ABSTRACT
Medieval biographers rarely discussed their subjects' views on child-rearing, unless they were candidates for canonization. So even if an early biography of King Henry Is daughter, the Empress Matilda, had survived,1 it is unlikely that we would have had any glimpses into her family life like those that can be found in the vita of her grandmother, St. Margaret of Scotland.2 Moreover, the empress had to bring up her three sons in troubled times. Even the eldest was not yet three when the death of her father, King Henry I, plunged her into a war to win and retain her inheritance; and for more than twelve years her life was spent in castles under constant danger of attack. Her family life has to be pieced together from casual references in chronicles, charters, and occasional letters. Since she had no daughters, her own upbringing could not have provided an example to imitate, and she cannot have seen a great deal of her granddaughters when they were in the care of her strong-willed daughter-in-law Eleanor ofAquitaine though in their adult lives Matilda was held up to them as a model of courage and fortitude.
