Was there a lady named Adele who contested the throne of England at the time of Empress Matilda doing the same?
Adela (or, in some variations, Adelicia) of Louvain was the second wife of Henry I whom he married in 1121, 3 years after the death of his first wife and shortly after the accidental drowning of his only legitimate son. She was the daughter of Godfrey I, Count of Louvain and only 18 at the time of her marriage to Henry who was about 35 years her senior. She was therefore the stepmother of Empress Matilda despite being about the same age. However she and Henry had no children of their own which was why her husband arranged for Matilda, his only surviving legitimate child, to succeed him. Adela supported this decision and never made any claims to the throne of her own to which she would have had no rights anyway. Three years after Henry's death she married William d'Aubigny, 1st Earl of Arundel and bore him seven children which suggests that it had not been her fault that she did not produce heirs for her first husband. Eventually she entered a convent in her native Brabant (in modern Belgium) where she died in 1151, 15 years after her first husband. It is thought she may have been buried with him at Reading Abbey but this is not certain.
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