ON 10 November 1209, Raimond Roger, erstwhile Viscount of Carcassonne, Béziers, Albi and Razès (1194–1209) and the first member of the higher nobility of Languedoc to fall victim to the Albigensian crusade, died in a dungeon in Carcassonne. He had been there for two months, since his surrender to the Albigensian crusaders besieging Carcassonne in September, and the speed at which he apparently succumbed to his changed circumstances has given rise to the suspicion in some crusade historiography that he was in fact murdered by the crusaders. The Spanish historian Jordi Ventura, for example, has cast doubt on the likelihood of Raimond Roger having died from natural causes, while Sibly and Sibly, in their edition of Pierre des Vaux-de-Cernay's Historia Albigensis, commented on the convenience of his death from the point of view of the crusaders and their new military leader, Simon de Montfort: ‘The death of the young viscount occurred at a time when resistance to de Montfort was beginning to mount, and it was undoubtedly very convenient for him, since the deposed Viscount Trencavel could have provided a rallying point for opposition.’

When the rumour of Raimond Roger's murder began is not clear, but this historiographical verdict on Raimond Roger's death clearly echoes the opinions of many of his contemporaries. That the suspicion of foul play was an immediate reaction to the viscount's death is implied by the complaint from the contemporary chronicler Guillaume de Tudela, written in 1213: ‘ill disposed people and other insignificant ones who know nothing about the affair, whether yes or no, said that he was killed in the night through treason. But never, by Jesus Christ on his throne, would the Count [Simon de Montfort] have ever consented, for anything in the world, to assassinate him.’ In this context, even the elaborate funeral, including an open lying in state, allowed to Raimond Roger by Simon de Montfort looks less a magnanimous gesture than a desperate attempt to stave off the inevitable. Despite this and Guillaume de Tudela's emphatic rebuttal, the rumours appear to have remained common currency into the later thirteenth century.