Roger II Trencavel (died March 1194) was the Viscount of Carcassonne,[1] Béziers,[2] Razès, and Albi from 1167 or 1171 until his death.
[8] However, in November 1171, Raymond drew Roger away from Alfonso II of Aragon by enfeoffing him with the viscounties and depriving the count of Foix.
Roger was a close ally of Ermengard of Narbonne from 1171 onwards, when the viscount and viscountess swore oaths of mutual alliance.
[16] Some have suggested that Roger was driven to the side of Alfonso by the results of the Third Lateran Council and by Raymond of Toulouse' request for assistance in dealing with heresy in his domains.
[18][19] Roger succeeded in establishing a vicar (Pierre Raimond d'Hautpoul) in Albi between 1175 and 1177, but he was forced to come to humiliating terms with the bishop William of Dourgne in 1193.
[20] In 1178 Henry of Marcy, who was leading a papal legation in the region, marched on Albi, whence Roger fled to Ambialet, and the on Castres, where they declared him a heretic and excommunicated him after releasing the bishop Gerard.
[18][21] In 1179, he was excommunicated again by Pons d'Arsac for his "conspicuous lack of enthusiasm for the extirpation of heresy" under the twenty-seventh canon of the Third Lateran Council and the decretal Ad abolendam of Pope Lucius III.
In 1188, Alfonso of Aragon came north of the Pyrenees again to defend Roger at Carcassonne, but he also granted away that viscounty as well as the Razès to Raimond-Roger of Foix in a move to dispossess the Trencavels entirely.