The date was the 25th of November, 1120, a night that would drastically change   the affairs of English history in one small, but significant event: the sinking of the  White Ship.

After securing his domains in Normandy, Henry I had returned to England, and, a  party of young  nobles prepared to follow.  Two ships were prepared to sail the    party  across  the  English  channel.  One of them was the elegant  White Ship captained  by  the  proud master,Thomas Fitz Stephen. Aboard this proud ship included many of the heirs to England's estates, and it also would carry Henry I's  one and only male heir,  seventeen-year old  William the Atheling, and his wife  Matilda of Anjou, the daughter of the Count of Anjou. Scheduled to sail on the White Ship was Henry's favourite nephew Stephen of Blois, but after Stephen has  surveyed the ship,  he changed his mind and prepared to sail on the other ship.

Considering  the  atmosphere  on the White Ship, Stephen had good reason for wanting to travel on the other ship. Before sailing, the crew had gotten  themselves completely drunk, and when church men came to bless the voyage off, they were laughed at and sent away.  Not surprisingly, the other ship took off first, and the passengers of the  White Ship demanded of the captain to overtake  and pass the other vessel. What happened next is unclear, but apparently the ship hit a rock on the port side, creating a fatal hole which caused the White Ship to sink.

There were only two survivors of the wreckage: a nobleman who eventually died in the freezing waters, and a Rouen butcher, who was the sole witness on board  to tell the tale.  Of the casualties:  the entire crew, and 300 passengers, one of whom was the only heir to the English throne, William the Atheling.

The Civil War of 1139 to 1153 was a battle of succession between two dangerous rivals to the English throne, The Empress Matilda, daughter and only legitimate heir of King Henry I, and Stephen of Blois, nephew to the the King by his mother Adela, wife to the Count of Blois.

The conflict began with the death of Henry's heir William the Aetheling, leaving England with no successor to the throne. Though Henry soon remarried after his son's death, he would never have any more children. The problem, however, seemed solved when his daughter Matilda was left a childless widow of the German Emperor. Summoning his daughter home to England, he had her married to Geoffrey, the heir of the county of Anjou, traditional enemies to the Kingdom of England, and soon after that had his barons swear (no less than three times) to accept her as heir to the throne. The evidence of his barons' repeated oaths shows that even then, Henry was doubtful of Matilda being well accepted as the reigning Queen of England. The eventual plan however, was not so much as having Matilda a queen, but her son by Geoffrey, a king.

This shaky plan, however ingenious Henry I might have thought it, was obviously not destined to work. A queen in her own right was unheard of at this point of English history, but as much opposition as there would be towards Matilda, there would be even more to her Angevin husband. Count Geoffrey had already caused quite a stir among the barons by making demands on several Norman castles, which he claimed Henry had granted him at his wedding. He would later claim joint rule with his wife for England and Normandy, and it was this thought in particular that uneased many of the barons. The Angevins had never been trusted among the Norman-French nobility which had made up most of the English court since the days of William the Conqueror.

Lucky for them, you might say, that Stephen was around when Henry I was dead in 1135. Stephen, this favourite nephew of the king, had been piled up with grand estates: Blois in his father’s right, and Boulogne in his wife’s name, another Matilda who would later play an interesting part of the war. Thanks to his uncle, Stephen had also be fitted up with other estates and honors throughout England and Normandy, and Henry’s favour had been apparent to everyone. Therefore, when Stephen suddenly appeared in London after Henry’s death, his claim of kingship was happily accepted by many.

This rapid movement of Stephen’s is shown in a great contrast to Matilda’s hesitation. For indeed, after her father’s death, she made no sign of moving towards London, or even to England, for when the news must have met up with her, she was still in Anjou with her husband and two sons. This perhaps made it even easier for Stephen’s supporters to give their approval for Stephen’s coronation at Westminster. Without the presence of the Empress, there seem little if no opposition.

The actual war itself could not have taken place without Matilda's several key supporters. The most important was her own half-brother, the oldest known bastard-born son of Henry I, Robert who had been made Earl of Gloucestor by his father's good graces. From 1139 until his death in 1147, Robert would remain at the front of the war as Matilda's lead general and commander of her forces. There was however, a flaw in his loyalty: his own hesitation.

When Stephen was crowned King, Robert hesitated at recognizing him, and was among one the last of the cautious English barons to accept Stephen as King of England. But in 1138, Robert openly fled from the King's court and sought out his sister in Normandy where her husband Geoffrey was set about conquering the duchy in his wife's name. It is still unclear exactly why Robert switched sides, but his defection was the hope Matilda needed. With Robert, and two other wealthy English barons, Miles of Gloucestor and Brian fitz Count of Wallingford, both of whom would remain loyal to Matilda for the rest of their lives, Matilda had the forces she needed to begin persuing her birthright.

The Empress Matilda, born in 1102, was the mother of King Henry II. Born the daughter of King Henry I, she had been sent off at the early age of 8 to be wed to the German Emperor Henry V. But when her father's heir William was drowned in a crossing of the English channel, and the emperor had left Matilda a widow, she was recalled back to England and made her father's heiress. She would be the next Queen of England, so they told her. In the mean time, she had been forced into a marriage with the Count Geoffrey of Anjou, a serious degradation in her eyes, for not only was she a former Empress, but she was a full eleven years older than Geoffrey.

Geoffrey the Fair, as he was sometimes called, was the founder of the royal Plantagenet family later to rule England. The name Plantagenet is thought to come from the sprig of broom plant (planta genista) he sometimes wore in his hair. From him would come the line of a people known as the Angevins after their native Anjou.

Around the time of Geoffrey's birth, the House of Anjou was at odds with England and was almost always making trouble on the continent, particularly in Normandy. While Henry I, King of England sought to maintain his claim to the throne against his older brother's son William Clito, English enemies like those in France had rallied to Clito's cause. To gain an ally among French territories, Henry married his son and heir William the Atheling to Margaret of Anjou, the daughter of Count Fulk V, Geoffrey's father. The death of both William and Margaret put an end to this alliance.

And so there was the marriage between Matilda and Geoffrey, a couple's whose marital relations were unusually well documented for those times: a relationship of little affection, to put it mildly, on either side. There was a reason Matilda was called ‘the Empress’ for the remainder of her life, rather than the countess she now was.

Unfortunately for Matilda, there had grown many concerns among the barons of England after those years when she had been made heir, men made uncomfortably uneasy with the thought of taking orders from a woman. Not only did a Queen of England in her own right sound bad, but a woman who's husband was one of the accursed Angevins was even worse. Had her father's choice of husbands been a more suitable man, England might not have been so against the Empress. But the idea of an Angevin on the throne as well, and not just any Angevin, but Geoffrey of Anjou, was to the nobility of England, quite preposterous.

For Geoffrey had his own reputation, one little favoured by the Norman-French aristocracy. Promiscuous, adventurous, reckless to the edge, and hardly religious is what would normally come into people's minds whenever the Count was mentioned. It was even rumoured that the Angevins were descendants of Melusine, daughter of Satan. Not a small accusation for those times.

A certain twist of fates, however, would appear to solve all their problems, for on the death of King Henry in 1135, Stephen, the Count of Blois and Boulogne, Matilda's cousin and nephew to the old king, would seize the throne.

What came next was the bloody Civil War of 1139-1153, a conflict of wills and power between two rivals for the English throne, one legal heir and one stolen coronation. Although Geoffrey would never set foot on English soil, Matilda participated actively in the war, her forces lead by a bastard-born brother Robert of Gloucester. The war itself was comically equal in its partisans with neither side having the greater advantage. When Stephen was captured at the Battle of Lincoln, which could have been the road to Matilda’s throne, her brother Robert was captured by Stephen’s queen, also named Matilda, and when the two were exchanged for each other, both players were back where they had started, so many years before.

After the swap, the war itself became drained of its life. What had started out as a quick battle to make the Empress a queen had turned into a war that would ravage the English countryside, but still it continued until Robert’s death in 1147. With the loss of her leading supporter, all Matilda’s claims were abandoned, and she quietly returned back across the Channel.

Geoffrey however, had been quite successful. As his wife kept Stephen and his supporters busy in England, the Count of Anjou easily won over Normandy, which he claimed in Matilda's name. Despite his other failings, Geoffrey was quite a capable battle commander, a trait he would pass on to his and Matilda's oldest son Henry. Though Matilda had failed, her son would not. In 1153, Henry securred himself as heir to the English throne. When the aging Stephen died the following year, King Henry II was crowned to the mutual support of everyone.

Seal of the Empress Matilda