Eleanor of Aquitaine: A Biography (WOMEN IN HISTORY)

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Here is where the sources get interesting, for chroniclers do not agree on how the separation came about. Several say that Louis ‘repudiated’ his queen, either because he was upset by the consanguinity or because she hadn’t borne a son (though they attribute the second motive to his barons, who are often depicted as anxious to avoid civil wars over succession). But John of Salisbury, Gervase of Canterbury and William of Newburgh all say that the initiative was with Eleanor. Gervase claims that she used consanguinity as a ‘pretext’ and William that she ‘grew most irritated with the king’s habits and … said that she had married a monk, not a king’. Louis had in fact been raised in a monastery. The cleric Stephen of Paris agreed that he ‘was entirely ecclesiastical in his conversation and habits’, though from him that was high praise. Eleanor of Aquitaine also formally took up the cross symbolic of the Second Crusade during a sermon preached by Bernard of Clairvaux. In addition, she had been corresponding with her uncle Raymond, Prince of Antioch, who was seeking further protection from the French crown against the Saracens. Eleanor recruited some of her royal ladies-in-waiting for the campaign as well as 300 non-noble Aquitainian vassals. She insisted on taking part in the Crusades as the feudal leader of the soldiers from her duchy. She left for the Second Crusade from Vézelay, the rumoured location of Mary Magdalene's grave, in June 1147.

In 1137 Duke William X left Poitiers for Bordeaux and took his daughters with him. Upon reaching Bordeaux, he left them in the charge of the archbishop of Bordeaux, one of his few loyal vassals. The duke then set out for the Shrine of Saint James of Compostela in the company of other pilgrims. However, he died on Good Friday of that year (9 April). Eleanor is the subject of A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver, a children's novel by E. L. Konigsburg. Eleanor is said to have been named for her mother Aenor and called Aliénor from the Latin Alia Aenor, which means the other Aenor. It became Eléanor in the langues d'oïl of northern France and Eleanor in English. [4] There was, however, another prominent Eleanor before her— Eleanor of Normandy, an aunt of William the Conqueror, who lived a century earlier than Eleanor of Aquitaine. In Paris as the queen of France, she was called Helienordis, her honorific name as written in the Latin epistles. As Eleanor travelled to Poitiers, two lords— Theobald V, Count of Blois, and Geoffrey, Count of Nantes, brother of Henry II, Duke of Normandy—tried to kidnap and marry her to claim her lands. As soon as she arrived in Poitiers, Eleanor sent envoys to Henry, Duke of Normandy and future king of England, asking him to come at once to marry her. On 18 May 1152 ( Whit Sunday), eight weeks after her annulment, Eleanor married Henry "without the pomp and ceremony that befitted their rank." [25] One of the most fascinating stories in history is that of Eleanor of Aquitaine. I have always found her an enigmatic and elusive figure, and writing her biography was a labour of love - something I had wanted to do for over a quarter of a century. Most of my research was done in the 1970s, when I transcribed thousands of references to the medieval queens of England from chronicles in the Rolls Series and other contemporary sources. This huge bank of material lay forgotten for years until a reader wrote begging me to write a book on Eleanor. This inspired me to look again at the research, and I realised that it had the makings of a wonderful project. All that remained was to convince my publishers of this. However, after the success of Elizabeth the Queen, the time was right for me to write a book about another strong and independent woman in history.This isn’t about Eleanor, either, but the tales included here are contemporary to her and would have been familiar to both Eleanor and Henry II. The true identity of Marie de France is unknown, but one possibility is that she is actually Marie, the abbess of Shaftesbury, who was Henry II’s half-sister. Film, radio and television [ edit ] Katharine Hepburn as Queen Eleanor in The Lion in Winter (1968) Eleanor was related to Henry even more closely than she had been to Louis: they were cousins to the third degree through their common ancestor Ermengarde of Anjou, wife of Robert I, Duke of Burgundy and Geoffrey, Count of Gâtinais, and they were also descended from King Robert II of France. A marriage between Henry and Eleanor's daughter Marie had earlier been declared impossible due to their status as third cousins once removed. It was rumoured by some that Eleanor had had an affair with Henry's own father, Geoffrey V, Count of Anjou, who had advised his son to avoid any involvement with her. Sometime between the end of March and the beginning of May, Eleanor left Poitiers, but was arrested and sent to the king at Rouen. The king did not announce the arrest publicly; for the next year, the queen's whereabouts were unknown. On 8 July 1174, Henry and Eleanor took ship for England from Barfleur. As soon as they disembarked at Southampton, Eleanor was taken either to Winchester Castle or Sarum Castle and held there. Louis’s monkish tendencies became all too apparent during the disastrous Second Crusade of 1147-49. Eleanor herself had taken the cross to accompany him to the East, but he showed no aptitude for strategy and seemed more interested in completing a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. After the French army suffered catastrophic losses, Eleanor abandoned him to travel with her more valiant uncle, Raymond of Antioch. Some claimed that they had an affair, though this seems unlikely. Later sources make the rumour still juicier: Eleanor’s lover was not her uncle but ‘the sultan of Babylon’. The Minstrel of Reims identified the sultan as Saladin, who was greatly admired in the West for his chivalry. Such an affair would have been impossible – Saladin was a child at the time – but the tale is interesting for its characterisation of Eleanor as a wildly transgressive, exotic figure. For the minstrel, she is both an excellent judge of character and an ‘evil woman’, betraying her faith as well as her husband. Her preference for virile courage over piety helps explain her attraction to the energetic Henry.

Second Crusade council: Conrad III of Germany, Eleanor's husband Louis VII of France, and Baldwin III of Jerusalem Henry and Eleanor are the main characters in James Goldman's 1966 play The Lion in Winter, which was made into a film in 1968 starring Peter O'Toole as Henry and Katharine Hepburn in the role of Eleanor, for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress and the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role and was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Drama. Evocative…A rich tapestry of a bygone age, and a judicious assessment of her subject's place within it." ( Newsday) Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine was one of the leading personalities of the Middle Ages and also one of the most controversial. She was beautiful, intelligent and wilful, and in her lifetime there were rumours about her that were not without substance. She had been reared in a relaxed and licentious court where the arts of the troubadours flourished, and was even said to have presided over the fabled Courts of Love. Eleanor married in turn Louis VII of France and Henry II of England, and was the mother of Richard the Lionheart and King John. She lived to be 82, but it was only in old age that she triumphed over the adversities and tragedies of her earlier years and became virtual ruler of England. She outlived all but three of her children, including her favorite son, Richard. I know that wasn’t uncommon for the time, but it still gives me the sads.Siberry, Elizabeth (2016). The New Crusaders: Images of the Crusades in the 19th and Early 20th Centuries. Routledge. ISBN 9781351885195. Queen Elanor's Confession, or Queen Eleanor's Confession, is Child Ballad 156. Although the figures are intended as Eleanor of Aquitaine, Henry II of England, and William Marshal, the story is an entire invention. Eleanor was imprisoned for the next 16 years, much of the time in various locations in England. During her imprisonment, Eleanor became more and more distant from her sons, especially from Richard, who had always been her favourite. [29] She did not have the opportunity to see her sons very often during her imprisonment, though she was released for special occasions such as Christmas. About four miles from Shrewsbury and close by Haughmond Abbey is "Queen Eleanor's Bower", the remains of a possible triangular timber castle which is believed to have been one of her prisons. Weir is so much the master of the period, so intuitive and unsentimental an interpreter of royal minds, and so upfront in her assumptions that I trusted her completely." ( The Boston Globe) This is the story of Eleanor’s earlier years of her reign of Aquitaine before her marriage to Louis VII. We don’t often get novels set before Eleanor becomes the more well-known version of herself. This is one, and it’s great. Eleanor of Aquitaine: Lord and Lady

A book with the pace, verve and readability which has become [Weir`s] hallmark." ( The Good Book Guide) Appearance [ edit ] Donor portrait in a 12th-century psalter in the Royal Library of the Netherlands, thought to depict an older Eleanor. Eleanor was again unwell in early 1201. When war broke out between John and Philip, Eleanor declared her support for John and set out from Fontevraud to her capital Poitiers to prevent her grandson Arthur I, Duke of Brittany, posthumous son of Eleanor's son Geoffrey and John's rival for the English throne, from taking control. Arthur learned of her whereabouts and besieged her in the castle of Mirebeau. As soon as John heard of this, he marched south, overcame the besiegers, and captured the 15-year-old Arthur, and probably his sister Eleanor, Fair Maid of Brittany, whom Eleanor had raised with Richard. Eleanor then returned to Fontevraud where she took the veil as a nun.

Ball, Margaret (2006). Duchess of Aquitaine: A Novel of Eleanor. St. Martin's Press. ISBN 978-1-4299-0139-0.