Weis" "Ancestral Roots. . ." (28:31), (133:26). Quoting from Christipher Cope's, "The Lost Kingdom of Burgundy" : "The reign of HUMBERT's son, Count Thomas I (1189-1233), opened a
golden age for Savoy for he started the great advance north-westwards which carried his successors' sway over the Rhone into Bresse and to the Saone between Macon and Chalon. Even more significant was his victory over Berthold V of Zahringen which cleared the way for the conquest by his son Peter II (1263-8) of what is now the cantons of Vaud and Fribourg.
Thomas was also more successful than his father in reproducing his race for his bride, MARGARET, daughter of the COUNT OF GENEVOIS, who raised eight sons and six daughters. According to the chronicler of Hautecombe Abbey, the Westminster of Savoy, MARGARET was being taken in 1196 to France by her ambitious father to become the third wife of Richard Lionhart's enemy, PHILIP AUGUSTUS. Thomas had fallen passionately in love with her and, ambushing her party in a narrow gorge in Bugey, defied the KING OF FRANCE and carried her off to the altar."

Europaische Stammtafeln ii, 190:
"From the time of Thomas I the counts were effectively rulers of a minor kingdom and there were very few states of any size in which the central power had so successfully established its authority." Savoy's greatest days were under Thomas' sons, Peter and Philip. Savoy prospered and even continued to expand from this time on into the sixteenth century. Turton, Plantagenet Ancestry, p. 97.