Raymond VII, Count of Toulouse


Raymond VII was Count of Toulouse, Duke of Narbonne and Marquis of Provence from 1222 until his death.

Family and marriages

Raymond was born at the Château de Beaucaire, the son of Raymond VI of Toulouse and Joan of England. Through his mother, he was a grandson of Henry II of England and a nephew of kings Richard I and John of England.
In March 1211, Raymond VII married Sancha of Aragon. They had one daughter, Joan, and were divorced in 1241. He was engaged to Sanchia of Provence, but she married Richard of Cornwall instead. In 1243 Raymond married Margaret of Lusignan, the daughter of Hugh X of Lusignan and Isabella of Angoulême. They had no children and the Council of Lyons in 1245 granted Raymond a divorce. He then tried to get support of Blanche, mother of King Louis IX of France, to marry Beatrice of Provence, who had just become Countess of Provence, but Beatrice married Blanche's son Charles instead.

Life

During the Albigensian Crusade in May 1216, Raymond set out from Marseille and besieged Beaucaire, which he captured on 24 August. He fought to reconquer the county of Toulouse from Simon de Montfort, 5th Earl of Leicester and later Simon's son Amaury VI of Montfort.
He succeeded his father in 1222. At the moment of his accession, he and the new count of Foix, Roger Bernard II the Great, besieged Carcassonne. On 14 September 1224, the Albigensian Crusaders surrendered and the war came to an end, each southern lord making peace with the church. However, in 1225, the council of Bourges excommunicated him and launched a crusade against him, the king of France, Louis VIII, called the Lion, wanting to renew the conflict in order to enforce his royal rights in Languedoc. Roger-Bernard tried to keep the peace, but the king rejected his embassy and the counts of Foix and Toulouse took up arms again. The war was largely a discontinuous series of skirmishes and, in January 1229, Raymond, defeated, was forced to sign the Treaty of Paris. By this treaty he ceded the former viscounty of Trencavel to Louis IX and his daughter Joan was forced to marry Alphonse, brother of the king.
When Raymond died, Alphonse became count of Toulouse, and after Alphonse's death the county was annexed by France. Raymond VII was buried beside his mother Joan in Fontevrault Abbey.