Alix of Montferrat

Alix von Montferrat (also Alasia ; * 1210 ; † before April 1233 in Kyrenia ) was a queen of Cyprus as the first wife of King Henry I of Cyprus . She was a daughter of Margrave Wilhelm VI. from Montferrat from the family of the Aleramides .

Their marriage was arranged by Emperor Frederick II while he was in Cyprus during his crusade in 1228. Alix came to Cyprus under imperial escort in 1231, when her husband and the entire nobility of the island were already in revolt against the rule of the emperor's governors ( Lombard War ). As a result, she stayed with the imperial governor Richard Filangieri , from whom she was brought to Kyrenia Castle after his defeat in the Battle of Agridi (June 15, 1232) . The governor defended himself here for ten more months against King Henry I and his regent, old John of Ibelin .

The chronicler Philipp von Novara reported that the supporters of the anti-imperial opposition referred to Alix as the “Lombard Queen” because of her stay in the imperial camp. Whether she was voluntarily at Filangieri's side or was unable to move to her husband's camp is unclear. Alix died during the siege of Kyrenia in the spring of 1233, before the castle had to be abandoned by Filangieri in April. Her body was handed over by the defense attorneys to her husband, whom she had never met. He recognized their marriage and thus their royal rank and ordered a funeral procession to Nicosia , where Alix was buried in the St. Sophia Cathedral.

Web links

• Alice von Montferrat at genealogie-mittelalter.de
• Alasia at fmg.ac (English)