RAIMOND ROGER was the last in a line of powerful and largely independent Trencavel viscounts which stretched back to the mid-eleventh century and beyond. The earliest recorded member of the Trencavel family was Bernard, Viscount of Albi under the Count of Toulouse in c.918. Bernard's grandson, also Bernard, acquired the viscounty of Nîmes through his marriage to the heiress, Gauze, in the mid-tenth century and the family became lords of Carcassonne, Béziers and the Razès in 1068 as a result of the marriage of Raimond Bernard Trencavel, Viscount of Albi and Nîmes (d.1078) to Ermengarde, daughter of Pierre Raimond, Count of Carcassonne (d. c.1065).

Their son, Bernard Aton IV (1078–1130), was Viscount of Carcassonne, Béziers, Albi, Razès, Nîmes and Agde and divided these lands between his three sons. Carcassonne, Albi and Razès were held by his eldest son, Roger I (1130–1150), while the second son, Raimond Trencavel I (1130–1167), became Viscount of Béziers and Agde, and the youngest, Bernard Aton V (1130–1163), received the viscounty of Nîmes. Raimond Trencavel became Viscount of Carcassonne, Razès and Albi on Roger I's death without issue in 1150 and passed these lands undivided to his eldest son, Roger II (1167–94). Raimond Roger succeeded his father, Roger II, in 1194 at the age of nine. He was married in 1203 to Agnes, daughter of Guillem VIII de Montpellier (d.1202), by whom he had one son, Raimond Trencavel II (1207-p. 1263). Nîmes continued to be ruled by the younger branch of the family until it was surrendered to Simon de Montfort in 1214 along with Agde, which had been divided between Raimond Trencavel and Bernard Aton V following disputes between them.

Trencavel power in Languedoc was ended with the death of Raimond Roger at the close of the first campaign of the Albigensian crusade in 1209. The crusaders had mustered at Lyons in June 1209 under the leadership of the papal legate Arnauld Amaury, Abbot of Cîteaux, where they were joined by Raimond VI of Toulouse himself, who had made an extensive abjuration of his myriad crimes against the Church to the papal legate Milo. They arrived at Montpellier on 15 July and then advanced westwards into Languedoc, where their first targets were the lands of Raimond Roger.