Matilda was born at Winchester, daughter of King Henry I of England and Matilda of Scotland.
Empress Matilda, also known as Maud, was born on 7 February 1102, most likely at Winchester, the daughter of King Henry I of England and Matilda of Scotland (herself a descendant of the Anglo-Saxon royal house through Margaret of Wessex).
Her birth united the Norman conquest dynasty with the old English royal line, a symbolic merging that would later bolster her own claims to legitimacy. As a princess of both Norman and Anglo-Saxon blood, Matilda was positioned from infancy as a valuable dynastic asset in the complex diplomatic world of twelfth-century Western Europe.
Little is recorded of her earliest childhood, but she would have received an education befitting a royal daughter destined for an important marriage alliance, including instruction in Latin, courtly manners, and religious devotion. Her early years at the English court set the stage for a life that would take her from empress of the Holy Roman Empire to claimant of the English throne, and eventually to matriarch of the Angevin dynasty that would rule England for centuries. Her birth, though undramatic in itself, marks the starting point of one of medieval Europe's most remarkable female political careers.