Family Card - Person Sheet
Family Card - Person Sheet
NameAndrew II , King of Hungary
Birthabt 1175
Death26 Oct 1235
FatherBela III , King of Hungary (1148-1196)
MotherAgnes de Chatillon (1154-1184)
Misc. Notes
Andrew II (Hungarian: András or Endre, Slovak: Ondrej) (c. 1175–October 26, 1235), king of Hungary from 1205 until 1235, member of Arpad dynasty.

Andrew was a son of King Bela III. He succeeded his nephew, the infant Ladislaus III, son of his older brother Emeric, as King of Hungary in 1205. Few other royal reigns were as detrimental to the Hungarian realm as Andrew's. Valiant, enterprising, pious as he was, all these fine qualities were ruined by a reckless good nature which never thought of the future. He declared in a decree that the generosity of a king should be limitless, and he followed this principle throughout his reign. He gave away everything - money, villages, domains, whole counties - to the utter impoverishment of the treasury, thereby rendering the crown, for the first time in Hungarian history, dependent upon the great nobility eager for personal gain.

In all matters of government, Andrew was equally reckless and haphazard. He was directly responsible for the beginnings of the feudal anarchy which led to the extinction of the Árpáds dynasty at the end of the 13th century. The great nobles did not even respect the lives of the royal family, for Andrew was recalled from a futile attempt to reconquer Galicia through the murder of his first wife Gertrude of Meran in 1213 by rebellious nobles jealous of the influence of her relatives.

In 1215 he married Iolanthe (Yolande) of France, but in 1217 was compelled by Pope Honorius III to lead the Fifth Crusade to the Holy Land, which he undertook in hopes of being elected Latin emperor of Constantinople. The crusade was not popular in Hungary, but Andrew contrived to collect 15,000 men together, whom he led to Venice. After the surrender of Hungarian claims on Zara (Zadar), about two-thirds of the crusaders were conveyed to Acre. Nevertheless the whole expedition was a forlorn hope. The Kingdom of Jerusalem was by this time reduced to a strip of coast about 440 square miles in extent, and after a drawn battle with the Turks on the Jordan River on November 10, 1217 and fruitless assaults on the fortresses of the Lebanon and on Mount Tabor, Andrew started home (January 18, 1218) through Antioch (Antakya), Iconium (Konya), Constantinople, and Bulgaria. On his return he found the feudal barons in the ascendant, and they extorted from him the Golden Bull.

Andrew's last exploit was to defeat an invasion of Frederick II of Austria in 1234. That same year he married his third wife, Beatrice of Este.

Family
Andrew had five children by his first wife, Gertrude:
1. Maria of Hungary (1203-1221), married Tsar Ivan Asen II of Bulgaria
2. Bela IV of Hungary (1206-1270)
3. Saint Elizabeth of Hungary (1207-1231)
4. Kálmán, Duke of Croatia (1208-1241)
5. András, King of Galicia (1210-1234)

From his second marriage to Yolande de Courtney, he had one daughter:
1. Jolán (Yolande) of Hungary (1215-1251), married James I of Aragon

Andrew's third marriage to Beatrice d'Este produced one posthumous son:
1. István (1236-1271), who was himself father of King Andrew III of Hungary
Spouses
Birth1185
Death24 Sep 1213
Marriageabt 1202
ChildrenBela IV (1206-1270)
Marriage1215
ChildrenViolant (Yolande) (~1216-1251)
Last Modified 13 Apr 2006Created 12 Oct 2023 using Reunion for Macintosh
Created Thursday, October 12, 2023 by Mike Perry

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