Talk:William VI, Marquis of Montferrat

Phantom first wife?
It is asserted without citation that William VI was married to the eldest daughter of Frederick Barbarossa. The enormity of even a brief marriage between the daughter of the Holy Roman emperor and the grandson of his most powerful vassal in Italy, right after the latter came to power and right before the former left for the Third Crusade, not to mention William being before the age of majority and the close consanguinity of the proposed couple, makes it extremely suspicious that it is not mentioned in any primary or secondary source that I know or could find.

I was able to track a reference down to the infamous 1937 Europäische Stammtafeln tables for the Aledramid marquises of Montferrat. Where Wilhelm Karl von Isenburg got the idea, I don't know because he doesn't say, but a random poster on RootsWeb points to an uncited remark from a 1757 Thesaurus rerum Suevicarum. That just pushes the question further back, but Sophie/Sophia of Hohenstaufen/Burgundy seems to be a phantom person invented by an eighteenth-century scholar who might have confused Judith of Babenberg, Judith/Sophia of Swabia, Beatrice of Burgundy, Frederick Barbarossa's daughter Beatrice, Sophia of Montferrat, and even Eleanor/Sophia of Savoy (or any combination thereof). I am only a doctoral candidate and not experienced as an editor, but I thought I'd post here to ask if someone else might agree with what I've found. Gormongous (talk) 06:48, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Given that there is no source cited, and that there is no mention of this marriage in the DBI article I think that you should remove it. Ian Spackman (talk) 13:17, 27 May 2014 (UTC)