Adèle DE NORMANDIE

Personnage très diffus de filiation incertaine.

Dudo says that Guilhem III proposed his own marriage to a sister of William Longsword of Normandy in the course of a gathering to hunt matingdeer near Rouen, attended amongst others by Hugo Capet's father Hugo Magnus described as duke and leading man of the kingdom - the title and position were accorded to him ca 936. William reportedly called his sister a 'girl' at the time, suggesting that she was perhaps ca 14 and bornwell after the conversion of her father Rollo to Christianity. Yet William of Jumièges later gave her the pagan name Gerloc, which appears rather anomalous considering that even William (who must have been ca 20years older than her) never occurs with any Norse name.

I would not accept the unsupported word of Dudo for anything at all,

including his own existence. He was an outstanding nincompoop, and relied for this period on the memories of people who clearly did not have the story of Rollo's life and family straight in the first place.

Dudo's contemporary Ademar of Chabannes, who certainly knew more aboutthe ducal family in Aquitaine though not that in Normandy, says that Rollo's daughter married Ebles Manzer and was mother of Guilhem III/I ("filius Rannulfi, Eblus manzer, Arvernis et Pictavis simul comes promotusest...Acceptaque in conjugium Adala, filia Rosi [sic] Rotomagensis comitis., genuit ex ea Willelmum Caput Stupe.") The monks of Saint-Maixent, where Guilhem's younger brother Ebles was abbot from 936 (NB around the time that Dudo placed the marriage to Guilhem III/I), followed Ademar and made him also a son of Ebles Manzer and the daughter of Rollo ("Eblus filius Ramnulfi...acceptaque in conjugio Adela, filia Rolli Rothomagensis, genuit ex ea Willelmum Caput Stup� et episcopum Ebulum".)

We don't know much about the marriages of Ebles Manzer - in the 890s heappears to have had a wife named Aremburgis and by February 911 he wasmarried to a lady named Emillana, probably the same as the Countess Alaina who later became a nun. Guilhem III/I occurs with a wife named Adeleidis in the early 950s. There is no evidence apart from Dudo, Ademarand William of Jumièges that any of these women (or perhaps another whodoes not occur in charters) was a daughter of Rollo and also had the name Gerloc.

There are such wide gaps in our knowledge of these genealogies that trying to fill in a "Norman ancestry alleged for Adelaide" from the fact that her grandson was somehow related to Edward the Confessor is a stretch too far. (Peter Stewart)

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