Irene Angelina

Irene Angelina was a Byzantine princess and member of the Angelos dynasty and by her two marriages Queen of Sicily in 1193 and Queen of Germany from 1198 to 1208.

Life

Irene was born in Constantinople, the second daughter of Byzantine emperor Isaac II Angelos and his first wife, possibly an unknown Palaiologina with a non-Greek mother, who became a nun with the name Irene. In 1193, her father and King Tancred of Sicily arranged Irene's marriage with Tancred's eldest son, Roger. Her husband was declared co-king, but he died on 24 December 1193, shortly before his father's death on 20 February 1194. Sicily was claimed by Tancred's aunt Constance and her husband, Emperor Henry VI. Irene was captured 29 December 1194 during the conquest of Sicily. She was married on 25 May 1197 to Henry's younger brother, Duke Philip of Swabia, and took the name Maria.
After the emperor had died on September 28, Philip was elected King of the Romans in Mühlhausen on 8 March 1198. Irene's father, who had been deposed in 1195, urged her to get Philip's support for his reinstatement; her brother, Alexius, subsequently spent some time at Philip's court during the preparations for the Fourth Crusade. She thus had an early influence on the eventual diversion of the crusade to Constantinople in 1204. Rivaled by the Welf scion Otto IV, Philip was able to consolidate his rule over the German kingdom. On 21 June 1208, he was killed by the Bavarian Count Palatine Otto VIII of Wittelsbach, leaving Irene widowed a second time.
After the murder of her husband, Irene, who was pregnant at the time, retired to Hohenstaufen Castle. Two months later, on 27 August 1208, she gave birth to another daughter. Both Irene and her child died shortly afterwards. She was buried in the family mausoleum in the Staufen proprietary monastery of Lorch Abbey, along with her children.

Issue

Philip and Irene had:

Beatrix, who married her father's rival, Emperor Otto IV on 22 July 1212 and died three weeks later without issue.
Maria, who married Duke Henry II of Brabant before 22 August 1215 and had issue.
Kunigunde, who married King Wenceslaus I of Bohemia in 1224 and had issue.
Elisabeth, who married King Ferdinand III of Castile on 30 November 1219 and had issue.
Daughter. She and her mother died following childbirth complications.

Sources identified two short-lived sons, Reinald and Frederick, also born from the union of Philip and Irene-Maria Angelina, being both buried at Lorch Abbey alongside their mother. However, there were no contemporary sources who could ascertain their existence without doubt.

Legacy

In his poem on King Philip's Magdeburg Christmas celebrations, the minnesinger Walther von der Vogelweide described Irene as rose ane dorn, ein tube sunder gallen.