Eustace. And Matilda was like, why would I do that?
00:38:01.400Eustace would then try and take over from me. That's a stupid thing to suggest. And Bishop1.00
00:38:05.960Henry was really mad about that and decided to switch teams again, betraying her to go and help
00:38:11.500Stephen instead. And then, so Stephen's still in jail, still in chains. And then what is this now
00:38:17.840like the eighth the eighth Matilda in the story we're going to call her Mathilde because that's
00:38:23.240how it's written so Stephen's wife Mathilde had been queen and she was pretty amazing herself
00:38:29.800she was working hard to get him or at least his sons to be king now instead of Matilda to try and
00:38:34.440get rid of her and because Mathilde was acting on behalf of her powerful husband and not in her own
00:38:40.200name she wasn't facing the same double standards as Matilda and was able to act more independently0.87
00:38:45.340ironically enough the same chronicle that criticized matilda's behavior as being so arrogant1.00
00:38:51.820and not womanly the same person cheered on matilda for forgetting the weakness of her sex and women's
00:38:58.620softness she bore herself with the valor of a man like this was good for her like he's cheering on
00:39:03.580matilda for being this sort of amazon badass meanwhile saying like but matilda like she was
00:39:10.980sort of snooty to people anyway matilda kept planning her coronation even as unbeknownst to
00:39:17.240her matilde with the help of bishop henry was launching attacks and wound up being matilda's
00:39:22.580undoing so on june 24th 1141 matilda was sitting down for a pre-coronation banquet
00:39:30.840which was interrupted suddenly by all the bells and all of london tolling and thousands of
00:39:35.760Londoners bursting in with weapons in hand against her. This was all put together by Mathilde and
00:39:41.960Bishop Henry. So Mathilde and company fled and the Londoners ransacked her lodgings and like
00:39:47.760smushed up all her food and whatever. So turned against her and as such she was never actually
00:39:53.640crowned Queen of England. One of the main voices against her at this point was goddamn Bishop Henry0.98
00:39:59.220who was like she didn't listen to my advice. She gloated too much. She's a woman. It's gross. We0.99
00:40:04.420had to get rid of her and this is also partially and he really liked Mathilde because although0.97
00:40:10.100Mathilde was it's like super badass warrior woman who like I kind of like her as well might do a0.99
00:40:15.480little podcast about her sometime later but when she went to talk to Bishop Henry she was she acted
00:40:20.260all pious and humble and you know she went to him with like womanly tears and he was like oh that's0.83
00:40:25.120how women should behave so she just knew how to play that game a bit better I guess Mathilde
00:40:30.080respect anyway so matilda learned of bishop henry's betrayal and rode off to winchester to face him
00:40:35.840down face to face and he ran away of course because he was so strong like so brave and
00:40:42.280criticizing her from a distance but he couldn't bear to see her in person because he awful um he
00:40:48.480appealed to matilde as matilda's team settled into winchester in a blockage scenario blockade
00:40:54.660scenario waiting for him to return so bishop henry and matilde's team their army surrounded
00:41:01.360them and besieged the city so they're in winchester um this is all called the route
00:41:06.420of winchester this whole event so so we've got matilde's teamed up with bishop henry
00:41:12.600the army is surrounding winchester where matilda is sieged with her supporters on sunday september
00:41:18.72014th Robert of Gloucester good dude and his army made a huge last stand mostly to distract the
00:41:25.260enemies so Matilda could escape and she did riding a stride so instead of the side saddle way the
00:41:31.900women often did she fled 40 miles northeast she rode flat out for literally for two days to the
00:41:38.340point where her body was so exhausted that for the final part of her escape she had to she was like0.87
00:41:43.060laid out on sort of a stretcher between two horses because she was so fucking tired um amazing so he
00:41:50.780robert of gloucester did the destruction matilda escaped road flowed out flat out like she wasn't0.78
00:41:55.740just like sitting around being i should be queen she was like doing amazing stuff but she seemed
00:42:00.360got news back in the safety of gloucester that robert of gloucester good dude had been captured
00:42:05.520by steven's forces and robert was really crucial to her whole thing like he was her half brother
00:42:10.840he was this like all the armies respected him so much he was he was super important to her whole
00:42:16.880her whole cause and the only way to get him freed was to do a prisoner exchange to give them steven
00:42:22.060in exchange for robert and so she's like what to do and while this is all happening uh jeffrey was
00:42:28.380doing an amazing job back in normandy sort of taking over there to the point where it seemed
00:42:33.760like steven could just not get a foothold over normandy so it was like is it gonna split up like
00:42:38.220is England and Normandy two separate places now bonus fun fact uh there's two twin brothers named
00:42:44.440Robert and Walleran of Leicester who were involved in this whole situation one was on Stephen's side
00:42:50.340one was on Matilda's side they were twins so Robert of Gloucester went to help Geoffrey in Normandy
00:42:57.080because he's so helpful and Geoffrey figured that he could get his help but he was so helpful that
00:43:02.100Geoffrey kept delaying his return um not wanting him to go back because Robert of Gloucester was
00:43:07.160so helpful to him um but then oh no while that was happening robert of gloucester was away matilda
00:43:13.120was left on her own i mean with her you know bodyguards etc in oxford and steven's team
00:43:18.560came over and sieged oxford they surrounded it tried to take it over robert so pissed he stormed
00:43:24.200back to england uh this time he brought with him matilda's nine-year-old son henry and began
00:43:28.860fighting to free her so now it's december 1142 matilda and her her colleagues had they've been
00:43:35.240sieged in this castle starving like literally starving for three months so she just decided
00:43:41.160you know what it's time for another trademark matilda daring escape and so what she does is
00:43:46.340with three bodyguards they all cloak themselves in white because it was snowy outside for
00:43:51.020camouflage so they snuck out through a side gate um they're camouflaged against the freshly
00:43:55.740fawn snow because it is december they were on the on a river but it was wintry enough that they
00:44:01.940could walk across the river so they walk across the river got away nobody saw them at all and
00:44:08.060steven was like oh good for her and he just like assed on oxford and suddenly again her cause seemed0.99
00:44:14.140lost but then it lived for another day the guy the chronicler who before wrote all those stupid
00:44:19.460stuff about her um which is a work that was sort of talking about how great steven is so of course
00:44:23.840he always said shitty things about her but he he was like you know what that was a cool thing she
00:44:29.160did she probably did it for attention but like it was cool and having brought nine-year-old henry
00:44:34.380over it was sort of a lucky thing for matilda and jeffrey because he was their ace in the hole
00:44:39.760because if people didn't want a woman leading which was the main reason why people didn't want
00:44:46.420to support matilda let's be real um he her son was a strong option matilda could not personally
00:44:52.680command troops on the battlefield which a couple times had been sort of what saved her that she was
00:44:58.960able to to flee and also because Stephen didn't want to attack her because she was a woman but
00:45:03.960that sort of got in her way as people seeing her as a leader but more importantly her most important
00:45:09.220subjects were unwilling to accept a woman as a leader her son brought with him the same birthright
00:45:14.420like being a descendant of the pre-king Henry but without the baggage of being a woman so it's at
00:45:19.720this point an utter stalemate between Stephen and Matilda the Matilda seems to begin pivoting to
00:45:25.620begin fighting not for the crown for herself to become king but on behalf of her son henry for
00:45:31.460him to become king and her son henry stayed in england until 1144 when he returned to france
00:45:36.940to train under his father jeffrey to learn more about how to be a king etc and then the years
00:45:42.680went by uh some of matilda's strongest fighters died mostly of natural causes robert of gloucester
00:45:49.220good dude died of a fever very sad um some of her other fighters headed off in crusades like
00:45:55.460They're just like, we've been fighting for you for a long time.
00:59:19.680And Biscuits, I'm Jeremy, a.k.a. Jarendell, and we are the hosts of the hit Disney podcast, Disney Countdown.
00:59:25.720On every episode of our fun and family-friendly show, we count down our top ten lists of all things Disney.
00:59:31.340The parks, the movies, the music, the food, the lore.
00:59:35.700There is nothing we don't cover on our show, right Jeremy?
00:59:38.580Ooh, girl, you know we are famous for rabbit holes, Disney-themed games, and fun facts you didn't know you needed, but you definitely need in your life.
00:59:45.660So if you are looking for a healthy dose of Disney magic, check out Disney Countdown wherever you get your podcasts.