Territorial evolution of France face up to the formidable challenge with which they were presented. The Duke of Normandy William the Conqueror became King of England in 1066 through his victory at Hastings over the Saxons. On the extinction of his male line of descent, his heir was the Duke of Anjou, Henry Plantagenet, grandson by his mother of Henry I of England. Two months before he ascended to the English throne, as Henry II, he married Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine, the richest heiress in the French kingdom and ex-wife of the King of France. The kings of France nevertheless, held some trump cards:
Engelbert, Duke of Carinthia Engelbert, Duke of Carinthia Engelbert II (died 13 April 1141), a member of the House of Sponheim, was Margrave of Istria and Carniola from about 1103/07 until 1124. In 1123, he succeeded his elder brother Henry as Duke of Carinthia and Margrave of Verona which he held until his retirement in 1135. Engelbert II was the son of Count Engelbert I of Sponheim (d. 1096) and his wife Hedwig of uncertain descent, maybe a daughter of the Billung duke Bernard II of Saxony. His grandfather Count Siegfried I of Sponheim (d. 1065) came to Carinthia about 1035 as an attendant