Azalais of Toulouse was the daughter of count Raymond V of Toulouse

Raymond V of Toulouse

Raymond V was count of Toulouse from 1148 until his death in 1194.He was the son of Alphonse-Jordan. When Alphonse died in the Holy Land in 1148, the county of Toulouse passed to his son Raymond, at the time 14 years old....

 and Constance of France. Her maternal grandparents were Louis VI of France

Louis VI of France

Louis VI , called the Fat , was King of France from 1108 until his death . Chronicles called him "roi de Saint-Denis".-Reign:...

 and his second wife Adélaide de Maurienne

Adélaide de Maurienne

Adelaide of Savoy was the second spouse but first Queen consort of Louis VI of France.-Biography:...

.

She was born at the castle of Burlats

Burlats

Burlats ) is a commune in the Tarn department in southern France.- Population:-Remarkable Monuments:* the Adelaide Pavilion, a unique showcase of Roman civil architecture that cradled the birth of l’Amour courtois...

 (canton of Roquecourbe

Roquecourbe

Roquecourbe is a commune in the Tarn department in southern France....

, Tarn) and is therefore called contessa de Burlatz (Countess of Burlats) in the vida

Vida (Occitan literary form)

Vida is the usual term for a brief prose biography, written in Old Occitan, of a troubadour or trobairitz.The word vida means "life" in Occitan languages. In the chansonniers, the manuscript collections of medieval troubadour poetry, the works of a particular author are often accompanied by a...

of Arnaut de Mareuil

Arnaut de Mareuil

Arnaut de Mareuil was a troubadour, composing lyric poetry in the Occitan language. Twenty-five, perhaps twenty-nine, of his songs, all cansos, survive, six with music....

.

She was married to Roger II Trencavel

Roger II Trencavel

Roger II Trencavel was the Viscount of Carcassonne, Béziers, Razès, and Albi from 1167 or 1171 until his death. Until 1177 he used the title proconsul, usually as proconsul de Bitteris , but he abandoned the usage when he became a vassal of the Crown of Aragon...

, count of Béziers

Béziers

Béziers is a town in Languedoc in southern France. It is a sub-prefecture of the Hérault department. Béziers hosts the famous Feria de Béziers, centred around bullfighting, every August. A million visitors are attracted to the five-day event...

 and Carcassonne

Carcassonne

Carcassonne is a fortified French town in the Aude department, of which it is the prefecture, in the former province of Languedoc.It is divided into the fortified Cité de Carcassonne and the more expansive lower city, the ville basse. Carcassone was founded by the Visigoths in the fifth century,...

, in 1171; she was the mother of Raimond Roger Trencavel, who died in captivity after the siege of Carcassonne in 1209. Azalais herself died in 1199.

Azalais of Toulouse is named in the poems of several troubadours, including Pons de la Gardia, Giraut de Salignac

Giraut de Salignac

Giraut de Salignac was a jongleur and troubadour from the Quercy. His castle was Salignac. According to his vida he composed cansos, sirventes, and descortz, though only one canso and one descort survive. His composition were characterised, so his biographer says, by "grace and skill"...

. It is said that the poems of Arnaut de Mareuil form a sequence telling of his love for her. Alfonso II of Aragon

Alfonso II of Aragon

Alfonso II or Alfons I ; Huesca, 1-25 March 1157 – 25 April 1196), called the Chaste or the Troubadour, was the King of Aragon and Count of Barcelona from 1164 until his death. He was the son of Ramon Berenguer IV of Barcelona and Petronilla of Aragon and the first King of Aragon who was...

 was his rival, and according to the razó

Razó (Occitan literary form)

A razó or razo was a short piece of Occitan prose detailing the circumstances of a troubadour composition. A razó normally introduced an individual poem, acting as a prose preface and explanation; it might, however, share some of the characteristics of a vida and the boundary between the...

to one of Arnaut's poems, the king jealously persuaded her to break off her friendship with Arnaut. Alfonso's own dealings with Azalais were fiercely criticized in a sirventès

Sirventes

The sirventes or serventes is a genre of Occitan lyric poetry used by the troubadours. In early Catalan it became a sirventesch and was imported into that language in the fourteenth century, where it developed into a unique didactic/moralistic type...

by Guillem de Berguedà: "she gave you her love, and you took two cities and a hundred castles from her".