Editing Stephen, King of England (section)

=== Childhood ===
[[File:North West France 1150.png|thumb|upright=1.13|Northern France around the time of Stephen's birth]]

Stephen was born in [[Blois]], [[France in the Middle Ages|France]], in either 1092 or 1096.<ref name="DavisKingP5">Davis, p. 1; King (2010), p. 5.</ref>{{#tag:ref|Opinions vary considerably among historians as to the date of Stephen's birth. [[Ralph Henry Carless Davis|R. H. Davis]] proposes 1096, King 1092.<ref name=DavisKingP5/>|group="nb"}} His father was [[Stephen, Count of Blois|Stephen-Henry]], [[Counts of Blois|Count of Blois and Chartres]], an important French nobleman and an active [[Crusades|crusader]] who died when Stephen was at most ten years old.<ref>Davis, p. 1.</ref> During the [[First Crusade]], Stephen-Henry had acquired a reputation for cowardice, and he returned to the [[Levant]] again in 1101 to rebuild his reputation; there he was killed at the [[Battle of Ramla (1102)|battle of Ramlah]].<ref name="DavisP4">Davis, p. 4.</ref> Stephen's mother, [[Adela of Normandy|Adela]], was the daughter of [[William the Conqueror]] and [[Matilda of Flanders]]. She was famous among her contemporaries for her piety and strong personality.<ref name=DavisKingP5/> Indeed, Adela was a major reason for Stephen-Henry's return to the Levant. She had a strong formative influence on Stephen during his growing years; she would live to see her son take her father's throne of England, but would die within a year after that.<ref name="King2010P5">King (2010), p. 5.</ref>{{#tag:ref|Adela was one of the major reasons for Stephen-Henry deciding to return to the Levant in 1101; Edmund King notes that she gave her husband "very active encouragement" to return; [[Christopher Tyerman]] more colourfully describes how she "waged an incessant campaign of bullying and moral blackmail, her nagging extending to their bedroom, where, before intercourse, she would urge her disgraced husband to consider his reputation and return to the Holy Land".<ref>King (2010), p. 7; Tyerman, p. 171.</ref>|group="nb"}}

In the 12th century, France was a loose collection of counties and smaller polities under the minimal control of the king of France. The king's power was linked to his control of the rich province of [[Île-de-France]], just to the east of Stephen's home county of Blois.<ref>Duby, p. 192; Barlow, p. 111.</ref> To the west lay the three counties of [[Maine (province)|Maine]], [[County of Anjou|Anjou]] and [[Touraine]], and to the north of Blois was the [[Duchy of Normandy]], from which William the Conqueror had conquered England in 1066. William's children were still fighting over the collective Anglo-Norman inheritance.<ref>Carpenter, p. 137.</ref> The rulers across this region spoke a similar language, albeit with regional dialects; followed the same religion; and were closely interrelated. They were also highly competitive and frequently in conflict with one another for valuable territory and the castles that controlled those territories.<ref>Barlow, p. 111; Koziol, p. 17; Thompson, p. 3.</ref>

Stephen had at least four brothers and one sister, along with two probable half-sisters.<ref name=King2010P5/> His eldest brother was [[William, Count of Sully|William]], who under normal circumstances would have ruled Blois and Chartres. William was probably [[intellectually disabled]], and Adela instead had the counties pass to her second son, [[Theobald II, Count of Champagne|Theobald]], later also [[County of Champagne|Count of Champagne]].<ref name=DavisP4/>{{#tag:ref|Stephen's brother William was described by chroniclers as being "deficient in intelligence ... second rate"; he also took a strange oath in [[Chartres Cathedral]] to kill the local bishop. His precise difficulties or condition remain unclear.<ref>Davis, p. 4; King (2010), p. 8.</ref>|group="nb"}} Stephen's other older brother, Odo, died young, probably in his early teens.<ref name=King2010P5/> 

Stephen's younger brother, [[Henry of Blois|Henry]], was probably born four years after him.<ref name=King2010P5/> The brothers formed a close-knit family group, and Adela encouraged Stephen to take up the role of a feudal knight or baron, whilst steering Henry towards a career in the church, possibly so that their personal career interests would not overlap.<ref>King (2010), p. 5; Davis, p. 5.</ref> Unusually, Stephen was raised in his mother's household rather than being sent to a close relative; he was taught [[Latin]] and riding, and was educated in recent history and [[Biblical stories]] by his tutor, William the Norman.<ref>King (2010), p. 9; Crouch (2002), p. 241.</ref>