Padre:
William X, Duke of Aquitaine
Madre:
Eleanor of Châtellerault, Duchess of Aquitaine
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17° Bisabuela/ Great Grandmother de:
Carlos Juan Felipe Antonio Vicente De La Cruz Urdaneta Alamo
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Eleanor d'Aquitaine, Queen Consort Of England is your 17th great grandmother of→ → Carlos Juan Felipe Antonio Vicente De La Cruz Urdaneta Alamo→ Morella Álamo Borges
your mother → Belén Borges Ustáriz
her mother → Belén de Jesús Ustáriz Lecuna
her mother → Miguel María Ramón de Jesus Uztáriz y Monserrate
her father → María de Guía de Jesús de Monserrate é Ibarra
his mother → Manuel José de Monserrate y Urbina, Teniente Coronel
her father → Antonieta Felicita Javiera Ignacia de Urbina y Hurtado de Mendoza
his mother → Isabel Manuela Josefa Hurtado de Mendoza y Rojas Manrique
her mother → Juana de Rojas Manrique de Mendoza
her mother → Constanza de Mendoza Mate de Luna
her mother → Mayor de Mendoza Manzanedo
her mother → Juan Fernández De Mendoza Y Manuel
her father → Sancha Manuel
his mother → Sancho Manuel de Villena Castañeda, señor del Infantado y Carrión de los Céspedes
her father → Manuel de Castilla, señor de Escalona
his father → Ferdinand "the Saint", king of Castile and León
his father → Berenguela I la Grande, reina de Castilla
his mother → Eleanor of England, Queen consort of Castile
her mother → Eleanor d'Aquitaine, Queen Consort Of England
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Eleanor d'Aquitaine, Queen Consort Of England MP
French: Aliénor d'Aquitaine, Queen Consort Of England, Lithuanian: Eleonora Akvitanietė, Queen Consort Of England, Spanish: Leonor de Aquitania, Queen Consort Of England
Gender:
Female
Birth:
between 1122 and 1124
Nantes, Loire-Atlantique, Pays de la Loire, France
Death:
between March 31, 1204 and April 01, 1204 (80-82)
Poitiers, Vienne, Poitou-Charentes, France
Place of Burial:
Fontevraud L'Abbaye Royale, Fontevraud-l'Abbaye, Maine-et-Loire, Pays de la Loire, France
Immediate Family:
Daughter of William X, Duke of Aquitaine and Eleanor of Châtellerault, Duchess of Aquitaine
Wife of Louis VII le Jeune, roi de France and Henry II "Curtmantle", king of England
Mother of Marie Capet de France, comtesse de Champagne; Alice de France, Comtesse de Blois; William IX, count of Poitiers; Henry the Young King; Matilda of England, Duchess of Saxony and 6 others
Sister of Petronilla d'Aquitaine and Guillaume d'Aquitaine
Added by:
Jean-Jacques Chacun on January 29, 2007
Managed by:
Angus Wood-Salomon and 672 others
Curated by:
Jason Scott Wills
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Aenor de Châtellerault De Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre
Aénor de Châtellerault, duquesa de Aquitania (Châtellerault, Vienne, Francia, c. 1103, - marzo de 1130 en Talmont) fue la madre de Eleanor de Aquitania, posiblemente la mujer más poderosa en Europa de su generación.
Aenor era hija del vizconde Aimery I de Châttellerault y su esposa, Dangereuse de L 'Isle Bouchard (m. 1151). Aenor se casó con William [Guillaume] X de Aquitania, el hijo del amante de su madre, y tuvo tres hijos con él:
Leonor de Aquitania, duquesa de Aquitania y esposa de Luis VII de Francia y Enrique II de Inglaterra.
Petronilla de Aquitania, esposa de Raoul I, conde de Vermandois.
William Aigret (quien murió a la edad de cuatro años)
El condado "Châtelherault" más tarde se convirtió en un título perteneciente a los duques de Hamilton.
Enlaces
Genealogia de Aenor de Châtellerault
Familia Ancestral de Aenor de Châtellerault
Esta biografía de un par francés o noble es un trozo. Puedes ayudar a Wikipedia expandiéndolo. Obtenido de " http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aenor_de_Ch%C3%A2tellerault "
Aenor de Châtellerault, duquesa de Aquitania (Châtellerault, Vienne, Francia, c. 1103, - marzo de 1130 en Talmont) fue la madre de Eleanor de Aquitania, posiblemente la mujer más poderosa de Europa de su generación [cita requerida].
Aenor era hija del vizconde Aimery I de Châttellerault y su esposa, Dangereuse de L 'Isle Bouchard (m. 1151). Aenor se casó con William X de Aquitania, el hijo del amante de su madre, y tuvo tres hijos con él:
Leonor de Aquitania, duquesa de Aquitania y esposa de Luis VII de Francia y Enrique II de Inglaterra. Petronilla de Aquitania, esposa de Raoul I, conde de Vermandois. William Aigret (quien murió a la edad de cuatro años) El condado "Châtelherault" más tarde se convirtió en un título perteneciente a los duques de Hamilton.
Aénor de Châtellerault, duquesa de Aquitania (Châtellerault, Vienne, Francia, c. 1103, - marzo de 1130 en Talmont) fue la madre de Eleanor de Aquitania, posiblemente la mujer más poderosa de Europa de su generación [cita requerida].
Aenor era hija del vizconde Aimery I de Châttellerault y su esposa, Dangereuse de L 'Isle Bouchard (m. 1151). Aenor se casó con William X de Aquitania, el hijo del amante de su madre, y tuvo tres hijos con él:
* Leonor de Aquitania, duquesa de Aquitania y esposa de Luis VII de Francia y Enrique II de Inglaterra. * Petronilla de Aquitania, esposa de Raoul I, Conde de Vermandois. * William Aigret (quien murió a la edad de cuatro años)
El condado "Châtelherault" más tarde se convirtió en un título perteneciente a los duques de Hamilton.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aenor_de_Ch%C3%A2tellerault y en francés; http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/A%C3%A9nor_de_Ch%C3%A2tellerault Aénor de Châtellerault, duquesa de Aquitania (Châtellerault, Vienne, Francia, c. 1103, - marzo de 1130 en Talmont) fue la madre de Eleanor de Aquitania, posiblemente la mujer más poderosa en Europa de su generación [cita requerida].
Aenor era hija del vizconde Aimery I de Châttellerault y su esposa, Dangereuse de L 'Isle Bouchard (m. 1151). Aenor se casó con William X de Aquitania, el hijo del amante de su madre, y tuvo tres hijos con él:
* Leonor de Aquitania, duquesa de Aquitania y esposa de Luis VII de Francia y Enrique II de Inglaterra. * Petronilla de Aquitania, esposa de Raoul I, Conde de Vermandois. * William Aigret (quien murió a la edad de cuatro años con su madre en Talmont)
El condado "Châtelherault" más tarde se convirtió en un título perteneciente a los duques de Hamilton.
Aénor de Châtellerault, duquesa de Aquitania (Châtellerault, Vienne, Francia, c. 1103, - marzo de 1130 en Talmont) fue la madre de Eleanor de Aquitania, posiblemente la mujer más poderosa de Europa de su generación [cita requerida].
Aenor era hija del vizconde Aimery I de Châttellerault y su esposa, Dangereuse de L 'Isle Bouchard (m. 1151). Aenor se casó con William X de Aquitania, el hijo del amante de su madre, y tuvo tres hijos con él:
Leonor de Aquitania, duquesa de Aquitania y esposa de Luis VII de Francia y Enrique II de Inglaterra. Petronilla de Aquitania, esposa de Raoul I, conde de Vermandois. William Aigret (quien murió a la edad de cuatro años con su madre en Talmont) El condado "Châtelherault" más tarde se convirtió en un título perteneciente a los duques de Hamilton.
[editar] Fuentes Genealogía [editar] Enlaces Genealogía de Aenor de Châtellerault Familia ancestral de Aenor de Châtellerault
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aenor_de_Ch%C3%A2tellerault
Aenor de Châtellerault, duquesa de Aquitania (Châtellerault, Vienne, Francia, c. 1103, - marzo de 1130 en Talmont) fue la madre de Leonor de Aquitania, posiblemente la mujer más poderosa en Europa de su generación.
Aenor era hija del vizconde Aimery I de Châttellerault y su esposa, Dangereuse de L 'Isle Bouchard (m. 1151). Aenor se casó con William X de Aquitania, el hijo del amante de su madre, y tuvo tres hijos con él:
Leonor de Aquitania, duquesa de Aquitania y esposa de Luis VII de Francia y Enrique II de Inglaterra. Petronilla de Aquitania, esposa de Raoul I, conde de Vermandois. William Aigret (quien murió a la edad de cuatro años) El condado "Châtelherault" más tarde se convirtió en un título perteneciente a los duques de Hamilton.
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aenor_de_Ch%C3%A2tellerault Aenor de Châtellerault De Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre Saltar a navegación, búsqueda
Aénor de Châtellerault, duquesa de Aquitania (Châtellerault, Vienne, Francia, c. 1103, - marzo de 1130 en Talmont) fue la madre de Eleanor de Aquitania, posiblemente la mujer más poderosa de Europa de su generación [cita requerida].
Aenor era hija del vizconde Aimery I de Châttellerault y su esposa, Dangereuse de L 'Isle Bouchard (m. 1151). Aenor se casó con William X de Aquitania, el hijo del amante de su madre, y tuvo tres hijos con él:
* Leonor de Aquitania, duquesa de Aquitania y esposa de Luis VII de Francia y Enrique II de Inglaterra. * Petronilla de Aquitania, esposa de Raoul I, Conde de Vermandois. * William Aigret (quien murió a la edad de cuatro años con su madre en Talmont)
El condado "Châtelherault" más tarde se convirtió en un título perteneciente a los duques de Hamilton. [editar] Fuentes
* Genealogía
[editar] Enlaces
* Genealogía de Aenor de Châtellerault * Familia ancestral de Aenor de Châtellerault
Aenor de Châtellerault De Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre Aénor de Châtellerault, duquesa de Aquitania (Châtellerault, Vienne, Francia, c. 1103, - marzo de 1130 en Talmont) fue la madre de Eleanor de Aquitania, posiblemente la mujer más poderosa de Europa. generación [cita requerida]. Aenor era hija del vizconde Aimery I de Châttellerault y su esposa, Dangereuse de L 'Isle Bouchard (m. 1151). Aenor se casó con William X de Aquitania, el hijo del amante de su madre, y tuvo tres hijos con él: Leonor de Aquitania, duquesa de Aquitania y esposa de ambos, Luis VII de Francia y Enrique II de Inglaterra. Petronilla de Aquitania, esposa de Raoul I, conde de Vermandois. William Aigret (quien murió a la edad de cuatro años) El condado "Châtelherault" más tarde se convirtió en un título perteneciente a los duques de Hamilton.
BIOGRAFÍA: Notas generales: LIBROS Eleanor de Aquitania la Madre Reina, Desmond Seward, 1978, Dorset Press, p13: "[Eleanor de Aquitania] era la hija del futuro William X de Aquitania y su esposa Aenor de Chatellerault ..." p18 : "Se sabe muy poco de la madre de Eleanor, Aenor. Era la hija del vizconde de Chatellerault y su esposa Dangerosa, concubina de William IX, la Maubergeonne'. Aenor had three children: William Aigret (who died when still a boy), Eleanor of Aquitaine and Petronilla (who is sometimes called Aelith). There is a whimsical legend that the name Eleanor- in Provencal, Alienor ', se deriva del juego de palabras latino Alia Aenor', ie Another Aenor'. La duquesa Aenor parece haber tenido obtuvo el nombramiento de su tío como obispo de Poitiers, tal vez porque era partidario de Anacleto, y probablemente fue excomulgada con su esposo como adherente del antipapa. El otro detalle para sobrevivir es que murió en Talmont, alrededor del año 1130, cuando Eleanor tenía solo ocho años."
Aénor de Châtellerault, duquesa de Aquitania, se casó con William X de Aquitania, hijo del amante de su madre, y tuvo tres hijos con él, incluido nuestro antepasado Eleanor.
Aenor de Châtellerault, duquesa de Aquitania (Châtellerault, Vienne, Francia, c. 1103, - marzo de 1130 en Talmont) fue la madre de Leonor de Aquitania, posiblemente la mujer más poderosa en Europa de su generación.
Aenor era hija del vizconde Aimery I de Châttellerault y su esposa, Dangereuse de L 'Isle Bouchard (m. 1151). Aenor se casó con William X de Aquitania, el hijo del amante de su madre, y tuvo tres hijos con él:
Leonor de Aquitania, duquesa de Aquitania y esposa de Luis VII de Francia y Enrique II de Inglaterra. Petronilla de Aquitania, esposa de Raoul I, conde de Vermandois. William Aigret (quien murió a la edad de cuatro años) El condado "Châtelherault" más tarde se convirtió en un título perteneciente a los duques de Hamilton.
Aénor de Châtellerault, duquesa de Aquitania (Châtellerault, Vienne, Francia, c. 1103, - marzo de 1130 en Talmont) fue la madre de Eleanor de Aquitania, posiblemente la mujer más poderosa de Europa de su generación [cita requerida].
Aenor era hija del vizconde Aimery I de Châttellerault y su esposa, Dangereuse de L 'Isle Bouchard (m. 1151). Aenor se casó con William X de Aquitania, el hijo del amante de su madre, y tuvo tres hijos con él:
* Leonor de Aquitania, duquesa de Aquitania y esposa de Luis VII de Francia y Enrique II de Inglaterra. * Petronilla de Aquitania, esposa de Raoul I, Conde de Vermandois. * William Aigret (quien murió a la edad de cuatro años con su madre en Talmont)
El condado "Châtelherault" más tarde se convirtió en un título perteneciente a los duques de Hamilton. [editar] Fuentes
* Genealogía
[editar] Enlaces
* Genealogía de Aenor de Châtellerault * Familia ancestral de Aenor de Châtellerault
Aenor de Châtellerault, duquesa de Aquitania (c. 1103, Châtellerault, Vienne, Francia - Talmont, marzo de 1130) fue la madre de Leonor de Aquitania, posiblemente la mujer más poderosa en Europa de su generación.
Aenor era hija del vizconde Aumary Châttellerault y su esposa, Dangereuse de L 'Isle Bouchard (fallecida en 1.151). Aenor se casó con William X de Aquitania, el hijo del amante de su madre, y tuvo tres hijos con él:
Leonor de Aquitania, duquesa de Aquitania y esposa de Luis VII de Francia y Enrique II de Inglaterra. Petronilla de Aquitania, esposa de Raoul I, conde de Vermandois. Willian Aigret (quien murió a la edad de cuatro años) El condado "Châtelherault" más tarde se convirtió en un título perteneciente a los duques de Hamilton.
Nació en 1102 en Châtellerault, Vienne, Francia, y murió en 1130. Era hija de Aimery de Châtellerault y Dangereuse de L'Isle Bouchard. El primer vástago de la dinastía de L'Isle-Bouchard fue Bouchard y nació hacia 865. El primero del linaje de Châtellerault nació hacia 920. Una abuela de Leonor de Châtellerault se llamaba Leonor (Aénor) de Thouars (1050), y una abuela de esta se llamaba Leonor (Aénor) de Blois (996). Leonor (Aénor) de Riviere es la más antigua Aénor y nació en 975. Fue tatarabuela de Dangereuse. El nombre de "Leonor" se hizo popular en España por Leonor de Inglaterra (ver Casa de Anjou), esposa de Alfonso VIII, hija de Enrique II de Inglaterra, nieta de Leonor de Aquitania y biznieta de Leonor de Châtellerault.
El nombre de "Leonor", hecho popular en la Castilla medieval, a partir de 1177 (y ahora, a partir del nacimiento de la infanta Leonor de Borbón Ortíz, el 31-X-2005), conocido del antiguo nombre de la época carolingea , "Aénor". La primera antepasada de Leonor de Inglaterra que lo llevó fue Aénor de Riviere, nacida en 975. Su línea de sucesión hasta la reina castellana es la siguiente:
I. Aénor (Leonor) de Riviere (c.975) (6ª abuela) casó con Bouchard II de L'Isle-Bouchard y tuviero por hijo a II. Hugo de L'Isle-Bouchard (c.995) (5 ° abuelo), que fue padre de III. Inés de L'Isle-Bouchard (1023) (4ª abuela), que casó con Archambaud en Sorel de Bueil y fuero padres de IV. Barthélémy de L'Isle-Bouchard (1049) (tatarabuela), que casó con Gerberga de Blaison y fuero padres de V. Dangereuse (Maubergeonne) de L'Isle-Bouchard (1075/1079) (bisabuela), que casó con Aimery I de Châtellerault y fueron padres de VI. Leonor de Châtellerault de Rochefoucau (1102) (abuela) que casó con Guillermo VIII, duque de Aquitania y fuero padres de VII. Leonor de Aquitania (madre), reina de Inglaterra (1122-1204), que casó con Enrique II de Plantagenet, rey de Inglaterra y fuero padres de VIII. Leonor de Plantagenet, princesa de Ingaleterra y reina de Castilla.
Por la línea de los Châtellerault hubo otras antepasadas de Leonor de Plantaget, princesa de Inglaterra y reina de Castilla, llamadas "Leonor":
I. Aénor (Leonor) de Blois (996) (5ª abuela), hija de Eudes I de Blois y Berta de Borgoña, nieta de Conrado III "el Pacífico", rey de Borgoña y Matilde de Francia (943, hija de Luis IV de Ultramar, rey de Francia, último rey de la dinastía carolingia), casó con Geoffroy II de Thouars y tuviero por hijo a II. Aimery IV de Thouars (1024) (4 ° abuelo), que casó con Arengarde de Mauleon y tuviero por hija a III. Leonor (Aénor) de Thouars (1050) (tatarabuela), que casó con Boson II de Châtellerault y tuviero por hijo a IV. Aimery I de Chatellerault (1075) (bisabuelo) que casó con Dangereuse (Maubergeonne) de L'Isle-Bouchard y fueron padres de V. Leonor de Châtellerault de Rochefoucau (1102) (abuela), como ya hemos dicho, abuela de Leonor de Plantagenet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aenor_de_Ch%C3%A2tellerault
Aénor de Châtellerault, (conocida también como Aénor de Rochefoucauld) duquesa de Aquitania (Châtellerault, Vienne, Francia, c. 1103, - marzo de 1130 en Talmont) fue la madre de Eleanor de Aquitania, posiblemente la mujer más poderosa de Europa de su generación. [cita requerida].
Aenor era hija del vizconde Aimery I de Châttellerault y su esposa, Dangereuse de L 'Isle Bouchard (m. 1151). Aenor se casó con William X de Aquitania, el hijo del amante de su madre, y tuvo tres hijos con él:
* Leonor de Aquitania, duquesa de Aquitania y esposa de Luis VII de Francia y Enrique II de Inglaterra. * Petronilla de Aquitania, esposa de Raoul I, Conde de Vermandois. * William Aigret (quien murió a la edad de cuatro años con su madre en Talmont)
El condado "Châtellerault" más tarde se convirtió en un título perteneciente a los duques de Hamilton.
Aenor de Châtellérault nació alrededor del año 1103 en Châtellérault, Vienne, Francia. Ella era la hija de Aimery I Vizconde de Châtellérault. Aenor de Châtellérault se casó con William X Duque de Aquitania, hijo de Guillermo IX "el Trovador" Duque de Aquitania y Philippa de Toulouse, en 1121. A partir de 1121, su nombre de casada era Aquitania. Aenor de Châtellérault murió en marzo de 1130.
http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~cousin/html/p363.htm#i4621
Ænor de Châtellerault nació después de 1109 en Chatellerault, Poitou, Aquitania, Francia.2 Era hija de Aymeric I, el vizconde de Châtellerault y Dangereuse "Maubergeonne" de l'Isle Bouchard, vicomtesse de Châtellerault.1 Ænor de Châtellerault se casó con Guillaume X "le Toulousain", duque de Guyenne, conde de Poitiers, hijo de Guillaume IX "le Troubadour", duque de Guyenne, conde de Poitiers y Ermengarde d 'Anjou, en 1121; Su 1st.3,1 Ænor de Châtellerault murió después de marzo de 1130.4
Hija de Aimery I de Chatellerault y Maubergeonne l'Isle Bouchard. Se casó con Guillaume X y le dio tres hijos.
Enlaces familiares:
Cónyuge: Guillaume X de Aquitania (1099-1137) Hijos: Reina Leonor de Aquitania (1123-1204) * Aelis Petronille de Aquitania (1125-1151) *
Relación calculada
Entierro: Abbaye de Nieul-sur-l'Autise Nieul-sur-l'Autise Departement de la Vendée Pays de la Loire, Francia
Fuente: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aenor_de_Ch%C3%A2tellerault
Aénor de Châtellerault (también conocida como Aénor de Rochefoucauld) duquesa de Aquitania (nacida en 1103 en Châtellerault, fallecida en marzo de 1130 en Talmont) fue la madre de Eleanor de Aquitania, quien posiblemente se convirtió en la mujer más poderosa de Europa de su generación.
Aenor era hija del vizconde Aimery I, vizconde de Châtellerault y su esposa, Dangereuse de L 'Isle Bouchard (m. 1151). Aenor se casó con William X de Aquitania, el hijo del amante de su madre, y tuvo tres hijos con él:
Leonor de Aquitania, duquesa de Aquitania y esposa de Luis VII de Francia y Enrique II de Inglaterra. Petronilla de Aquitania, esposa de Raoul I, conde de Vermandois. William Aigret (quien murió a la edad de cuatro años con su madre en Talmont-sur-Gironde)
Referencia: Ancestry Genealogy - SmartCopy : 23 de agosto de 2017, 13:28:39 UTC
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English (default) history
http://fmg.ac/Projects/MedLands/AQUITAINE.htm#Eleonoredied1204
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Eleanor of Aquitaine (Aliénor d'Aquitaine in French), Duchess of Aquitaine and Gascony and Countess of Poitou (1122[1] – April 1, 1204) was one of the wealthiest and most powerful women in Europe during the High Middle Ages. She was Queen consort of both France and England in turn and the mother of both King Richard I and King John. She is well known for her involvement in the Second Crusade.
The oldest of three children, Eleanor was the daughter of William X, Duke of Aquitaine, and her mother was Aenor de Châtellerault, the daughter of Aimeric I, Vicomte of Chatellerault. William's and Aenor's marriage had been arranged by his father, William IX of Aquitaine the Troubadour, and her mother, Dangereuse, William IX's long-time mistress. Eleanor was named after her mother (Aenor) and called Aliénor, which means the other Aenor in the langue d'oc (Occitan language), but it became Eléanor in the northern Oil language.
She was reared in one of Europe's most cultured courts, the birthplace of courtly love. By all accounts, Eleanor's father ensured she had the best education possible: she could read, speak Latin, and was well-versed in music and literature. She also enjoyed riding, hawking, and hunting. Eleanor was very outgoing and stubborn. She was regarded as very beautiful during her time; most likely she was red-haired and brown-eyed as her father and grandfather were. She became heiress to Aquitaine (the largest and richest of the provinces in what would become modern France) and 7 other countries, after the death of her brother, William Aigret, at age 4, along with their mother. She had only one other sibling, a younger sister named Aelith in Occitan, but always known by the name of Petronilla.
In 1137, Duke William X set out from Poitiers to Bordeaux, taking his daughters with him. Upon reaching Bordeaux, he left Eleanor and Petronilla in the charge of the Archbishop of Bordeaux, one of the Duke's few loyal vassals, who could be entrusted with the safety of the Duke's daughters. The Duke then set out for the Shrine of Saint James of Compostela in North-western Spain, in the company of other pilgrims; however, on April 9th (Good Friday), 1137 he was stricken with sickness, probably food poisoning. He died that evening, having bequeathed Aquitaine to Eleanor.
Something of a free spirit, Eleanor was not popular with the staid northerners (according to sources, Louis´ mother, Adélaide de Maurienne, thought her flighty and a bad influence) — she was not aided by memories of Queen Constance, the Provencial wife of Robert II, of whom tales of her immodest dress and language were still told with horror,[2].
Her conduct was repeatedly criticized by Church elders (particularly Bernard of Clairvaux and Abbot Suger) as indecorous. The King, however, was madly in love with his beautiful and worldly bride, and granted her every whim, even though her behavior baffled and vexed him to no end. Much money went into beautifying the austere Cite Palace in Paris for Eleanor's sake.
Two lords — Theobald of Blois, son of the Count of Champagne, and Geoffrey of Anjou (brother of Henry, Count of Anjou and Duke of Normandy) — tried to kidnap Eleanor to marry her and claim her lands on Eleanor's way to Poitiers. As soon as she arrived in Poitiers, Eleanor sent envoys to Henry Count of Anjou and Duke of Normandy, asking him to come at once and marry her. On Whit Sunday, May 18, 1152, six weeks after her annulment, Eleanor married Henry 'without the pomp and ceremony that befitted their rank'.[3] She was about 11 years older than he, and related to him more closely than she had been to Louis. Eleanor and Henry were half, third cousins through their common ancestor Ermengarde of Anjou (wife to Robert I, Duke of Burgundy and Geoffrey, Count of Gâtinais); they were also both descendants of Robert II of Normandy. A marriage between Henry and Eleanor's daughter, Marie, had indeed been declared impossible for this very reason. One of Eleanor's rumoured lovers had been Henry's own father, Geoffrey of Anjou, who had advised his son to avoid any involvement with her.
Over the next thirteen years, she bore Henry five sons and three daughters: William, Henry, Richard, Geoffrey, John, Matilda, Eleanor, and Joanna. John Speed, in his 1611 work History of Great Britain, mentions the possibility that Eleanor had a son named Philip, who died young. His sources no longer exist and he alone mentions this birth.[4]
Henry was by no means faithful to his wife and had a reputation for philandering. Their son, William, and Henry's illegitimate son, Geoffrey, were born just months apart. Henry fathered other illegitimate children throughout the marriage. Eleanor appears to have taken an ambivalent attitude towards these affairs: for example, Geoffrey of York, an illegitimate son of Henry and a prostitute named Ykenai, was acknowledged by Henry as his child and raised at Westminster in the care of the Queen.
Eleanor died in 1204 and was entombed in Fontevraud Abbey next to her husband Henry and near son Richard. Her tomb effigy shows her reading a Bible and is decorated with magnificent jewelry. She was the patroness of such literary figures as Wace, Benoît de Sainte-More, and Chrétien de Troyes
Eleanor of Aquitaine (or Aliénor), Duchess of Aquitaine and Gascony (old north Basque country) and Countess of Poitou (1122[1]–1 April 1204) was one of the wealthiest and most powerful women in Europe during the High Middle Ages.
Eleanor was Queen consort of both France (to Louis VII) and England (to Henry II) in turn, and the mother of two kings of England, Richard I and John. She is well known for her participation in the Second Crusade.Eleanor was the oldest of three children of William X, Duke of Aquitaine, and his duchess Aenor de Châtellerault, the daughter of Aimeric I, Vicomte of Chatellerault and countess Dangereuse, who was William IX of Aquitaine the Troubadour's longtime mistress as well as Eleanor's maternal grandmother. Her parents' marriage had been arranged by Dangereuse with her paternal grandfather, the Troubadour. Eleanor was 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 and Eleanor in English.
She was reared in Europe's most cultured court of her time, the birthplace of courtly love. By all accounts, Eleanor's father ensured that she had the best possible education. Although her native tongue was Poitevin, she was taught to read and speak Latin, was well versed in music and literature, and schooled in riding, hawking, and hunting. Eleanor was extroverted, lively, intelligent, and strong willed. She was regarded as a great beauty by her contemporaries, none of whom left a surviving description that includes the color of her hair or eyes. Although the ideal beauty of the time was a silvery blonde with blue eyes, she may have inherited her coloring from her father and grandfather, who were both brown-eyed with copper locks. In the spring of 1130, when Eleanor was eight, her four-year-old brother William Aigret and their mother died at the castle of Talmont, on Aquitaine's Atlantic coast. Eleanor became the heir to her father's domains. Aquitaine was the largest and richest province of France; Poitou and Aquitaine together were almost one-third the size of modern France. Eleanor had only one other legitimate sibling, a younger sister named Aelith but always called Petronilla. Her half brothers, William and Joscelin, were acknowledged by William X as his sons—not as his heirs—and by his daughters as brothers. Later, during the first four years of Henry II's reign, all three siblings joined Eleanor's royal household.
Inheritance and first marriage
In 1137, Duke William X set out from Poitiers to Bordeaux, taking his daughters with him. Upon reaching Bordeaux, he left Eleanor and Petronilla in the charge of the Archbishop of Bordeaux, one of the Duke's few loyal vassals who could be entrusted with the safety of the duke's daughters. The duke then set out for the Shrine of Saint James of Compostela in northwestern Basque country, in the company of other pilgrims; however, on April 9th (Good Friday), 1137 he was stricken with sickness, probably food poisoning. He died that evening, having bequeathed Aquitaine to Eleanor.
Eleanor, about the age of 15, became the Duchess of Aquitaine, and thus the most eligible heiress in Europe. As these were the days when kidnapping an heiress was seen as a viable option for attaining title, William had dictated a will on the very day he died, bequeathing his domains to Eleanor and appointing King Louis VI (nicknamed "the Fat") as her guardian. William requested the king take care of both the lands and the duchess, and find a suitable husband for her. However, until a husband was found, the king had the right to Eleanor's lands. The duke also insisted to his companions that his death be kept a secret until Louis was informed — the men were to journey from Saint James across the Pyrenees as quickly as possible, to call at Bordeaux to notify the archbishop, and then to make all speed to Paris, to inform the king.
The King of France himself was also gravely ill at that time, suffering "a flux of the bowels" (dysentery) from which he seemed unlikely to recover. Despite his immense obesity and impending mortality, however, Louis the Fat remained clear-minded. To his concerns regarding his new heir, Prince Louis (the former heir, Philip, having died from a riding accident), was added joy over the death of one of his most cantankerous vassals — and the availability of the best Duchy in France. Presenting a solemn and dignified manner to the grieving Aquitainian messengers, upon their departure he became overjoyed, stammering in delight.
Rather than act as guardian to the duchess and duchy, he decided, he would marry the duchess to his heir and bring Aquitaine under the French crown, thereby greatly increasing the power and prominence of France and the Capets. Within hours, then, Louis had arranged for his son, Prince Louis, to be married to Eleanor, with Abbot Suger in charge of the wedding arrangements. Prince Louis was sent to Bordeaux with an escort of 500 knights, as well as Abbot Suger, Count Theobald II of Champagne and Count Ralph of Vermandois.
Louis arrived in Bordeaux on 11 July, and the next day, accompanied by the Archbishop of Bordeaux, Geoffrey de Lauroux (in whose keeping Eleanor and Petronilla had been left), the couple were married in the Cathedral of Saint-André in Bordeaux. It was a magnificent ceremony with almost a thousand guests. However, there was a catch: the land would remain independent of France and Eleanor's oldest son would be both King of France and Duke of Aquitaine. Thus, her holdings would not be merged with France until the next generation. She gave Louis a wedding present that is still in existence, a rock crystal vase, currently on display at the Louvre.
Something of a free spirit, Eleanor was not popular with the staid northerners (according to sources, Louis´ mother, Adélaide de Maurienne, thought her flighty and a bad influence) — she was not aided by memories of Queen Constance, the Provencial wife of Robert II, tales of whose immodest dress and language were still told with horror.[2]
Her conduct was repeatedly criticized by Church elders (particularly Bernard of Clairvaux and Abbot Suger) as indecorous. The King, however, was madly in love with his beautiful and worldly bride and granted her every whim, even though her behavior baffled and vexed him to no end. Much money went into beautifying the austere Cite Palace in Paris for Eleanor's sake.[citation needed]
[edit] Conflict
Though Louis was a pious man he soon came into violent conflict with Pope Innocent II. In 1141, the archbishopric of Bourges became vacant, and the king put forward as a candidate one of his chancellors, Cadurc, whilst vetoing the one suitable candidate, Pierre de la Chatre, who was promptly elected by the canons of Bourges and consecrated by the Pope. Louis accordingly bolted the gates of Bourges against the new Bishop; the Pope, recalling William X's similar attempts to exile Innocent's supporters from Poitou and replace them with priests loyal to himself, blamed Eleanor, saying that Louis was only a child and should be taught manners. Outraged, Louis swore upon relics that so long as he lived Pierre should never enter Bourges. This brought the interdict upon the king's lands. Pierre de la Chatre was given refuge by Count Theobald II of Champagne.
Louis became involved in a war with Count Theobald of Champagne by permitting Raoul I of Vermandois and seneschal of France, to repudiate his wife (Leonora), Theobald's niece, and to marry Petronilla of Aquitaine, Eleanor's sister. Eleanor urged Louis to support her sister's illegitimate marriage to Raoul of Vermandois. Champagne had also offended Louis by siding with the pope in the dispute over Bourges. The war lasted two years (1142–44) and ended with the occupation of Champagne by the royal army. Louis was personally involved in the assault and burning of the town of Vitry. More than a thousand people (1300, some say) who had sought refuge in the church died in the flames.
Horrified, and desiring an end to the war, Louis attempted to make peace with Theobald in exchange for supporting the lift of the interdict on Raoul and Petronilla. This was duly lifted for long enough to allow Theobald's lands to be restored; it was then lowered once more when Raoul refused to repudiate Petronilla, prompting Louis to return to the Champagne and ravage it once more.
In June of 1144, the King and Queen visited the newly built cathedral at Saint-Denis. Whilst there, the Queen met with Bernard of Clairvaux, demanding that he have the excommunication of Petronilla and Raoul lifted through his influence on the Pope, in exchange for which King Louis would make concessions in Champagne, and recognise Pierre de la Chatre as archbishop of Bourges. Dismayed at her attitude, Bernard scolded her for her lack of penitence and her interference in matters of state. In response, Eleanor broke down, and meekly excused her behaviour, claiming to be embittered through her lack of children. In response to this, Bernard became more kindly towards her: "My child, seek those things which make for peace. Cease to stir up the King against the Church, and urge upon him a better course of action. If you will promise to do this, I in return promise to entreat the merciful Lord to grant you offspring."
In a matter of weeks, peace had returned to France: Theobald's provinces had been returned, and Pierre de la Chatre was installed as Archbishop of Bourges. And in 1145, Eleanor gave birth to a daughter, Marie.
Louis, however still burned with guilt over the massacre at Vitry-le-Brûlé, and desired to make a Pilgrimage to the Holy Land in order to atone for his sins. Fortuitously for him, in the Autumn of 1145, Pope Eugenius requested Louis to lead a Crusade to the Middle East, to rescue the Frankish Kingdoms there from disaster. Accordingly, Louis declared on Christmas Day 1145 at Bourges his intention of going on a crusade.
[edit] Crusade
Eleanor of Aquitaine took up the crusade during a sermon preached by Bernard of Clairvaux. She was followed by some of her royal ladies-in-waiting as well as 300 non-noble vassals. She insisted on taking part in the Crusades as the feudal leader of the soldiers from her duchy. The story that she and her ladies dressed as Amazons is disputed by serious historians; however, her testimonial launch of the Second Crusade from Vézelay, the rumored location of Mary Magdalene´s burial, dramatically emphasized the role of women in the campaign.
The Crusade itself achieved little. Louis was a weak and ineffectual military leader with no concept of maintaining troop discipline or morale, or of making informed and logical tactical decisions. In eastern Europe, the French army was at times hindered by Manuel I Comnenus, the Byzantine Emperor, who feared that it would jeopardize the tenuous safety of his empire; however, during their 3-week stay at Constantinople, Louis was fêted and Eleanor was much admired. She is compared with Penthesilea, mythical queen of the Amazons, by the Greek historian Nicetas Choniates; he adds that she gained the epithet chrysopous (golden-foot) from the cloth of gold that decorated and fringed her robe. Louis and Eleanor stayed in the Philopation palace, just outside the city walls.
From the moment the Crusaders entered Asia Minor, the Crusade went badly. The King and Queen were optimistic — the Byzantine Emperor had told them that the German Emperor Conrad had won a great victory against a Turkish army (where in fact the German army had been massacred), and the company was still eating well. However, whilst camping near Nicea, the remnants of the German army, including a dazed and sick Emperor Conrad, began to straggle into the French camp, bringing news of their disaster. The French, with what remained of the Germans, then began to march in increasingly disorganized fashion, towards Antioch. Their spirits were buoyed on Christmas Eve — when they chose to camp in the lush Dercervian valley near Ephesus, they were ambushed by a Turkish detachment; the French proceeded to slaughter this detachment and appropriate their camp.
Louis then decided to directly cross the Phrygian mountains, in the hope of speeding his approach to take refuge with Eleanor's uncle Raymond in Antioch. As they ascended the mountains, however, the army and the King and Queen were left horrified by the unburied corpses of the previously slaughtered German army.
On the day set for the crossing of Mount Cadmos, Louis chose to take charge of the rear of the column, where the unarmed pilgrims and the baggage trains marched. The vanguard, with which Queen Eleanor marched, was commanded by her Aquitainian vassal, Geoffrey de Rancon; this, being unencumbered by baggage, managed to reach the summit of Cadmos, where de Rancon had been ordered to make camp for the night. De Rancon however chose to march further, deciding in concert with the Count of Maurienne (Louis´ uncle) that a nearby plateau would make a better camp: such disobedience was reportedly common in the army, due to the lack of command from the King.
Accordingly, by midafternoon, the rear of the column — believing the day's march to be nearly at an end — was dawdling; this resulted in the army becoming divided, with some having already crossed the summit and others still approaching it. It was at this point that the Turks, who had been following and feinting for many days, seized their opportunity and attacked those who had not yet crossed the summit. The Turks, having seized the summit of the mountain, and the French (both soldiers and pilgrims) having been taken by surprise, there was little hope of escape: those who tried were caught and killed, and many men, horses and baggage were cast into the canyon below the ridge. William of Tyre placed the blame for this disaster firmly on the baggage — which was considered to have belonged largely to the women.
The King, ironically, was saved by his lack of authority — having scorned a King's apparel in favour of a simple solder's tunic, he escaped notice (unlike his bodyguards, whose skulls were brutally smashed and limbs severed). He reportedly "nimbly and bravely scaled a rock by making use of some tree roots which God had provided for his safety," and managed to survive the attack. Others were not so fortunate: "No aid came from Heaven, except that night fell."[citation needed]
The official scapegoat for the disaster was Geoffrey de Rancon, who had made the decision to continue, and it was suggested that he be hanged (a suggestion which the King ignored). Since he was Eleanor's vassal, many believed that it was she who had been ultimately responsible for the change in plan, and thus the massacre. This did nothing for her popularity in Christendom — as did the blame affixed to her baggage, and the fact that her Aquitainian soldiers had marched at the front, and thus were not involved in the fight. Eleanor's reputation was further sullied by her supposed affair with her uncle Raymond of Poitiers, Prince of Antioch.
While in the eastern Mediterranean, Eleanor learned about maritime conventions developing there, which were the beginnings of what would become admiralty law. She introduced those conventions in her own lands, on the island of Oleron in 1160 and later in England as well. She was also instrumental in developing trade agreements with Constantinople and ports of trade in the Holy Lands.
[edit] Annulment of first marriage
Even before the Crusade, Eleanor and Louis were becoming estranged. The city of Antioch had been annexed by Bohemond of Hauteville in the First Crusade, and it was now ruled by Eleanor's flamboyant uncle, Raymond of Antioch, who had gained the principality by marrying its reigning Princess, Constance of Antioch. Clearly, Eleanor supported his desire to re-capture the nearby County of Edessa, the cause of the Crusade; in addition, having been close to him in their youth, she now showed excessive affection towards her uncle — whilst many historians today dismiss this as familial affection (noting their early friendship, and his similarity to her father and grandfather), most at the time firmly believed the two to be involved in an incestuous and adulterous affair. Louis was directed by the Church to visit Jerusalem instead. When Eleanor declared her intention to stand with Raymond and the Aquitaine forces, Louis had her brought out by force. His long march to Jerusalem and back north debilitated his army, but her imprisonment disheartened her knights, and the divided Crusade armies could not overcome the Muslim forces. For reasons unknown, likely the Germans' insistence on conquest, the Crusade leaders targeted Damascus, an ally until the attack. Failing in this attempt, they retired to Jerusalem, and then home.
Home, however, was not easily reached. The royal couple, on separate ships due to their disagreements, were first attacked in May by Byzantine ships attempting to capture both (in order to take them to Byzantium, according to the orders of the Emperor). Although they escaped this predicament unharmed, stormy weather served to drive Eleanor's ship far to the south (to the Barbary Coast), and to similarly lose her husband. Neither was heard of for over two months: at which point, in mid-July, Eleanor's ship finally reached Palermo in Sicily, where she discovered that she and her husband had both been given up for dead. The King still lost, she was given shelter and food by servants of King Roger of Sicily, until the King eventually reached Calabria, and she set out to meet him there. Later, at King Roger's court in Potenza, she learnt of the death of her uncle Raymond; this appears to have forced a change of plans, for instead of returning to France from Marseilles, they instead sought the Pope in Tusculum, where he had been driven five months before by a Roman revolt.
Pope Eugenius III did not, as Eleanor had hoped, grant a divorce; instead, he attempted to reconcile Eleanor and Louis, confirming the legality of their marriage, and proclaiming that no word could be spoken against it, and that it might not be dissolved under any pretext. Eventually, he arranged events so that Eleanor had no choice but to sleep with Louis in a bed specially prepared by the Pope. Thus was conceived their second child — not a son, but another daughter, Alix of France. The marriage was now doomed. Still without a son and in danger of being left with no male heir, facing substantial opposition to Eleanor from many of his barons and her own desire for divorce, Louis had no choice but to bow to the inevitable. On March 11, 1152, they met at the royal castle of Beaugency to dissolve the marriage. Archbishop Hugh Sens, Primate of France, presided, and Louis and Eleanor were both present, as were the Archbishops of Bordeaux and Rouen. Archbishop Samson of Reims acted for Eleanor. On March 21 the four archbishops, with the approval of Pope Eugenius, granted an annulment due to consanguinity within the fourth degree (Eleanor and Louis were third cousins, once removed and shared common ancestry with Robert II of France). Their two daughters were declared legitimate and custody of them awarded to King Louis. Archbishop Sampson received assurances from Louis that Eleanor's lands would be restored to her.
[edit] Marriage to Henry II of England Henry II of England Henry II of England The marriage of Eleanor of Aquitaine to Henry of Anjou and Henry's subsequent succession to the throne of England created an empire. The marriage of Eleanor of Aquitaine to Henry of Anjou and Henry's subsequent succession to the throne of England created an empire.
Two lords — Theobald of Blois, son of the Count of Champagne, and Geoffrey of Anjou (brother of Henry, Count of Anjou and Duke of Normandy) — tried to kidnap Eleanor to marry her and claim her lands on Eleanor's way to Poitiers. As soon as she arrived in Poitiers, Eleanor sent envoys to Henry Count of Anjou and Duke of Normandy, asking him to come at once and marry her. On Whit Sunday, May 18, 1152, six weeks after her annulment, Eleanor married Henry 'without the pomp and ceremony that befitted their rank'.[3] She was about 11 years older than he, and related to him more closely than she had been to Louis. Eleanor and Henry were half, third cousins through their common ancestor Ermengarde of Anjou (wife to Robert I, Duke of Burgundy and Geoffrey, Count of Gâtinais); they were also both descendants of Robert II of Normandy. A marriage between Henry and Eleanor's daughter, Marie, had indeed been declared impossible for this very reason. One of Eleanor's rumoured lovers had been Henry's own father, Geoffrey of Anjou, who had advised his son to avoid any involvement with her.
Over the next thirteen years, she bore Henry five sons and three daughters: William, Henry, Richard, Geoffrey, John, Matilda, Eleanor, and Joanna. John Speed, in his 1611 work History of Great Britain, mentions the possibility that Eleanor had a son named Philip, who died young. His sources no longer exist and he alone mentions this birth.[4]
Henry was by no means faithful to his wife and had a reputation for philandering. Their son, William, and Henry's illegitimate son, Geoffrey, were born just months apart. Henry fathered other illegitimate children throughout the marriage. Eleanor appears to have taken an ambivalent attitude towards these affairs: for example, Geoffrey of York, an illegitimate son of Henry and a prostitute named Ykenai, was acknowledged by Henry as his child and raised at Westminster in the care of the Queen.
The period between Henry's accession and the birth of Eleanor's youngest son was turbulent: Aquitaine, as was the norm, defied the authority of Henry as Eleanor's husband; attempts to claim Toulouse, the rightful inheritance of Eleanor's grandmother and father, were made, ending in failure; the news of Louis of France's widowhood and remarriage was followed by the marriage of Henry's son (young Henry) to Louis' daughter Marguerite; and, most climactically, the feud between the King and Thomas à Becket, his Chancellor, and later his Archbishop of Canterbury. Little is known of Eleanor's involvement in these events. By late 1166, and the birth of her final child, however, Henry's notorious affair with Rosamund Clifford had become known, and her marriage to Henry appears to have become terminally strained.
1167 saw the marriage of Eleanor's third daughter, Matilda, to Henry the Lion of Saxony; Eleanor remained in England with her daughter for the year prior to Matilda's departure to Normandy in September. Afterwards, Eleanor proceeded to gather together her movable possessions in England and transport them on several ships in December to Argentan. At the royal court, celebrated there that Christmas, she appears to have agreed to a separation from Henry. Certainly, she left for her own city of Poitiers immediately after Christmas. Henry did not stop her; on the contrary, he and his army personally escorted her there, before attacking a castle belonging to the rebellious Lusignan family. Henry then went about his own business outside Aquitaine, leaving Earl Patrick (his regional military commander) as her protective custodian. When Patrick was killed in a skirmish, Eleanor (who proceeded to ransom his captured nephew, the young William Marshal), was left in control of her inheritance.
[edit] Myth of the "Court of Love" in Poitiers This section does not cite any references or sources. (April 2008) Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed.
Of all her influence on culture, Eleanor's time in Poitier was perhaps the most critical and yet the least is known of what happened. Away from Henry, Eleanor was able to develop her own court in Poitier. At a small cathedral still stands the stained glass commemorating Eleanor and Henry with a family tree growing from their prayers. Her court style was to encourage the cult of courtly love. Apparently, however, both King and church expunged the records of the actions and judgments taken under her authority. A small fragment of the court letters, codes and practices were written by Andreas Capellanus. It appears that one activity in the court style was for 12 men and women to hear cases of love between individuals. This forum was the forerunner of the jury system that she would implement in England after releasing all prisoners upon Henry's death. The proceedings of the court are speculative, though the legends of the court have endured.
Henry concentrated on controlling his increasingly-large empire, badgering Eleanor's subjects in attempts to control her patrimony of Aquitaine and her court at Poitiers. Straining all bounds of civility, Henry caused Archbishop Thomas Becket to be murdered at the altar of the church in 1170 (though there is considerable debate as to whether it was truly Henry's intent to be permanently rid of his archbishop). This aroused Eleanor's horror and contempt, along with most of Europe's.
Eleanor's marriage to Henry was tumultuous and argumentative. However, despite his mistresses and Eleanor's imprisonment, Eleanor once remarked, "My marriage to Henry was a much happier one than my marriage to Louis." Eleanor and Henry did deeply love and respect one another and they did all they could to keep their family together as a whole. In their years together they raised their children and saw their grandchildren grow up. Eleanor and Henry, despite the rebellion of their children, and the times in which they lived, lived out their years with relative happiness.
[edit] Revolt and capture
In March 1173, aggrieved at his lack of power and egged on by his father's enemies, the younger Henry launched the Revolt of 1173–1174. He fled to Paris. From there 'the younger Henry, devising evil against his father from every side by the advice of the French King, went secretly into Aquitaine where his two youthful brothers, Richard and Geoffrey, were living with their mother, and with her connivance, so it is said, he incited them to join him'.[5] The Queen sent her younger sons to France 'to join with him against their father the King'.[6] Once her sons had left for Paris, Eleanor encouraged the lords of the south to rise up and support them.[7] Sometime between the end of March and the beginning of May, Eleanor left Poitiers to follow her sons to Paris but was arrested on the way and sent to the King in Rouen. The King did not announce the arrest publicly. For the next year, her whereabouts are unknown. On July 8, 1174, Henry took ship for England from Barfleur. He brought Eleanor on the ship. As soon as they disembarked at Southampton, Eleanor was taken away either to Winchester Castle or Sarum Castle and held there.
[edit] Years of imprisonment 1173–1189
Eleanor was imprisoned for the next sixteen years, much of the time in various locations in England. During her imprisonment, Eleanor had become more and more distant with her sons, especially Richard (who had always been her favorite). 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 triangular castle which is believed to have been one of her prisons.
Henry lost his great love, Rosamund Clifford, in 1176. He had met her in 1166 and began the liaison in 1173, supposedly contemplating divorce from Eleanor. Rosamund/Rosamond was one among Henry's many mistresses, but although he treated earlier liaisons discreetly, he flaunted Rosamond. This notorious affair caused a monkish scribe with a gift for Latin to transcribe Rosamond's name to "Rosa Immundi", or "Rose of Unchastity". Likely, Rosamond was one weapon in Henry's efforts to provoke Eleanor into seeking an annulment (this flared in October 1175). Had she done so, Henry might have appointed Eleanor abbess of Fontevrault (Fontevraud), requiring her to take a vow of poverty, thereby releasing her titles and nearly half their empire to him, but Eleanor was much too wily to be provoked into this. Nevertheless, rumours persisted, perhaps assisted by Henry's camp, that Eleanor had poisoned Rosamund. No one knows what Henry believed, but he did donate much money to the Godstow Nunnery in which Rosamund was buried.
In 1183, Young Henry tried again. In debt and refused control of Normandy, he tried to ambush his father at Limoges. He was joined by troops sent by his brother Geoffrey and Philip II of France. Henry's troops besieged the town, forcing his son to flee. Henry the Young wandered aimlessly through Aquitaine until he caught dysentery. On Saturday, 11 June 1183, the Young King realized he was dying and was overcome with remorse for his sins. When his father's ring was sent to him, he begged that his father would show mercy to his mother, and that all his companions would plead with Henry to set her free. The King sent Thomas of Earley, Archdeacon of Wells, to break the news to Eleanor at Sarum.[8] Eleanor had had a dream in which she foresaw her son Henry's death. In 1193 she would tell Pope Celestine III that she was tortured by his memory.
In 1183, Philip of France claimed that certain properties in Normandy belonged to The Young Queen but Henry insisted that they had once belonged to Eleanor and would revert to her upon her son's death. For this reason Henry summoned Eleanor to Normandy in the late summer of 1183. She stayed in Normandy for six months. This was the beginning of a period of greater freedom for the still supervised Eleanor. Eleanor went back to England probably early in 1184.[7] Over the next few years Eleanor often traveled with her husband and was sometimes associated with him in the government of the realm, but still had a custodian so that she was not free.
[edit] Regent of England
Upon Henry's death on July 6, 1189, just days after suffering an injury from a jousting match, Richard was his undisputed heir. One of his first acts as king was to send William the Marshal to England with orders to release Eleanor from prison, but her custodians had already released her when he demanded this.[9] Eleanor rode to Westminster and received the oaths of fealty from many lords and prelates on behalf of the King. She ruled England in Richard's name, signing herself as 'Eleanor, by the grace of God, Queen of England'. On August 13, 1189, Richard sailed from Barfleur to Portsmouth, and was received with enthusiasm. She ruled England as regent while Richard went off on the Third Crusade. She personally negotiated his ransom by going to Germany.
[edit] Later life
Eleanor survived Richard and lived well into the reign of her youngest son King John. In 1199, under the terms of a truce between King Philip II of France and King John, it was agreed that Philip's twelve-year-old heir Louis would be married to one of John's nieces of Castile. John deputed Eleanor to travel to Castile to select one of the princesses. Now 77, Eleanor set out from Poitiers. Just outside Poitiers she was ambushed and held captive by Hugh IX of Lusignan, which had long ago been sold by his forebears to Henry II. Eleanor secured her freedom by agreeing to his demands and journeyed south, crossed the Pyrenees, and travelled through the Kingdoms of Navarre and Castile, arriving before the end of January, 1200.
King Alfonso VIII and Queen Leonora of Castile had two remaining unmarried daughters, Urraca and Blanche. Eleanor selected the younger daughter, Blanche. She stayed for two months at the Castilian court. Late in March, Eleanor and her granddaughter Blanche journeyed back across the Pyrenees. When she was at Bordeaux where she celebrated Easter, the famous warrior Mercadier came to her and it was decided that he would escort the Queen and Princess north. "On the second day in Easter week, he was slain in the city by a man-at-arms in the service of Brandin",[6] a rival mercenary captain. This tragedy was too much for the elderly Queen, who was fatigued and unable to continue to Normandy. She and Blanche rode in easy stages to the valley of the Loire, and she entrusted Blanche to the Archbishop of Bordeaux, who took over as her escort. The exhausted Eleanor went to Fontevrault, where she remained. In early summer, Eleanor was ill and John visited her at Fontevrault.
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 Fontevrault for her capital Poitiers to prevent her grandson Arthur, John's enemy, from taking control. Arthur learned of her whereabouts and besieged her in the castle of Mirabeau. As soon as John heard of this he marched south, overcame the besiegers and captured Arthur. Eleanor then returned to Fontevrault where she took the veil as a nun. By the time of her death she had outlived all of her children except for King John and Queen Leonora.
Eleanor died in 1204 and was entombed in Fontevraud Abbey next to her husband Henry and her son Richard. Her tomb effigy shows her reading a Bible and is decorated with magnificent jewelry. She was the patroness of such literary figures as Wace, Benoît de Sainte-More, and Chrétien de Troyes.
[edit] In historical fiction
Eleanor and Henry are the main characters in James Goldman's play The Lion in Winter, which was made into a film starring Peter O'Toole and Katharine Hepburn, and remade for television in 2003 with Patrick Stewart and Glenn Close. The depiction of her in the play and film Becket contains historical inaccuracies, as acknowledged by the author, Jean Anouilh. In 2004, Catherine Muschamp's one-woman play, Mother of the Pride, toured the UK with Eileen Page in the title role. In 2005, Chapelle Jaffe played the same part in Toronto.
The character "Queen Elinor" appears in William Shakespeare's King John, along with other members of the family.
Eleanor, Duchesse d'Aquitaine was born between 1120 and 1122 at Château de Belin, Guienne, France.4 She was the daughter of Guillaume X, Duc d'Aquitaine and Eleanor Châtellérault de Rochefoucauld.2,3 She married, firstly, Louis VII, Roi de France, son of Louis VI, Roi de France and Adelaide di Savoia, on 25 July 1137 at Bordeaux Cathedral, Bordeaux, Dauphine, France.4 She and Louis VII, Roi de France were divorced in 1152 on the grounds of consanguity.5 She married, secondly, Henry II 'Curtmantle' d'Anjou, King of England, son of Geoffrey V Plantagenet, Comte d'Anjou et Maine and Matilda 'the Empress' of England, on 18 May 1152 at Bordeaux Cathedral, Bordeaux, Dauphine, France.4 She was also reported to have been married on 14 May 1152. She died on 1 April 1204 at Fontevraud Abbey, Fontevraud, France.5 She was buried at Fontevraud Abbey, Fontevraud, France.5
In a way Eleanor of Aquitaine's life had barely begun after she returned to France from her travels on the Second Crusade. She lived until her eighties, becoming one of the great political and wealthy powers of medieval Europe. Eleanor was wealthy because she was heiress of the duchy of Aquitaine, one of the greatest fiefs in Europe. Aquitaine was like a separate nation with lands extending in southwestern France from the river Loire to the Pyrenees. Eleanor's court was a trend setter in the medieval world, known for its sophistication and luxury. Heavily influenced by the Spanish courts of the Moors, it gave patronage to poets and encouraged the art of the troubadours, some of whom were believed to be in love with the beautiful Eleanor. One story is that in her effort to shed her rough knights of their unruly ways, she made up a mock trial in which the court ladies sat on an elevated platform and judged the knights, who read poems of homage to women and acted out proper courting techniques. The men wore fancy clothes - flowing sleeves, pointed shoes - and wore their hair long.
During their adventures on the Second Crusade, it became apparent that her marriage with dour, severe King Louis VII of France was ill matched. The marriage was annulled on a technicality, and Eleanor left her two daughters by him to be raised in the French court. Within a short time Eleanor threw herself into a new marriage, a stormy one to Henry of Anjou, an up and coming prince eleven years younger than she. Their temperaments as well as their wealth in land were well matched; her new husband became Henry II king of England in 1154.
For the next thirteen years Eleanor constantly bore Henry children, five sons and three daughters. (William, Henry, Richard I "the Lionheart", Geoffrey, John "Lackland", Mathilda, Eleanor, and Joan). Richard and John became, in turn, kings of England. Henry was given the title "the young king" by his father, although father Henry still ruled. Through tough fighting and clever alliances, and with a parcel of children, Henry and Eleanor created an impressive empire. As well, Eleanor was an independent ruler in her own right since she had inherited the huge Duchy of Aquitaine and Poitiers from her father when she was 15.
However all was not well between Henry and Eleanor. When her older sons were of age, her estrangement from her husband grew. In 1173 she led her three of her sons in a rebellion against Henry, surprising him with this act of aggression so seemingly unusual for a woman. In her eyes it was justified. After two decades of child bearing, putting up with his infidelities, vehemently disagreeing with some of his decisions, and, worst of all, having to share her independence and power, Eleanor may have hoped that her prize would have been the right to rule Aquitaine with her beloved third son Richard, and without Henry. The rebellion was put down, however, and fifty-year-old Eleanor was imprisoned by Henry in various fortified buildings for the next fifteen years.
In 1189, Henry died. On the accession of her son Richard I to kingship, Eleanor's fortunes rose again. When Richard was fighting in the Holy Land she repeatedly intervened to defend his lands - even against her son John. When he was captured on his way home, she used her considerable influence to help raise the ransom and secure Richard's release. Her relentless work on behalf of her favorite son increased her fame as an extremely able politician.
Eleanor traveled constantly, even in her old age. Running from one end of Europe to another, she often risked her life in her efforts to maintain the loyalty of the English subjects, cement marriage alliances, and manage her army and estates. By this time she had many grandchildren. Possibly one of her wisest acts was to travel to Spain to chose and collect her thirteen year old grand daughter Blanche of Castile to become the bride of Louis VIII of France, the grandson of her first husband Louis VII! Blanche eventually proved a rival to Eleanor in political influence and success as queen of France. Eleanor also, when almost seventy, rode over the Pyrenees to collect her candidate to be Richard's wife, (Berengaria, the daughter of King Sancho the Wise of Navarre). She then traversed the Alps, traveling all the way down the Italian peninsula, to bring Berengaria to Sicily. Berengaria then travelled to Cyprus, where Richard married her at Limossol on May 12, 1191.
Eleanor died in 1204 at her favorite religious house, the abbey of Fontevrault, where she had retreated to find peace during various moments of her life.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleanor_of_Aquitaine
Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine (1122[1]–1 April 1204) was one of the wealthiest and most powerful women in Europe during the High Middle Ages.
Eleanor succeeded her father as Duchess of Aquitaine and Countess of Poitiers at the age of fifteen, and thus became the most eligible bride in Europe. Three months after her accession she married Louis, son and junior co-ruler of her guardian, King Louis VI. As Queen of the Franks, she participated in the unsuccessful Second Crusade. Soon after the Crusade was over, Louis VII and Eleanor agreed to dissolve their marriage, because of Eleanor's own desire for divorce and also because the only children they had were two daughters - Marie, and Alix. The royal marriage was annuled on 11 March, 1152, on the grounds of consanguinity within the fourth degree. Their daughters were declared legitimate and custody of them awarded to Louis, while Eleanor's lands were restored to her.
As soon as she arrived in Poitiers, Eleanor proposed to the eleven years younger Henry, Duke of the Normans. On May 18, 1152, six weeks after the annulment of her first marriage, Eleanor married the Duke of the Normans. On 25 October, 1154 her husband ascended the throne of the Kingdom of England, making Eleanor Queen of the English. Over the next thirteen years, she bore Henry five sons, two of whom would become king, and three daughters. However, Henry and Eleanor eventually became estranged. She was imprisoned between 1173 and 1189 for supporting her son's revolt against King Henry II.
Eleanor was widowed on 6 July 1189. Her husband was succeeded by their son, Richard the Lionheart, who soon released his mother. Now queen mother, Eleanor acted as a regent for her son while he went off on the Third Crusade. Eleanor survived her son Richard and lived well into the reign of her youngest son King John. By the time of her death she had outlived all of her children except for King John and Leonora, Queen of Castile. Contents [hide]
* 1 Early life * 2 Inheritance * 3 First marriage o 3.1 Conflict o 3.2 Crusade * 4 Annulment of first marriage * 5 Second marriage o 5.1 Myth of the "Court of Love" in Poitiers o 5.2 Revolt and capture o 5.3 Years of imprisonment 1173–1189 * 6 Widowhood * 7 In historical fiction * 8 Ancestry * 9 Issue * 10 Notes * 11 Biographies and printed works * 12 External links
[edit] Early life Coat of arms of the duchy of Aquitaine.
Eleanor or Aliénor was the oldest of three children of William X, Duke of Aquitaine, and his duchess Aenor de Châtellerault, the daughter of Aimeric I, Vicomte of Chatellerault and countess Dangereuse, who was William IX, Duke of Aquitaine the Troubadour's longtime mistress as well as Eleanor's maternal grandmother. Her parents' marriage had been arranged by Dangereuse with her paternal grandfather, the Troubadour. Eleanor was 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 and Eleanor in English.
By all accounts, Eleanor's father ensured that she had the best possible education. Although her native tongue was Poitevin, she was taught to read and speak Latin, was well versed in music and literature, and schooled in riding, hawking, and hunting. Eleanor was extroverted, lively, intelligent, and strong willed. She was regarded as a great beauty by her contemporaries, none of whom, however, left a surviving description that includes the colour of her hair or eyes. Although the ideal beauty of the time was a silvery blonde with blue eyes, she may have inherited her colouring from her father and grandfather, who were both brown-eyed with copper-red hair. In the spring of 1130, when Eleanor was eight, her four-year-old brother William Aigret and their mother died at the castle of Talmont, on Aquitaine's Atlantic coast. Eleanor became the heir to her father's domains. Aquitaine was the largest and richest province of France; Poitou and Aquitaine together were almost one-third the size of modern France. Eleanor had only one other legitimate sibling, a younger sister named Aelith but always called Petronilla. Her half brothers, William and Joscelin, were acknowledged by William X as his sons—not as his heirs—and by his daughters as brothers. Later, during the first four years of Henry II's reign, all three siblings joined Eleanor's royal household.
[edit] Inheritance
In 1137, Duke William X set out from Poitiers to Bordeaux, taking his daughters with him. Upon reaching Bordeaux, he left Eleanor and Petronilla in the charge of the Archbishop of Bordeaux, one of the Duke's few loyal vassals who could be entrusted with the safety of the duke's daughters. The duke then set out for the Shrine of Saint James of Compostela, in the company of other pilgrims; however, on Good Friday 9 April 1137, he was stricken with sickness, possibly food poisoning. He died that evening, having bequeathed Aquitaine to Eleanor.
Eleanor, aged about fifteen, became the Duchess of Aquitaine, and thus the most eligible heiress in Europe. As these were the days when kidnapping an heiress was seen as a viable option for obtaining a title, William had dictated a will on the very day he died, bequeathing his domains to Eleanor and appointing King Louis VI (nicknamed "the Fat") as her guardian. William requested the King to take care of both the lands and the duchess, and to also find her a suitable husband. However, until a husband was found, the King had the legal right to Eleanor's lands. The Duke also insisted to his companions that his death be kept a secret until Louis was informed — the men were to journey from Saint James across the Pyrenees as quickly as possible, to call at Bordeaux to notify the Archbishop, and then to make all speed to Paris, to inform the King.
The King of France himself was also gravely ill at that time, suffering "a flux of the bowels" (dysentery) from which he seemed unlikely to recover. Despite his immense obesity and impending mortality, however, Louis the Fat remained clear-minded. To his concerns regarding his new heir, Prince Louis (the former heir, Philip, having died from a riding accident), was added joy over the death of one of his most cantankerous vassals — and the availability of the best Duchy in France. Presenting a solemn and dignified manner to the grieving Aquitainian messengers, upon their departure he became overjoyed, stammering in delight.
Rather than act as guardian to the Duchess and duchy, he decided, he would marry the duchess to his heir and bring Aquitaine under the French Crown, thereby greatly increasing the power and prominence of France and the Capets. Within hours, then, Louis had arranged for his son, Prince Louis, to be married to Eleanor, with Abbot Suger in charge of the wedding arrangements. Prince Louis was sent to Bordeaux with an escort of 500 knights, as well as Abbot Suger, Theobald II, Count of Champagne and Count Ralph of Vermandois.
[edit] First marriage Wedding of Louis and Eleanor
Louis arrived in Bordeaux on 11 July.[citation needed] On 25 July 1137 the couple were married in the Cathedral of Saint-André in Bordeaux by the Archbishop of Bordeaux, Geoffrey de Lauroux[2] (in whose keeping Eleanor and Petronilla had been left). It was a magnificent ceremony with almost a thousand guests. However, there was a catch: the land would remain independent of France and Eleanor's oldest son would be both King of France and Duke of Aquitaine. Thus, her holdings would not be merged with France until the next generation. She gave Louis a wedding present that is still in existence, a rock crystal vase, currently on display at the Louvre.
Possessing a high-spirited nature, Eleanor was not popular with the staid northerners (according to sources, Louis´ mother, Adélaide de Maurienne, thought her flighty and a bad influence) — she was not aided by memories of Queen Constance, the Provencial wife of Robert II, tales of whose immodest dress and language were still told with horror.[3]
Her conduct was repeatedly criticized by Church elders (particularly Bernard of Clairvaux and Abbot Suger) as indecorous. The King, however, was madly in love with his beautiful and worldly bride and granted her every whim, even though her behavior baffled and vexed him to no end. Much money went into beautifying the austere Cite Palace in Paris for Eleanor's sake.[citation needed]
[edit] Conflict
Though Louis was a pious man he soon came into a violent conflict with Pope Innocent II. In 1141, the archbishopric of Bourges became vacant, and the King put forward as a candidate one of his chancellors, Cadurc, whilst vetoing the one suitable candidate, Pierre de la Chatre, who was promptly elected by the canons of Bourges and consecrated by the Pope. Louis accordingly bolted the gates of Bourges against the new Bishop; the Pope, recalling William X's similar attempts to exile Innocent's supporters from Poitou and replace them with priests loyal to himself, blamed Eleanor, saying that Louis was only a child and should be taught manners. Outraged, Louis swore upon relics that so long as he lived Pierre should never enter Bourges. This brought the interdict upon the King's lands. Pierre de la Chatre was given refuge by Theobald II, Count of Champagne.
Louis became involved in a war with Count Theobald of Champagne by permitting Raoul I, Count of Vermandois and seneschal of France, to repudiate his wife (Leonora), Theobald's niece, and to marry Petronilla of Aquitaine, Eleanor's sister. Eleanor urged Louis to support her sister's illegitimate marriage to Raoul of Vermandois. Champagne had also offended Louis by siding with the pope in the dispute over Bourges. The war lasted two years (1142–44) and ended with the occupation of Champagne by the royal army. Louis was personally involved in the assault and burning of the town of Vitry. More than a thousand people (1300, some say) who had sought refuge in the church died in the flames.
Horrified, and desiring an end to the war, Louis attempted to make peace with Theobald in exchange for supporting the lift of the interdict on Raoul and Petronilla. This was duly lifted for long enough to allow Theobald's lands to be restored; it was then lowered once more when Raoul refused to repudiate Petronilla, prompting Louis to return to the Champagne and ravage it once more.
In June, 1144, the King and Queen visited the newly built cathedral at Saint-Denis. Whilst there, the Queen met with Bernard of Clairvaux, demanding that he have the excommunication of Petronilla and Raoul lifted through his influence on the Pope, in exchange for which King Louis would make concessions in Champagne, and recognise Pierre de la Chatre as archbishop of Bourges. Dismayed at her attitude, Bernard scolded her for her lack of penitence and her interference in matters of state. In response, Eleanor broke down, and meekly excused her behaviour, claiming to be bitter because of her lack of children. In response to this, Bernard became more kindly towards her: "My child, seek those things which make for peace. Cease to stir up the King against the Church, and urge upon him a better course of action. If you will promise to do this, I in return promise to entreat the merciful Lord to grant you offspring."
In a matter of weeks, peace had returned to France: Theobald's provinces had been returned, and Pierre de la Chatre was installed as Archbishop of Bourges. In April 1145, Eleanor gave birth to a daughter, Marie.
Louis, however still burned with guilt over the massacre at Vitry-le-Brûlé, and desired to make a Pilgrimage to the Holy Land in order to atone for his sins. Fortuitously for him, in the Autumn of 1145, Pope Eugenius requested Louis to lead a Crusade to the Middle East, to rescue the Frankish Kingdoms there from disaster. Accordingly, Louis declared on Christmas Day 1145 at Bourges his intention of going on a crusade.
[edit] Crusade
Eleanor of Aquitaine took up the crusade during a sermon preached by Bernard of Clairvaux. She was followed by some of her royal ladies-in-waiting as well as 300 non-noble vassals. She insisted on taking part in the Crusades as the feudal leader of the soldiers from her duchy. The story that she and her ladies dressed as Amazons is disputed by serious historians; however, her testimonial launch of the Second Crusade from Vézelay, the rumored location of Mary Magdalene´s burial, dramatically emphasized the role of women in the campaign.
The Crusade itself achieved little. Louis was a weak and ineffectual military leader with no concept of maintaining troop discipline or morale, or of making informed and logical tactical decisions. In eastern Europe, the French army was at times hindered by Manuel I Comnenus, the Byzantine Emperor, who feared that it would jeopardize the tenuous safety of his empire; however, during their 3-week stay at Constantinople, Louis was fêted and Eleanor was much admired. She is compared with Penthesilea, mythical queen of the Amazons, by the Greek historian Nicetas Choniates; he adds that she gained the epithet chrysopous (golden-foot) from the cloth of gold that decorated and fringed her robe. Louis and Eleanor stayed in the Philopation palace, just outside the city walls. Second Crusade council: Conrad III of Germany, Eleanor's husband Louis VII of France, and Baldwin III of Jerusalem
From the moment the Crusaders entered Asia Minor, the Crusade went badly. The King and Queen were optimistic — the Byzantine Emperor had told them that the German Emperor Conrad had won a great victory against a Turkish army (where in fact the German army had been massacred), and the company was still eating well. However, whilst camping near Nicea, the remnants of the German army, including a dazed and sick Emperor Conrad, began to straggle into the French camp, bringing news of their disaster. The French, with what remained of the Germans, then began to march in increasingly disorganized fashion, towards Antioch. Their spirits were buoyed on Christmas Eve — when they chose to camp in the lush Dercervian valley near Ephesus, they were ambushed by a Turkish detachment; the French proceeded to slaughter this detachment and appropriate their camp.
Louis then decided to directly cross the Phrygian mountains, in the hope of speeding his approach to take refuge with Eleanor's uncle Raymond in Antioch. As they ascended the mountains, however, the army and the King and Queen were left horrified by the unburied corpses of the previously slaughtered German army.
On the day set for the crossing of Mount Cadmos, Louis chose to take charge of the rear of the column, where the unarmed pilgrims and the baggage trains marched. The vanguard, with which Queen Eleanor marched, was commanded by her Aquitainian vassal, Geoffrey de Rancon; this, being unencumbered by baggage, managed to reach the summit of Cadmos, where de Rancon had been ordered to make camp for the night. De Rancon however chose to march further, deciding in concert with the Count of Maurienne (Louis´ uncle) that a nearby plateau would make a better camp: such disobedience was reportedly common in the army, due to the lack of command from the King.
Accordingly, by midafternoon, the rear of the column — believing the day's march to be nearly at an end — was dawdling; this resulted in the army becoming divided, with some having already crossed the summit and others still approaching it. It was at this point that the Turks, who had been following and feinting for many days, seized their opportunity and attacked those who had not yet crossed the summit. The Turks, having seized the summit of the mountain, and the French (both soldiers and pilgrims) having been taken by surprise, there was little hope of escape: those who tried were caught and killed, and many men, horses and baggage were cast into the canyon below the ridge. William of Tyre placed the blame for this disaster firmly on the baggage — which was considered to have belonged largely to the women.
The King, ironically, was saved by his lack of authority — having scorned a King's apparel in favour of a simple solder's tunic, he escaped notice (unlike his bodyguards, whose skulls were brutally smashed and limbs severed). He reportedly "nimbly and bravely scaled a rock by making use of some tree roots which God had provided for his safety," and managed to survive the attack. Others were not so fortunate: "No aid came from Heaven, except that night fell."[citation needed]
The official scapegoat for the disaster was Geoffrey de Rancon, who had made the decision to continue, and it was suggested that he be hanged (a suggestion which the King ignored). Since he was Eleanor's vassal, many believed that it was she who had been ultimately responsible for the change in plan, and thus the massacre. This did nothing for her popularity in Christendom — as did the blame affixed to her baggage, and the fact that her Aquitainian soldiers had marched at the front, and thus were not involved in the fight. Eleanor's reputation was further sullied by her supposed affair with her uncle Raymond of Poitiers, Prince of Antioch.
While in the eastern Mediterranean, Eleanor learned about maritime conventions developing there, which were the beginnings of what would become admiralty law. She introduced those conventions in her own lands, on the island of Oleron in 1160 and later in England as well. She was also instrumental in developing trade agreements with Constantinople and ports of trade in the Holy Lands.
[edit] Annulment of first marriage
Even before the Crusade, Eleanor and Louis were becoming estranged. The city of Antioch had been annexed by Bohemond of Hauteville in the First Crusade, and it was now ruled by Eleanor's flamboyant uncle, Raymond of Antioch, who had gained the principality by marrying its reigning Princess, Constance of Antioch. Clearly, Eleanor supported his desire to re-capture the nearby County of Edessa, the cause of the Crusade; in addition, having been close to him in their youth, she now showed excessive affection towards her uncle — whilst many historians today dismiss this as familial affection (noting their early friendship, and his similarity to her father and grandfather), most at the time firmly believed the two to be involved in an incestuous and adulterous affair. Louis was directed by the Church to visit Jerusalem instead. When Eleanor declared her intention to stand with Raymond and the Aquitaine forces, Louis had her brought out by force. His long march to Jerusalem and back north debilitated his army, but her imprisonment disheartened her knights, and the divided Crusade armies could not overcome the Muslim forces. For reasons unknown, likely the Germans' insistence on conquest, the Crusade leaders targeted Damascus, an ally until the attack. Failing in this attempt, they retired to Jerusalem, and then home. Eleanor and her first husband
Home, however, was not easily reached. The royal couple, on separate ships due to their disagreements, were first attacked in May by Byzantine ships attempting to capture both (in order to take them to Byzantium, according to the orders of the Emperor). Although they escaped this predicament unharmed, stormy weather served to drive Eleanor's ship far to the south (to the Barbary Coast), and to similarly lose her husband. Neither was heard of for over two months: at which point, in mid-July, Eleanor's ship finally reached Palermo in Sicily, where she discovered that she and her husband had both been given up for dead. The King still lost, she was given shelter and food by servants of King Roger of Sicily, until the King eventually reached Calabria, and she set out to meet him there. Later, at King Roger's court in Potenza, she learnt of the death of her uncle Raymond; this appears to have forced a change of plans, for instead of returning to France from Marseilles, they instead sought the Pope in Tusculum, where he had been driven five months before by a Roman revolt.
Pope Eugenius III did not, as Eleanor had hoped, grant a divorce; instead, he attempted to reconcile Eleanor and Louis, confirming the legality of their marriage, and proclaiming that no word could be spoken against it, and that it might not be dissolved under any pretext. Eventually, he arranged events so that Eleanor had no choice but to sleep with Louis in a bed specially prepared by the Pope. Thus was conceived their second child — not a son, but another daughter, Alix of France. The marriage was now doomed. Still without a son and in danger of being left with no male heir, facing substantial opposition to Eleanor from many of his barons and her own desire for divorce, Louis had no choice but to bow to the inevitable. On 11 March, 1152, they met at the royal castle of Beaugency to dissolve the marriage. Archbishop Hugh Sens, Primate of France, presided, and Louis and Eleanor were both present, as were the Archbishops of Bordeaux and Rouen. Archbishop Samson of Reims acted for Eleanor. On 21 March, the four archbishops, with the approval of Pope Eugenius, granted an annulment due to consanguinity within the fourth degree (Eleanor and Louis were third cousins, once removed and shared common ancestry with Robert II of France). Their two daughters were, however, declared legitimate and custody of them awarded to King Louis. Archbishop Sampson received assurances from Louis that Eleanor's lands would be restored to her.
[edit] Second marriage Henry II of England The marriage of Eleanor of Aquitaine to Henry of Anjou and Henry's subsequent succession to the throne of England created an empire.
Two lords — Theobald V, Count of Blois, son of the Count of Champagne, and Geoffrey VI, Count of Anjou (brother of Henry, Count of Anjou and Duke of Normandy) — tried to kidnap Eleanor to marry her and claim her lands on Eleanor's way to Poitiers. As soon as she arrived in Poitiers, Eleanor sent envoys to Henry Count of Anjou and Duke of Normandy, asking him to come at once and marry her. On 18 May, 1152 (Whit Sunday), six weeks after her annulment, Eleanor married Henry 'without the pomp and ceremony that befitted their rank'.[4] At that moment, Eleanor became Duchess of the Normans and Countess of the Angevins, while Henry became Duke of Aquitaine and Count of Poitiers. She was about 11 years older than he, and related to him more closely than she had been to Louis. Eleanor and Henry were half, third cousins through their common ancestor Ermengarde of Anjou (wife to Robert I, Duke of Burgundy and Geoffrey, Count of Gâtinais); they were also both descendants of Robert II of Normandy. A marriage between Henry and Eleanor's daughter, Marie, had indeed been declared impossible for this very reason. One of Eleanor's rumoured lovers had been Henry's own father, Geoffrey of Anjou, who had advised his son to avoid any involvement with her.
Over the next thirteen years, she bore Henry five sons and three daughters: William, Henry, Richard, Geoffrey, John, Matilda, Eleanor, and Joan. John Speed, in his 1611 work History of Great Britain, mentions the possibility that Eleanor had a son named Philip, who died young. His sources no longer exist and he alone mentions this birth.[5]
Henry was by no means faithful to his wife and had a reputation for philandering. Their son, William, and Henry's illegitimate son, Geoffrey, were born just months apart. Henry fathered other illegitimate children throughout the marriage. Eleanor appears to have taken an ambivalent attitude towards these affairs: for example, Geoffrey of York, an illegitimate son of Henry and a prostitute named Ykenai, was acknowledged by Henry as his child and raised at Westminster in the care of the Queen.
The period between Henry's accession and the birth of Eleanor's youngest son was turbulent: Aquitaine, as was the norm, defied the authority of Henry as Eleanor's husband; attempts to claim Toulouse, the rightful inheritance of Eleanor's grandmother and father, were made, ending in failure; the news of Louis of France's widowhood and remarriage was followed by the marriage of Henry's son (young Henry) to Louis' daughter Marguerite; and, most climactically, the feud between the King and Thomas à Becket, his Chancellor, and later his Archbishop of Canterbury. Little is known of Eleanor's involvement in these events. By late 1166, and the birth of her final child, however, Henry's notorious affair with Rosamund Clifford had become known, and her marriage to Henry appears to have become terminally strained.
1167 saw the marriage of Eleanor's third daughter, Matilda, to Henry the Lion of Saxony; Eleanor remained in England with her daughter for the year prior to Matilda's departure to Normandy in September. Afterwards, Eleanor proceeded to gather together her movable possessions in England and transport them on several ships in December to Argentan. At the royal court, celebrated there that Christmas, she appears to have agreed to a separation from Henry. Certainly, she left for her own city of Poitiers immediately after Christmas. Henry did not stop her; on the contrary, he and his army personally escorted her there, before attacking a castle belonging to the rebellious Lusignan family. Henry then went about his own business outside Aquitaine, leaving Earl Patrick (his regional military commander) as her protective custodian. When Patrick was killed in a skirmish, Eleanor (who proceeded to ransom his captured nephew, the young William Marshal), was left in control of her inheritance.
[edit] Myth of the "Court of Love" in Poitiers This section does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed. (April 2008)
Of all her influence on culture, Eleanor's time in Poitier was perhaps the most critical and yet the least is known of what happened. Away from Henry, Eleanor was able to develop her own court in Poitier. At a small cathedral still stands the stained glass commemorating Eleanor and Henry with a family tree growing from their prayers. Her court style was to encourage the cult of courtly love. Apparently, however, both King and church expunged the records of the actions and judgments taken under her authority. A small fragment of the court letters, codes and practices were written by Andreas Capellanus. It appears that one activity in the court style was for 12 men and women to hear cases of love between individuals. This forum was the forerunner of the jury system that she would implement in England after releasing all prisoners upon Henry's death. The proceedings of the court are speculative, though the legends of the court have endured.
Henry concentrated on controlling his increasingly-large empire, badgering Eleanor's subjects in attempts to control her patrimony of Aquitaine and her court at Poitiers. Straining all bounds of civility, Henry caused Archbishop Thomas Becket to be murdered at the altar of the church in 1170 (though there is considerable debate as to whether it was truly Henry's intent to be permanently rid of his archbishop). This aroused Eleanor's horror and contempt, along with most of Europe's.
Eleanor's marriage to Henry was tumultuous and argumentative. However, despite his mistresses and Eleanor's imprisonment, Eleanor once remarked, "My marriage to Henry was a much happier one than my marriage to Louis." Eleanor and Henry did deeply love and respect one another and they did all they could to keep their family together as a whole. In their years together they raised their children and saw their grandchildren grow up. Eleanor and Henry, despite the rebellion of their children, and the times in which they lived, lived out their years with relative happiness.
[edit] Revolt and capture
In March 1173, aggrieved at his lack of power and egged on by his father's enemies, the younger Henry launched the Revolt of 1173–1174. He fled to Paris. From there 'the younger Henry, devising evil against his father from every side by the advice of the French King, went secretly into Aquitaine where his two youthful brothers, Richard and Geoffrey, were living with their mother, and with her connivance, so it is said, he incited them to join him'.[6] The Queen sent her younger sons to France 'to join with him against their father the King'.[7] Once her sons had left for Paris, Eleanor encouraged the lords of the south to rise up and support them.[8] Sometime between the end of March and the beginning of May, Eleanor left Poitiers to follow her sons to Paris but was arrested on the way and sent to the King in Rouen. The King did not announce the arrest publicly. For the next year, her whereabouts are unknown. On 8 July, 1174, Henry took ship for England from Barfleur. He brought Eleanor on the ship. As soon as they disembarked at Southampton, Eleanor was taken away either to Winchester Castle or Sarum Castle and held there.
[edit] Years of imprisonment 1173–1189
Eleanor was imprisoned for the next sixteen years, much of the time in various locations in England. During her imprisonment, Eleanor had become more and more distant with her sons, especially Richard (who had always been her favorite). 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 triangular castle which is believed to have been one of her prisons. Royal styles of Eleanor of Aquitaine
Reference style Her Grace Spoken style Your Grace Alternative style My Lady
Henry lost his great love, Rosamund Clifford, in 1176. He had met her in 1166 and began the liaison in 1173, supposedly contemplating divorce from Eleanor. Rosamond was one among Henry's many mistresses, but although he treated earlier liaisons discreetly, he flaunted Rosamond. This notorious affair caused a monkish scribe with a gift for Latin to transcribe Rosamond's name to "Rosa Immundi", or "Rose of Unchastity". Likely, Rosamond was one weapon in Henry's efforts to provoke Eleanor into seeking an annulment (this flared in October 1175). Had she done so, Henry might have appointed Eleanor abbess of Fontevrault (Fontevraud), requiring her to take a vow of poverty, thereby releasing her titles and nearly half their empire to him, but Eleanor was much too wily to be provoked into this. Nevertheless, rumours persisted, perhaps assisted by Henry's camp, that Eleanor had poisoned Rosamund. No one knows what Henry believed, but he did donate much money to the Godstow Nunnery in which Rosamund was buried.
In 1183, Young Henry tried again. In debt and refused control of Normandy, he tried to ambush his father at Limoges. He was joined by troops sent by his brother Geoffrey and Philip II of France. Henry's troops besieged the town, forcing his son to flee. Henry the Young wandered aimlessly through Aquitaine until he caught dysentery. On Saturday, 11 June 1183, the Young King realized he was dying and was overcome with remorse for his sins. When his father's ring was sent to him, he begged that his father would show mercy to his mother, and that all his companions would plead with Henry to set her free. The King sent Thomas of Earley, Archdeacon of Wells, to break the news to Eleanor at Sarum.[9] Eleanor had had a dream in which she foresaw her son Henry's death. In 1193 she would tell Pope Celestine III that she was tortured by his memory.
In 1183, Philip of France claimed that certain properties in Normandy belonged to The Young Queen but Henry insisted that they had once belonged to Eleanor and would revert to her upon her son's death. For this reason Henry summoned Eleanor to Normandy in the late summer of 1183. She stayed in Normandy for six months. This was the beginning of a period of greater freedom for the still supervised Eleanor. Eleanor went back to England probably early in 1184.[8] Over the next few years Eleanor often traveled with her husband and was sometimes associated with him in the government of the realm, but still had a custodian so that she was not free.
[edit] Widowhood
Upon Henry's death on July 6, 1189, just days after suffering an injury from a jousting match, Richard was his undisputed heir. One of his first acts as king was to send William the Marshal to England with orders to release Eleanor from prison, but her custodians had already released her. [10]
Eleanor rode to Westminster and received the oaths of fealty from many lords and prelates on behalf of the King. She ruled England in Richard's name, signing herself as 'Eleanor, by the grace of God, Queen of England'. On 13 August, 1189, Richard sailed from Barfleur to Portsmouth, and was received with enthusiasm. She ruled England as regent while Richard went off on the Third Crusade. She personally negotiated his ransom by going to Germany.
Eleanor survived Richard and lived well into the reign of her youngest son King John. In 1199, under the terms of a truce between King Philip II of France and King John, it was agreed that Philip's twelve-year-old heir Louis would be married to one of John's nieces of Castile. John deputed Eleanor to travel to Castile to select one of the princesses. Now 77, Eleanor set out from Poitiers. Just outside Poitiers she was ambushed and held captive by Hugh IX of Lusignan, which had long ago been sold by his forebears to Henry II. Eleanor secured her freedom by agreeing to his demands and journeyed south, crossed the Pyrenees, and travelled through the Kingdoms of Navarre and Castile, arriving before the end of January, 1200.
King Alfonso VIII and Queen Leonora of Castile had two remaining unmarried daughters, Urraca and Blanche. Eleanor selected the younger daughter, Blanche. She stayed for two months at the Castilian court. Late in March, Eleanor and her granddaughter Blanche journeyed back across the Pyrenees. When she was at Bordeaux where she celebrated Easter, the famous warrior Mercadier came to her and it was decided that he would escort the Queen and Princess north. "On the second day in Easter week, he was slain in the city by a man-at-arms in the service of Brandin",[7] a rival mercenary captain. This tragedy was too much for the elderly Queen, who was fatigued and unable to continue to Normandy. She and Blanche rode in easy stages to the valley of the Loire, and she entrusted Blanche to the Archbishop of Bordeaux, who took over as her escort. The exhausted Eleanor went to Fontevrault, where she remained. In early summer, Eleanor was ill and John visited her at Fontevrault. Plaster statue of Eleanor and Henry II at Fontevraud Abbey
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 Fontevrault for her capital Poitiers to prevent her grandson Arthur, John's enemy, from taking control. Arthur learned of her whereabouts and besieged her in the castle of Mirabeau. As soon as John heard of this he marched south, overcame the besiegers and captured Arthur. Eleanor then returned to Fontevrault where she took the veil as a nun.
Eleanor died in 1204 and was entombed in Fontevraud Abbey next to her husband Henry and her son Richard. Her tomb effigy shows her reading a Bible and is decorated with magnificent jewelry. By the time of her death she had outlived all of her children except for King John and Queen Leonora. She was the patroness of such literary figures as Wace, Benoît de Sainte-More, and Chrétien de Troyes.
[edit] In historical fiction
Eleanor and Henry are the main characters in James Goldman's play The Lion in Winter, which was made into a film starring Peter O'Toole and Katharine Hepburn in 1968 (for which Hepburn 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), and remade for television in 2003 with Patrick Stewart and Glenn Close (for which Close won the Golden Globe Award for Best Performance by an Actress In A Mini-series or Motion Picture Made for Television and was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress - Miniseries or a Movie).
The depiction of Eleanor in the play Becket, which was filmed in 1964 with Pamela Brown as Eleanor, contains historical inaccuracies, as acknowledged by the author, Jean Anouilh.
In 2004, Catherine Muschamp's one-woman play, Mother of the Pride, toured the UK with Eileen Page in the title role. In 2005, Chapelle Jaffe played the same part in Toronto.
The character "Queen Elinor" appears in William Shakespeare's King John, along with other members of the family. On television, she has been portrayed in this play by Una Venning in the BBC Sunday Night Theatre version (1952) and by Mary Morris in the BBC Shakespeare version (1984).
She figures prominently in Sharon Kay Penman's novels, When Christ And His Saints Slept, Time and Chance, and Devil's Brood. Penman has also written a series of historical mysteries where she, in old age, sends a trusted servant to unravel various puzzles.
Eleanor has also featured in a number of screen versions of Ivanhoe and the Robin Hood story. She has been played by Martita Hunt in The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men (1952), Jill Esmond in the British TV adventure series The Adventures of Robin Hood (1952–1953), Phyllis Neilson-Terry in the British TV adventure series Ivanhoe (1958), Yvonne Mitchell in the BBC TV drama series The Legend of Robin Hood (1975), Siân Phillips in the TV series Ivanhoe (1997), and Tusse Silberg in the TV series The New Adventures of Robin Hood (1997).
She has also been portrayed by Mary Clare in the silent film Becket (1923), based on a play by Alfred Lord Tennyson, Prudence Hyman in the British children's TV series Richard the Lionheart (1962), and Jane Lapotaire in the BBC TV drama series The Devil's Crown (1978), which dramatised the reigns of Henry II, Richard I and John. Most recently she was portrayed by Lynda Bellingham in the BBC One series Robin Hood (2006 TV series).
Eleanor of Aquitaine Ancestry
Ancestors of Eleanor of Aquitaine
Issue
By Louis VII of France (married 12 July 1137, annulled 21 March 1152)
Marie, Countess of Champagne 1145 11 March 1198 married Henry I, Count of Champagne; had issue
Alix, Countess of Blois 1151 1198 married Theobald V, Count of Blois; had issue
By Henry II of England (married 18 May 1152, widowed 6 July 1189)
William, Count of Poitiers 17 August 1153 April 1156 never married; no issue
Henry the Young King 28 February 1155 11 June 1183 married Marguerite of France; no issue
Matilda, Duchess of Saxony June 1156 13 July 1189 married Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony; had issue
Richard I of England 8 September 1157 6 April 1199 married Berengaria of Navarre; no issue
Geoffrey II, Duke of Brittany 23 September 1158 19 August 1186 married Constance, Duchess of Brittany; had issue
Leonora, Queen of Castile 13 October 1162 31 October 1214 married Alfonso VIII of Castile; had issue
Joan, Queen of Sicily October 1165 4 September 1199 married 1) William II of Sicily 2) Raymond VI of Toulouse; had issue
John of England 24 December 1167 19 October 1216 married 1) Isabella, Countess of Gloucester 2) Isabella of Angoulême; had issue
Notes
1. ^ The exact date of Eleanor's birth is not known, but the year is known from the fact that the lords of Aquitaine swore fealty to her on her fourteenth birthday in 1136. Some chronicles give her date of birth as 1120, but her parents almost certainly married in 1121.
2. ^ Kristiana Gregory, Crown Jewel of Aquitaine, 2002, p.182
3. ^ Meade, Marion (2002). Eleanor of Aquitaine. Phoenix Press. pp. 51. "...[Adelaide] perhaps [based] her preconceptions on another southerner, Constance of Provence...tales of her allegedly immodest dress and language still continued to circulate amongst the sober Franks."
4. ^ Chronique de Touraine
5. ^ Weir, Alison, Eleanor of Aquitaine: A Life, pages 154-155, Ballantine Books, 1999
6. ^ William of Newburgh
7. ^ a b Roger of Hoveden
8. ^ a b Eleanor of Aquitaine. Alison Weir 1999
9. ^ Ms. S. Berry, Senior Archivist at the Somerset Archive and Record Service, identified this "archdeacon of Wells" as Thomas of Earley, noting his family ties to Henry II and the Earleys' philanthropies (Power of a Woman, ch. 33, and endnote 40).
10. ^ Eleanor of Aquitaine. Alison Weir 1999.
Biographies and printed works
* Eleanor of Aquitaine: Lord and Lady, John Carmi Parsons & Bonnie Wheeler (2002) * Queen Eleanor: Independent Spirit of the Medieval World, Polly Schover Brooks (1983) (for young readers) * Eleanor of Aquitaine: A Biography, Marion Meade (1977) * Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Four Kings, Amy Kelly (1950) * Eleanor of Aquitaine: The Mother Queen, Desmond Seward (1978) * Eleanor of Aquitaine: A Life, Alison Weir (1999) * Le lit d'Aliénor, Mireille Calmel (2001) * "The Royal Diaries, Eleanor Crown Jewel of Aquitaine", Kristiana Gregory (2002) * Women of the Twelfth Century, Volume 1 : Eleanor of Aquitaine and Six Others, Georges Duby * A Proud Taste For Scarlet and Miniver, E. L. Konigsburg * The Book of Eleanor: A Novel of Eleanor of Aquitaine, Pamela Kaufman (2002) * The Courts of Love, Jean Plaidy (1987) * Power of a Woman. Memoirs of a turbulent life: Eleanor of Aquitaine, Robert Fripp (2006)
External links
* The Eleanor Vase preserved at the Louvre Images of Medieval Art and Architecture * RoyaList Online interactive family tree (en)
Eleanor of Aquitaine (in French: Aliénor d’Aquitaine, Éléonore de Guyenne) (1122[note 1] – 1 April 1204) was one of the wealthiest and most powerful women in Western Europe during the High Middle Ages. As well as being Duchess of Aquitaine in her own right, she was queen consort of France 1137-1152 and queen consort of England 1154-1189. She was the patroness of such literary figures as Wace, Benoît de Sainte-More, and Chrétien de Troyes.
Eleanor succeeded her father as suo jure Duchess of Aquitaine and Countess of Poitiers at the age of fifteen, and thus became the most eligible bride in Europe. Three months after her accession she married Louis VII, son and junior co-ruler of her guardian, King Louis VI. As Queen of the Franks, she participated in the unsuccessful Second Crusade. Soon after the Crusade was over, Louis VII and Eleanor agreed to dissolve their marriage, because of Eleanor's own desire for divorce and also because the only children they had were two daughters - Marie and Alix. The royal marriage was annulled on 11 March 1152, on the grounds of consanguinity within the fourth degree. Their daughters were declared legitimate and custody of them awarded to Louis, while Eleanor's lands were restored to her.
As soon as she arrived in Poitiers, Eleanor became engaged to the eleven years younger Henry II, Duke of the Normans. On 18 May 1152, eight weeks after the annulment of her first marriage, Eleanor married the Duke of the Normans. On 25 October 1154 her husband ascended the throne of the Kingdom of England, making Eleanor Queen of the English. Over the next thirteen years, she bore Henry eight children: five sons, two of whom would become king, and three daughters. However, Henry and Eleanor eventually became estranged. She was imprisoned between 1173 and 1189 for supporting her son Henry's revolt against her husband, King Henry II.
Eleanor was widowed on 6 July 1189. Her husband was succeeded by their son, Richard the Lionheart, who immediately moved to release his mother. Now queen mother, Eleanor acted as a regent for her son while he went off on the Third Crusade. Eleanor survived her son Richard and lived well into the reign of her youngest son King John. By the time of her death she had outlived all of her children except for King John and Eleanor, Queen of Castile. Recent scholarship has put forward new, original sources (letters to and from Eleanor.
Eleanor or Aliénor was the oldest of three children of William X, Duke of Aquitaine, whose glittering ducal court was on the leading edge of early–12th-century culture, and his wife, Aenor de Châtellerault, the daughter of Aimeric I, Viscount of Châtellerault, and Dangereuse, who was William IX's longtime mistress as well as Eleanor's maternal grandmother. Her parents' marriage had been arranged by Dangereuse with her paternal grandfather, the Troubadour.
Eleanor was 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 and Eleanor in English.[1] There is, however, an earlier Eleanor on record: Eleanor of Normandy, William the Conqueror's aunt, who lived a century earlier than Eleanor of Aquitaine.
By all accounts, Eleanor's father ensured that she had the best possible education.[2] Although her native tongue was Poitevin, she was taught to read and speak Latin, was well versed in music and literature, and schooled in riding, hawking, and hunting.[3] Eleanor was extroverted, lively, intelligent, and strong willed. In the spring of 1130, when Eleanor was eight, her four-year-old brother William Aigret and their mother died at the castle of Talmont, on Aquitaine's Atlantic coast. Eleanor became the heir presumptive to her father's domains. The Duchy of Aquitaine was the largest and richest province of France; Poitou (where Eleanor spent most of her childhood) and Aquitaine together were almost one-third the size of modern France. Eleanor had only one other legitimate sibling, a younger sister named Aelith but always called Petronilla. Her half brothers, William and Joscelin, were acknowledged by William X as his sons, but not as his heirs. Later, during the first four years of Henry II's reign, all three siblings joined Eleanor's royal household. [edit]Inheritance
In 1137, Duke William X set out from Poitiers to Bordeaux, taking his daughters with him. Upon reaching Bordeaux, he left Eleanor and Petronilla in the charge of the Archbishop of Bordeaux, one of the Duke's few loyal vassals who could be entrusted with the safety of the duke's daughters. 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 9 April 1137.[4][5]
Eleanor, aged about fifteen, became the Duchess of Aquitaine, and thus the most eligible heiress in Europe. As these were the days when kidnapping an heiress was seen as a viable option for obtaining a title, William had dictated a will on the very day he died, bequeathing his domains to Eleanor and appointing King Louis VI of France as her guardian.[6] William requested the King to take care of both the lands and the duchess, and to also find her a suitable husband.[2] However, until a husband was found, the King had the legal right to Eleanor's lands. The Duke also insisted to his companions that his death be kept a secret until Louis was informed — the men were to journey from Saint James across the Pyrenees as quickly as possible, to call at Bordeaux to notify the Archbishop, and then to make all speed to Paris, to inform the King.
The King of France himself was also gravely ill at that time, suffering "a flux of the bowels" (dysentery) from which he seemed unlikely to recover. Despite his immense obesity and impending mortality, however, Louis the Fat remained clear-minded. To his concerns regarding his new heir, Louis, who had been destined for the monastic life of a younger son (the former heir, Philip, having died from a riding accident),[7] was added joy over the death of one of his most powerful vassals — and the availability of the best duchy in France. Presenting a solemn and dignified manner to the grieving Aquitainian messengers, upon their departure he became overjoyed, stammering in delight. Rather than act as guardian to the Duchess and duchy, he decided, he would marry the duchess to his heir and bring Aquitaine under the French Crown, thereby greatly increasing the power and prominence of France and the Capets. Within hours, then, Louis had arranged for his son, Prince Louis, to be married to Eleanor, with Abbot Suger in charge of the wedding arrangements. Prince Louis was sent to Bordeaux with an escort of 500 knights, as well as Abbot Suger, Theobald II, Count of Champagne and Count Ralph of Vermandois.
On 25 July 1137 the couple were married in the Cathedral of Saint-André in Bordeaux by the Archbishop of Bordeaux.[2] Immediately after the wedding, the couple were enthroned as Duke and Duchess of Aquitaine.[2][2] However, there was a catch: the land would remain independent of France and Eleanor's oldest son would be both King of the Franks and Duke of Aquitaine. Thus, her holdings would not be merged with France until the next generation. She gave Louis a wedding present that is still in existence, a rock crystal vase, currently on display at the Louvre.[2][7][8] Eleanor's tenure as junior Queen of the Franks lasted only few days. On 1 August, Eleanor's father-in-law died and her husband became sole monarch. Eleanor was anointed and crowned Queen of the Franks on Christmas Day of the same year.[2][5]
Possessing a high-spirited nature, Eleanor was not popular with the staid northerners (according to sources, Louis´ mother, Adélaide de Maurienne, thought her flighty and a bad influence) — she was not aided by memories of Queen Constance, the Provençal wife of Robert II, tales of whose immodest dress and language were still told with horror.[9]
Her conduct was repeatedly criticized by Church elders (particularly Bernard of Clairvaux and Abbot Suger) as indecorous. The King, however, was madly in love with his beautiful and worldly bride and granted her every whim, even though her behavior baffled and vexed him to no end. Much money went into beautifying the austere Cité Palace in Paris for Eleanor's sake.[7]
hough Louis was a pious man he soon came into a violent conflict with Pope Innocent II. In 1141, the archbishopric of Bourges became vacant, and the King put forward as a candidate one of his chancellors, Cadurc, whilst vetoing the one suitable candidate, Pierre de la Chatre, who was promptly elected by the canons of Bourges and consecrated by the Pope. Louis accordingly bolted the gates of Bourges against the new Bishop; the Pope, recalling William X's similar attempts to exile Innocent's supporters from Poitou and replace them with priests loyal to himself, blamed Eleanor, saying that Louis was only a child and should be taught manners. Outraged, Louis swore upon relics that so long as he lived Pierre should never enter Bourges. This brought the interdict upon the King's lands. Pierre de la Chatre was given refuge by Theobald II, Count of Champagne. Louis became involved in a war with Count Theobald of Champagne by permitting Raoul I, Count of Vermandois and seneschal of France, to repudiate his wife Eléonore of Blois, Theobald's sister, and to marry Petronilla of Aquitaine, Eleanor's sister. Eleanor urged Louis to support her sister's illegitimate marriage to Raoul of Vermandois. Champagne had also offended Louis by siding with the Pope in the dispute over Bourges. The war lasted two years (1142–44) and ended with the occupation of Champagne by the royal army. Louis was personally involved in the assault and burning of the town of Vitry. More than a thousand people (1300, some say) who had sought refuge in the church died in the flames. Horrified, and desiring an end to the war, Louis attempted to make peace with Theobald in exchange for supporting the lift of the interdict on Raoul and Petronilla. This was duly lifted for long enough to allow Theobald's lands to be restored; it
Eleanor of Aquitaine (or Aliénor), Duchess of Aquitaine and Gascony and Countess of Poitou (1122[1] – April 1, 1204) was one of the wealthiest and most powerful women in Europe during the High Middle Ages. She was Queen consort of both France (to Louis VII) and England (to Henry II) in turn, and the mother of two kings of England, Richard the Lionheart and John Lackland. She is well known for her involvement in the Second Crusade.
Eleanor of Aquitaine is considered by many to have been the most powerful and enlightened woman of her age, if not the entire medieval epoch. She was born in 1122 on Bordeaux in the country of Aquitaine, having for a father the future duke of Aquitaine, William X, and her mother Aenor of Chatellerault. In Aquitaine women had liberties rarely found elsewhere in Europe and they mixed freely with men. Her personality, as she grew older, owed a lot to this atmosphere of civility.
The first man to exhort an enormous impression upon her was her grandfather, William IX, Duke of Aquitaine, known as the Troubadour (Guilhem loTrobador). "He was a man of extraordinary complexity, alternately idealistic and cynical, ruthless but impractical . . . Nevertheless contemporaries undoubtedly respected him as a mighty prince and a brave knight." Her father, William X, was just as complex and colorful as his father, however known also for aggressiveness. He quarreled often wit
House
House of Poitiers Father
William X, Duke of Aquitaine Mother
Aenor de Châtellerault Born
1122 or 1124 Poitiers, Bordeaux, or Nieul-sur-l'Autise Died
1 April 1204 (aged c. 81/82) Poitiers Burial Fontevraud Abbey, Fontevraud Religion
Roman Catholicism
French and English Monarch. Duchess and heiress of Aquitaine and Gascogne, Countess of Poitou. Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine inherited the duchy of Aquitaine from her father in 1137. In the same year, on July 25., she married Louis of France. The couple were very different., Louis had been raised at a monastery and was very calm and she was a with an independent spirit. In 1147 they both joined the Crusade. During their stay in Antioch she was suspected to have a liaison with her uncle Raymond de Poitiers, who reigned as Prince of Antioch, and she had to return to France alone. She gave birth to two daughters, Marie and Alix, that where later married to two brothers.
In March 1152 she divorced Louis and married again in May the 19 year old Henry Plantagenet, which led to a scandal. With the divorce and remarriage Louis not only lost a wife, that he had apparently loved, but also her inheritance which consisted of the West and a large part of Southern France.
In 1154 Henry became King and his sphere of influence extended thereby from Scotland to the Pyreneeses. Over the years they had 8 children. In the beginning the marriage seems to have been very happy, but later Henry started to have affairs. With much energy she made political schemes against her husband. In 1173 she encouraged her three oldest sons to rebel against him and to claim their inheritances early.
In 1174 Henry defeated his sons and captured Eleonore. He imprisoned her for most of the following 16 years. She was released when the message of his death reached her prison. While Richard was on a Crusade she ruled the country very skillfully.
She traveled all her life governing her children's possession in France. In the Winter of 1199/1200 with the high age of 77 she travelled over the Pyreneeses to Castile to visit her daughter Aenor and accompany her granddaughter Blanca to France to marry the dauphin. In later years she more often retired to e Abbey of Fontevraud where she died and was buried beside her husband and two of her children. She had survived her husbands and eight of her ten children. During the Revolution her body was exhumed, her bones scattered and never recovered. (bio by: Lutetia)
Family links:
Parents: Guillaume X of Aquitaine (1099 - 1137) Aenor de Châtellerault (1103 - 1130) Spouses: King Louis VII (1120 - 1180)* Henry II (1133 - 1189)* Children: Marie de Champagne (1145 - 1198)* William IX Plantagenet-de Poitiers (1153 - 1156)* Henry Plantagenet (1155 - 1183)* Mathilda Plantagenet (1156 - 1189)* Richard I (1157 - 1199)* Geoffrey II Plantagenet (1158 - 1186)* Eleanor Plantagenet (1162 - 1214
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Eleanor of Aquitaine (Aliénor d'Aquitaine in French), Duchess of Aquitaine and Gascony and Countess of Poitou (1122[1] – April 1, 1204) was one of the wealthiest and most powerful women in Europe during the High Middle Ages. She was Queen consort of both France and England in turn and the mother of both King Richard I and King John. She is well known for her involvement in the Second Crusade.
The oldest of three children, Eleanor was the daughter of William X, Duke of Aquitaine, and her mother was Aenor de Châtellerault, the daughter of Aimeric I, Vicomte of Chatellerault. William's and Aenor's marriage had been arranged by his father, William IX of Aquitaine the Troubadour, and her mother, Dangereuse, William IX's long-time mistress. Eleanor was named after her mother (Aenor) and called Aliénor, which means the other Aenor in the langue d'oc (Occitan language), but it became Eléanor in the northern Oil language.
She was reared in one of Europe's most cultured courts, the birthplace of courtly love. By all accounts, Eleanor's father ensured she had the best education possible: she could read, speak Latin, and was well-versed in music and literature. She also enjoyed riding, hawking, and hunting. Eleanor was very outgoing and stubborn. She was regarded as very beautiful during her time; most likely she was red-haired and brown-eyed as her father and grandfather were. She became heiress to Aquitaine (the largest and richest of the provinces in what would become modern France) and 7 other countries, after the death of her brother, William Aigret, at age 4, along with their mother. She had only one other sibling, a younger sister named Aelith in Occitan, but always known by the name of Petronilla.
In 1137, Duke William X set out from Poitiers to Bordeaux, taking his daughters with him. Upon reaching Bordeaux, he left Eleanor and Petronilla in the charge of the Archbishop of Bordeaux, one of the Duke's few loyal vassals, who could be entrusted with the safety of the Duke's daughters. The Duke then set out for the Shrine of Saint James of Compostela in North-western Spain, in the company of other pilgrims; however, on April 9th (Good Friday), 1137 he was stricken with sickness, probably food poisoning. He died that evening, having bequeathed Aquitaine to Eleanor.
Something of a free spirit, Eleanor was not popular with the staid northerners (according to sources, Louis´ mother, Adélaide de Maurienne, thought her flighty and a bad influence) — she was not aided by memories of Queen Constance, the Provencial wife of Robert II, of whom tales of her immodest dress and language were still told with horror,[2].
Her conduct was repeatedly criticized by Church elders (particularly Bernard of Clairvaux and Abbot Suger) as indecorous. The King, however, was madly in love with his beautiful and worldly bride, and granted her every whim, even though her behavior baffled and vexed him to no end. Much money went into beautifying the austere Cite Palace in Paris for Eleanor's sake.
Two lords — Theobald of Blois, son of the Count of Champagne, and Geoffrey of Anjou (brother of Henry, Count of Anjou and Duke of Normandy) — tried to kidnap Eleanor to marry her and claim her lands on Eleanor's way to Poitiers. As soon as she arrived in Poitiers, Eleanor sent envoys to Henry Count of Anjou and Duke of Normandy, asking him to come at once and marry her. On Whit Sunday, May 18, 1152, six weeks after her annulment, Eleanor married Henry 'without the pomp and ceremony that befitted their rank'.[3] She was about 11 years older than he, and related to him more closely than she had been to Louis. Eleanor and Henry were half, third cousins through their common ancestor Ermengarde of Anjou (wife to Robert I, Duke of Burgundy and Geoffrey, Count of Gâtinais); they were also both descendants of Robert II of Normandy. A marriage between Henry and Eleanor's daughter, Marie, had indeed been declared impossible for this very reason. One of Eleanor's rumoured lovers had been Henry's own father, Geoffrey of Anjou, who had advised his son to avoid any involvement with her.
Over the next thirteen years, she bore Henry five sons and three daughters: William, Henry, Richard, Geoffrey, John, Matilda, Eleanor, and Joanna. John Speed, in his 1611 work History of Great Britain, mentions the possibility that Eleanor had a son named Philip, who died young. His sources no longer exist and he alone mentions this birth.[4]
Henry was by no means faithful to his wife and had a reputation for philandering. Their son, William, and Henry's illegitimate son, Geoffrey, were born just months apart. Henry fathered other illegitimate children throughout the marriage. Eleanor appears to have taken an ambivalent attitude towards these affairs: for example, Geoffrey of York, an illegitimate son of Henry and a prostitute named Ykenai, was acknowledged by Henry as his child and raised at Westminster in the care of the Queen.
Eleanor died in 1204 and was entombed in Fontevraud Abbey next to her husband Henry and near son Richard. Her tomb effigy shows her reading a Bible and is decorated with magnificent jewelry. She was the patroness of such literary figures as Wace, Benoît de Sainte-More, and Chrétien de Troyes
Eleanor of Aquitaine (or Aliénor), Duchess of Aquitaine and Gascony (old north Basque country) and Countess of Poitou (1122[1]–1 April 1204) was one of the wealthiest and most powerful women in Europe during the High Middle Ages.
Eleanor was Queen consort of both France (to Louis VII) and England (to Henry II) in turn, and the mother of two kings of England, Richard I and John. She is well known for her participation in the Second Crusade.Eleanor was the oldest of three children of William X, Duke of Aquitaine, and his duchess Aenor de Châtellerault, the daughter of Aimeric I, Vicomte of Chatellerault and countess Dangereuse, who was William IX of Aquitaine the Troubadour's longtime mistress as well as Eleanor's maternal grandmother. Her parents' marriage had been arranged by Dangereuse with her paternal grandfather, the Troubadour. Eleanor was 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 and Eleanor in English.
She was reared in Europe's most cultured court of her time, the birthplace of courtly love. By all accounts, Eleanor's father ensured that she had the best possible education. Although her native tongue was Poitevin, she was taught to read and speak Latin, was well versed in music and literature, and schooled in riding, hawking, and hunting. Eleanor was extroverted, lively, intelligent, and strong willed. She was regarded as a great beauty by her contemporaries, none of whom left a surviving description that includes the color of her hair or eyes. Although the ideal beauty of the time was a silvery blonde with blue eyes, she may have inherited her coloring from her father and grandfather, who were both brown-eyed with copper locks. In the spring of 1130, when Eleanor was eight, her four-year-old brother William Aigret and their mother died at the castle of Talmont, on Aquitaine's Atlantic coast. Eleanor became the heir to her father's domains. Aquitaine was the largest and richest province of France; Poitou and Aquitaine together were almost one-third the size of modern France. Eleanor had only one other legitimate sibling, a younger sister named Aelith but always called Petronilla. Her half brothers, William and Joscelin, were acknowledged by William X as his sons—not as his heirs—and by his daughters as brothers. Later, during the first four years of Henry II's reign, all three siblings joined Eleanor's royal household.
Inheritance and first marriage
In 1137, Duke William X set out from Poitiers to Bordeaux, taking his daughters with him. Upon reaching Bordeaux, he left Eleanor and Petronilla in the charge of the Archbishop of Bordeaux, one of the Duke's few loyal vassals who could be entrusted with the safety of the duke's daughters. The duke then set out for the Shrine of Saint James of Compostela in northwestern Basque country, in the company of other pilgrims; however, on April 9th (Good Friday), 1137 he was stricken with sickness, probably food poisoning. He died that evening, having bequeathed Aquitaine to Eleanor.
Eleanor, about the age of 15, became the Duchess of Aquitaine, and thus the most eligible heiress in Europe. As these were the days when kidnapping an heiress was seen as a viable option for attaining title, William had dictated a will on the very day he died, bequeathing his domains to Eleanor and appointing King Louis VI (nicknamed "the Fat") as her guardian. William requested the king take care of both the lands and the duchess, and find a suitable husband for her. However, until a husband was found, the king had the right to Eleanor's lands. The duke also insisted to his companions that his death be kept a secret until Louis was informed — the men were to journey from Saint James across the Pyrenees as quickly as possible, to call at Bordeaux to notify the archbishop, and then to make all speed to Paris, to inform the king.
The King of France himself was also gravely ill at that time, suffering "a flux of the bowels" (dysentery) from which he seemed unlikely to recover. Despite his immense obesity and impending mortality, however, Louis the Fat remained clear-minded. To his concerns regarding his new heir, Prince Louis (the former heir, Philip, having died from a riding accident), was added joy over the death of one of his most cantankerous vassals — and the availability of the best Duchy in France. Presenting a solemn and dignified manner to the grieving Aquitainian messengers, upon their departure he became overjoyed, stammering in delight.
Rather than act as guardian to the duchess and duchy, he decided, he would marry the duchess to his heir and bring Aquitaine under the French crown, thereby greatly increasing the power and prominence of France and the Capets. Within hours, then, Louis had arranged for his son, Prince Louis, to be married to Eleanor, with Abbot Suger in charge of the wedding arrangements. Prince Louis was sent to Bordeaux with an escort of 500 knights, as well as Abbot Suger, Count Theobald II of Champagne and Count Ralph of Vermandois.
Louis arrived in Bordeaux on 11 July, and the next day, accompanied by the Archbishop of Bordeaux, Geoffrey de Lauroux (in whose keeping Eleanor and Petronilla had been left), the couple were married in the Cathedral of Saint-André in Bordeaux. It was a magnificent ceremony with almost a thousand guests. However, there was a catch: the land would remain independent of France and Eleanor's oldest son would be both King of France and Duke of Aquitaine. Thus, her holdings would not be merged with France until the next generation. She gave Louis a wedding present that is still in existence, a rock crystal vase, currently on display at the Louvre.
Something of a free spirit, Eleanor was not popular with the staid northerners (according to sources, Louis´ mother, Adélaide de Maurienne, thought her flighty and a bad influence) — she was not aided by memories of Queen Constance, the Provencial wife of Robert II, tales of whose immodest dress and language were still told with horror.[2]
Her conduct was repeatedly criticized by Church elders (particularly Bernard of Clairvaux and Abbot Suger) as indecorous. The King, however, was madly in love with his beautiful and worldly bride and granted her every whim, even though her behavior baffled and vexed him to no end. Much money went into beautifying the austere Cite Palace in Paris for Eleanor's sake.[citation needed]
[edit] Conflict
Though Louis was a pious man he soon came into violent conflict with Pope Innocent II. In 1141, the archbishopric of Bourges became vacant, and the king put forward as a candidate one of his chancellors, Cadurc, whilst vetoing the one suitable candidate, Pierre de la Chatre, who was promptly elected by the canons of Bourges and consecrated by the Pope. Louis accordingly bolted the gates of Bourges against the new Bishop; the Pope, recalling William X's similar attempts to exile Innocent's supporters from Poitou and replace them with priests loyal to himself, blamed Eleanor, saying that Louis was only a child and should be taught manners. Outraged, Louis swore upon relics that so long as he lived Pierre should never enter Bourges. This brought the interdict upon the king's lands. Pierre de la Chatre was given refuge by Count Theobald II of Champagne.
Louis became involved in a war with Count Theobald of Champagne by permitting Raoul I of Vermandois and seneschal of France, to repudiate his wife (Leonora), Theobald's niece, and to marry Petronilla of Aquitaine, Eleanor's sister. Eleanor urged Louis to support her sister's illegitimate marriage to Raoul of Vermandois. Champagne had also offended Louis by siding with the pope in the dispute over Bourges. The war lasted two years (1142–44) and ended with the occupation of Champagne by the royal army. Louis was personally involved in the assault and burning of the town of Vitry. More than a thousand people (1300, some say) who had sought refuge in the church died in the flames.
Horrified, and desiring an end to the war, Louis attempted to make peace with Theobald in exchange for supporting the lift of the interdict on Raoul and Petronilla. This was duly lifted for long enough to allow Theobald's lands to be restored; it was then lowered once more when Raoul refused to repudiate Petronilla, prompting Louis to return to the Champagne and ravage it once more.
In June of 1144, the King and Queen visited the newly built cathedral at Saint-Denis. Whilst there, the Queen met with Bernard of Clairvaux, demanding that he have the excommunication of Petronilla and Raoul lifted through his influence on the Pope, in exchange for which King Louis would make concessions in Champagne, and recognise Pierre de la Chatre as archbishop of Bourges. Dismayed at her attitude, Bernard scolded her for her lack of penitence and her interference in matters of state. In response, Eleanor broke down, and meekly excused her behaviour, claiming to be embittered through her lack of children. In response to this, Bernard became more kindly towards her: "My child, seek those things which make for peace. Cease to stir up the King against the Church, and urge upon him a better course of action. If you will promise to do this, I in return promise to entreat the merciful Lord to grant you offspring."
In a matter of weeks, peace had returned to France: Theobald's provinces had been returned, and Pierre de la Chatre was installed as Archbishop of Bourges. And in 1145, Eleanor gave birth to a daughter, Marie.
Louis, however still burned with guilt over the massacre at Vitry-le-Brûlé, and desired to make a Pilgrimage to the Holy Land in order to atone for his sins. Fortuitously for him, in the Autumn of 1145, Pope Eugenius requested Louis to lead a Crusade to the Middle East, to rescue the Frankish Kingdoms there from disaster. Accordingly, Louis declared on Christmas Day 1145 at Bourges his intention of going on a crusade.
[edit] Crusade
Eleanor of Aquitaine took up the crusade during a sermon preached by Bernard of Clairvaux. She was followed by some of her royal ladies-in-waiting as well as 300 non-noble vassals. She insisted on taking part in the Crusades as the feudal leader of the soldiers from her duchy. The story that she and her ladies dressed as Amazons is disputed by serious historians; however, her testimonial launch of the Second Crusade from Vézelay, the rumored location of Mary Magdalene´s burial, dramatically emphasized the role of women in the campaign.
The Crusade itself achieved little. Louis was a weak and ineffectual military leader with no concept of maintaining troop discipline or morale, or of making informed and logical tactical decisions. In eastern Europe, the French army was at times hindered by Manuel I Comnenus, the Byzantine Emperor, who feared that it would jeopardize the tenuous safety of his empire; however, during their 3-week stay at Constantinople, Louis was fêted and Eleanor was much admired. She is compared with Penthesilea, mythical queen of the Amazons, by the Greek historian Nicetas Choniates; he adds that she gained the epithet chrysopous (golden-foot) from the cloth of gold that decorated and fringed her robe. Louis and Eleanor stayed in the Philopation palace, just outside the city walls.
From the moment the Crusaders entered Asia Minor, the Crusade went badly. The King and Queen were optimistic — the Byzantine Emperor had told them that the German Emperor Conrad had won a great victory against a Turkish army (where in fact the German army had been massacred), and the company was still eating well. However, whilst camping near Nicea, the remnants of the German army, including a dazed and sick Emperor Conrad, began to straggle into the French camp, bringing news of their disaster. The French, with what remained of the Germans, then began to march in increasingly disorganized fashion, towards Antioch. Their spirits were buoyed on Christmas Eve — when they chose to camp in the lush Dercervian valley near Ephesus, they were ambushed by a Turkish detachment; the French proceeded to slaughter this detachment and appropriate their camp.
Louis then decided to directly cross the Phrygian mountains, in the hope of speeding his approach to take refuge with Eleanor's uncle Raymond in Antioch. As they ascended the mountains, however, the army and the King and Queen were left horrified by the unburied corpses of the previously slaughtered German army.
On the day set for the crossing of Mount Cadmos, Louis chose to take charge of the rear of the column, where the unarmed pilgrims and the baggage trains marched. The vanguard, with which Queen Eleanor marched, was commanded by her Aquitainian vassal, Geoffrey de Rancon; this, being unencumbered by baggage, managed to reach the summit of Cadmos, where de Rancon had been ordered to make camp for the night. De Rancon however chose to march further, deciding in concert with the Count of Maurienne (Louis´ uncle) that a nearby plateau would make a better camp: such disobedience was reportedly common in the army, due to the lack of command from the King.
Accordingly, by midafternoon, the rear of the column — believing the day's march to be nearly at an end — was dawdling; this resulted in the army becoming divided, with some having already crossed the summit and others still approaching it. It was at this point that the Turks, who had been following and feinting for many days, seized their opportunity and attacked those who had not yet crossed the summit. The Turks, having seized the summit of the mountain, and the French (both soldiers and pilgrims) having been taken by surprise, there was little hope of escape: those who tried were caught and killed, and many men, horses and baggage were cast into the canyon below the ridge. William of Tyre placed the blame for this disaster firmly on the baggage — which was considered to have belonged largely to the women.
The King, ironically, was saved by his lack of authority — having scorned a King's apparel in favour of a simple solder's tunic, he escaped notice (unlike his bodyguards, whose skulls were brutally smashed and limbs severed). He reportedly "nimbly and bravely scaled a rock by making use of some tree roots which God had provided for his safety," and managed to survive the attack. Others were not so fortunate: "No aid came from Heaven, except that night fell."[citation needed]
The official scapegoat for the disaster was Geoffrey de Rancon, who had made the decision to continue, and it was suggested that he be hanged (a suggestion which the King ignored). Since he was Eleanor's vassal, many believed that it was she who had been ultimately responsible for the change in plan, and thus the massacre. This did nothing for her popularity in Christendom — as did the blame affixed to her baggage, and the fact that her Aquitainian soldiers had marched at the front, and thus were not involved in the fight. Eleanor's reputation was further sullied by her supposed affair with her uncle Raymond of Poitiers, Prince of Antioch.
While in the eastern Mediterranean, Eleanor learned about maritime conventions developing there, which were the beginnings of what would become admiralty law. She introduced those conventions in her own lands, on the island of Oleron in 1160 and later in England as well. She was also instrumental in developing trade agreements with Constantinople and ports of trade in the Holy Lands.
[edit] Annulment of first marriage
Even before the Crusade, Eleanor and Louis were becoming estranged. The city of Antioch had been annexed by Bohemond of Hauteville in the First Crusade, and it was now ruled by Eleanor's flamboyant uncle, Raymond of Antioch, who had gained the principality by marrying its reigning Princess, Constance of Antioch. Clearly, Eleanor supported his desire to re-capture the nearby County of Edessa, the cause of the Crusade; in addition, having been close to him in their youth, she now showed excessive affection towards her uncle — whilst many historians today dismiss this as familial affection (noting their early friendship, and his similarity to her father and grandfather), most at the time firmly believed the two to be involved in an incestuous and adulterous affair. Louis was directed by the Church to visit Jerusalem instead. When Eleanor declared her intention to stand with Raymond and the Aquitaine forces, Louis had her brought out by force. His long march to Jerusalem and back north debilitated his army, but her imprisonment disheartened her knights, and the divided Crusade armies could not overcome the Muslim forces. For reasons unknown, likely the Germans' insistence on conquest, the Crusade leaders targeted Damascus, an ally until the attack. Failing in this attempt, they retired to Jerusalem, and then home.
Home, however, was not easily reached. The royal couple, on separate ships due to their disagreements, were first attacked in May by Byzantine ships attempting to capture both (in order to take them to Byzantium, according to the orders of the Emperor). Although they escaped this predicament unharmed, stormy weather served to drive Eleanor's ship far to the south (to the Barbary Coast), and to similarly lose her husband. Neither was heard of for over two months: at which point, in mid-July, Eleanor's ship finally reached Palermo in Sicily, where she discovered that she and her husband had both been given up for dead. The King still lost, she was given shelter and food by servants of King Roger of Sicily, until the King eventually reached Calabria, and she set out to meet him there. Later, at King Roger's court in Potenza, she learnt of the death of her uncle Raymond; this appears to have forced a change of plans, for instead of returning to France from Marseilles, they instead sought the Pope in Tusculum, where he had been driven five months before by a Roman revolt.
Pope Eugenius III did not, as Eleanor had hoped, grant a divorce; instead, he attempted to reconcile Eleanor and Louis, confirming the legality of their marriage, and proclaiming that no word could be spoken against it, and that it might not be dissolved under any pretext. Eventually, he arranged events so that Eleanor had no choice but to sleep with Louis in a bed specially prepared by the Pope. Thus was conceived their second child — not a son, but another daughter, Alix of France. The marriage was now doomed. Still without a son and in danger of being left with no male heir, facing substantial opposition to Eleanor from many of his barons and her own desire for divorce, Louis had no choice but to bow to the inevitable. On March 11, 1152, they met at the royal castle of Beaugency to dissolve the marriage. Archbishop Hugh Sens, Primate of France, presided, and Louis and Eleanor were both present, as were the Archbishops of Bordeaux and Rouen. Archbishop Samson of Reims acted for Eleanor. On March 21 the four archbishops, with the approval of Pope Eugenius, granted an annulment due to consanguinity within the fourth degree (Eleanor and Louis were third cousins, once removed and shared common ancestry with Robert II of France). Their two daughters were declared legitimate and custody of them awarded to King Louis. Archbishop Sampson received assurances from Louis that Eleanor's lands would be restored to her.
[edit] Marriage to Henry II of England Henry II of England Henry II of England The marriage of Eleanor of Aquitaine to Henry of Anjou and Henry's subsequent succession to the throne of England created an empire. The marriage of Eleanor of Aquitaine to Henry of Anjou and Henry's subsequent succession to the throne of England created an empire.
Two lords — Theobald of Blois, son of the Count of Champagne, and Geoffrey of Anjou (brother of Henry, Count of Anjou and Duke of Normandy) — tried to kidnap Eleanor to marry her and claim her lands on Eleanor's way to Poitiers. As soon as she arrived in Poitiers, Eleanor sent envoys to Henry Count of Anjou and Duke of Normandy, asking him to come at once and marry her. On Whit Sunday, May 18, 1152, six weeks after her annulment, Eleanor married Henry 'without the pomp and ceremony that befitted their rank'.[3] She was about 11 years older than he, and related to him more closely than she had been to Louis. Eleanor and Henry were half, third cousins through their common ancestor Ermengarde of Anjou (wife to Robert I, Duke of Burgundy and Geoffrey, Count of Gâtinais); they were also both descendants of Robert II of Normandy. A marriage between Henry and Eleanor's daughter, Marie, had indeed been declared impossible for this very reason. One of Eleanor's rumoured lovers had been Henry's own father, Geoffrey of Anjou, who had advised his son to avoid any involvement with her.
Over the next thirteen years, she bore Henry five sons and three daughters: William, Henry, Richard, Geoffrey, John, Matilda, Eleanor, and Joanna. John Speed, in his 1611 work History of Great Britain, mentions the possibility that Eleanor had a son named Philip, who died young. His sources no longer exist and he alone mentions this birth.[4]
Henry was by no means faithful to his wife and had a reputation for philandering. Their son, William, and Henry's illegitimate son, Geoffrey, were born just months apart. Henry fathered other illegitimate children throughout the marriage. Eleanor appears to have taken an ambivalent attitude towards these affairs: for example, Geoffrey of York, an illegitimate son of Henry and a prostitute named Ykenai, was acknowledged by Henry as his child and raised at Westminster in the care of the Queen.
The period between Henry's accession and the birth of Eleanor's youngest son was turbulent: Aquitaine, as was the norm, defied the authority of Henry as Eleanor's husband; attempts to claim Toulouse, the rightful inheritance of Eleanor's grandmother and father, were made, ending in failure; the news of Louis of France's widowhood and remarriage was followed by the marriage of Henry's son (young Henry) to Louis' daughter Marguerite; and, most climactically, the feud between the King and Thomas à Becket, his Chancellor, and later his Archbishop of Canterbury. Little is known of Eleanor's involvement in these events. By late 1166, and the birth of her final child, however, Henry's notorious affair with Rosamund Clifford had become known, and her marriage to Henry appears to have become terminally strained.
1167 saw the marriage of Eleanor's third daughter, Matilda, to Henry the Lion of Saxony; Eleanor remained in England with her daughter for the year prior to Matilda's departure to Normandy in September. Afterwards, Eleanor proceeded to gather together her movable possessions in England and transport them on several ships in December to Argentan. At the royal court, celebrated there that Christmas, she appears to have agreed to a separation from Henry. Certainly, she left for her own city of Poitiers immediately after Christmas. Henry did not stop her; on the contrary, he and his army personally escorted her there, before attacking a castle belonging to the rebellious Lusignan family. Henry then went about his own business outside Aquitaine, leaving Earl Patrick (his regional military commander) as her protective custodian. When Patrick was killed in a skirmish, Eleanor (who proceeded to ransom his captured nephew, the young William Marshal), was left in control of her inheritance.
[edit] Myth of the "Court of Love" in Poitiers This section does not cite any references or sources. (April 2008) Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed.
Of all her influence on culture, Eleanor's time in Poitier was perhaps the most critical and yet the least is known of what happened. Away from Henry, Eleanor was able to develop her own court in Poitier. At a small cathedral still stands the stained glass commemorating Eleanor and Henry with a family tree growing from their prayers. Her court style was to encourage the cult of courtly love. Apparently, however, both King and church expunged the records of the actions and judgments taken under her authority. A small fragment of the court letters, codes and practices were written by Andreas Capellanus. It appears that one activity in the court style was for 12 men and women to hear cases of love between individuals. This forum was the forerunner of the jury system that she would implement in England after releasing all prisoners upon Henry's death. The proceedings of the court are speculative, though the legends of the court have endured.
Henry concentrated on controlling his increasingly-large empire, badgering Eleanor's subjects in attempts to control her patrimony of Aquitaine and her court at Poitiers. Straining all bounds of civility, Henry caused Archbishop Thomas Becket to be murdered at the altar of the church in 1170 (though there is considerable debate as to whether it was truly Henry's intent to be permanently rid of his archbishop). This aroused Eleanor's horror and contempt, along with most of Europe's.
Eleanor's marriage to Henry was tumultuous and argumentative. However, despite his mistresses and Eleanor's imprisonment, Eleanor once remarked, "My marriage to Henry was a much happier one than my marriage to Louis." Eleanor and Henry did deeply love and respect one another and they did all they could to keep their family together as a whole. In their years together they raised their children and saw their grandchildren grow up. Eleanor and Henry, despite the rebellion of their children, and the times in which they lived, lived out their years with relative happiness.
[edit] Revolt and capture
In March 1173, aggrieved at his lack of power and egged on by his father's enemies, the younger Henry launched the Revolt of 1173–1174. He fled to Paris. From there 'the younger Henry, devising evil against his father from every side by the advice of the French King, went secretly into Aquitaine where his two youthful brothers, Richard and Geoffrey, were living with their mother, and with her connivance, so it is said, he incited them to join him'.[5] The Queen sent her younger sons to France 'to join with him against their father the King'.[6] Once her sons had left for Paris, Eleanor encouraged the lords of the south to rise up and support them.[7] Sometime between the end of March and the beginning of May, Eleanor left Poitiers to follow her sons to Paris but was arrested on the way and sent to the King in Rouen. The King did not announce the arrest publicly. For the next year, her whereabouts are unknown. On July 8, 1174, Henry took ship for England from Barfleur. He brought Eleanor on the ship. As soon as they disembarked at Southampton, Eleanor was taken away either to Winchester Castle or Sarum Castle and held there.
[edit] Years of imprisonment 1173–1189
Eleanor was imprisoned for the next sixteen years, much of the time in various locations in England. During her imprisonment, Eleanor had become more and more distant with her sons, especially Richard (who had always been her favorite). 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 triangular castle which is believed to have been one of her prisons.
Henry lost his great love, Rosamund Clifford, in 1176. He had met her in 1166 and began the liaison in 1173, supposedly contemplating divorce from Eleanor. Rosamund/Rosamond was one among Henry's many mistresses, but although he treated earlier liaisons discreetly, he flaunted Rosamond. This notorious affair caused a monkish scribe with a gift for Latin to transcribe Rosamond's name to "Rosa Immundi", or "Rose of Unchastity". Likely, Rosamond was one weapon in Henry's efforts to provoke Eleanor into seeking an annulment (this flared in October 1175). Had she done so, Henry might have appointed Eleanor abbess of Fontevrault (Fontevraud), requiring her to take a vow of poverty, thereby releasing her titles and nearly half their empire to him, but Eleanor was much too wily to be provoked into this. Nevertheless, rumours persisted, perhaps assisted by Henry's camp, that Eleanor had poisoned Rosamund. No one knows what Henry believed, but he did donate much money to the Godstow Nunnery in which Rosamund was buried.
In 1183, Young Henry tried again. In debt and refused control of Normandy, he tried to ambush his father at Limoges. He was joined by troops sent by his brother Geoffrey and Philip II of France. Henry's troops besieged the town, forcing his son to flee. Henry the Young wandered aimlessly through Aquitaine until he caught dysentery. On Saturday, 11 June 1183, the Young King realized he was dying and was overcome with remorse for his sins. When his father's ring was sent to him, he begged that his father would show mercy to his mother, and that all his companions would plead with Henry to set her free. The King sent Thomas of Earley, Archdeacon of Wells, to break the news to Eleanor at Sarum.[8] Eleanor had had a dream in which she foresaw her son Henry's death. In 1193 she would tell Pope Celestine III that she was tortured by his memory.
In 1183, Philip of France claimed that certain properties in Normandy belonged to The Young Queen but Henry insisted that they had once belonged to Eleanor and would revert to her upon her son's death. For this reason Henry summoned Eleanor to Normandy in the late summer of 1183. She stayed in Normandy for six months. This was the beginning of a period of greater freedom for the still supervised Eleanor. Eleanor went back to England probably early in 1184.[7] Over the next few years Eleanor often traveled with her husband and was sometimes associated with him in the government of the realm, but still had a custodian so that she was not free.
[edit] Regent of England
Upon Henry's death on July 6, 1189, just days after suffering an injury from a jousting match, Richard was his undisputed heir. One of his first acts as king was to send William the Marshal to England with orders to release Eleanor from prison, but her custodians had already released her when he demanded this.[9] Eleanor rode to Westminster and received the oaths of fealty from many lords and prelates on behalf of the King. She ruled England in Richard's name, signing herself as 'Eleanor, by the grace of God, Queen of England'. On August 13, 1189, Richard sailed from Barfleur to Portsmouth, and was received with enthusiasm. She ruled England as regent while Richard went off on the Third Crusade. She personally negotiated his ransom by going to Germany.
[edit] Later life
Eleanor survived Richard and lived well into the reign of her youngest son King John. In 1199, under the terms of a truce between King Philip II of France and King John, it was agreed that Philip's twelve-year-old heir Louis would be married to one of John's nieces of Castile. John deputed Eleanor to travel to Castile to select one of the princesses. Now 77, Eleanor set out from Poitiers. Just outside Poitiers she was ambushed and held captive by Hugh IX of Lusignan, which had long ago been sold by his forebears to Henry II. Eleanor secured her freedom by agreeing to his demands and journeyed south, crossed the Pyrenees, and travelled through the Kingdoms of Navarre and Castile, arriving before the end of January, 1200.
King Alfonso VIII and Queen Leonora of Castile had two remaining unmarried daughters, Urraca and Blanche. Eleanor selected the younger daughter, Blanche. She stayed for two months at the Castilian court. Late in March, Eleanor and her granddaughter Blanche journeyed back across the Pyrenees. When she was at Bordeaux where she celebrated Easter, the famous warrior Mercadier came to her and it was decided that he would escort the Queen and Princess north. "On the second day in Easter week, he was slain in the city by a man-at-arms in the service of Brandin",[6] a rival mercenary captain. This tragedy was too much for the elderly Queen, who was fatigued and unable to continue to Normandy. She and Blanche rode in easy stages to the valley of the Loire, and she entrusted Blanche to the Archbishop of Bordeaux, who took over as her escort. The exhausted Eleanor went to Fontevrault, where she remained. In early summer, Eleanor was ill and John visited her at Fontevrault.
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 Fontevrault for her capital Poitiers to prevent her grandson Arthur, John's enemy, from taking control. Arthur learned of her whereabouts and besieged her in the castle of Mirabeau. As soon as John heard of this he marched south, overcame the besiegers and captured Arthur. Eleanor then returned to Fontevrault where she took the veil as a nun. By the time of her death she had outlived all of her children except for King John and Queen Leonora.
Eleanor died in 1204 and was entombed in Fontevraud Abbey next to her husband Henry and her son Richard. Her tomb effigy shows her reading a Bible and is decorated with magnificent jewelry. She was the patroness of such literary figures as Wace, Benoît de Sainte-More, and Chrétien de Troyes.
[edit] In historical fiction
Eleanor and Henry are the main characters in James Goldman's play The Lion in Winter, which was made into a film starring Peter O'Toole and Katharine Hepburn, and remade for television in 2003 with Patrick Stewart and Glenn Close. The depiction of her in the play and film Becket contains historical inaccuracies, as acknowledged by the author, Jean Anouilh. In 2004, Catherine Muschamp's one-woman play, Mother of the Pride, toured the UK with Eileen Page in the title role. In 2005, Chapelle Jaffe played the same part in Toronto.
The character "Queen Elinor" appears in William Shakespeare's King John, along with other members of the family.
Eleanor, Duchesse d'Aquitaine was born between 1120 and 1122 at Château de Belin, Guienne, France.4 She was the daughter of Guillaume X, Duc d'Aquitaine and Eleanor Châtellérault de Rochefoucauld.2,3 She married, firstly, Louis VII, Roi de France, son of Louis VI, Roi de France and Adelaide di Savoia, on 25 July 1137 at Bordeaux Cathedral, Bordeaux, Dauphine, France.4 She and Louis VII, Roi de France were divorced in 1152 on the grounds of consanguity.5 She married, secondly, Henry II 'Curtmantle' d'Anjou, King of England, son of Geoffrey V Plantagenet, Comte d'Anjou et Maine and Matilda 'the Empress' of England, on 18 May 1152 at Bordeaux Cathedral, Bordeaux, Dauphine, France.4 She was also reported to have been married on 14 May 1152. She died on 1 April 1204 at Fontevraud Abbey, Fontevraud, France.5 She was buried at Fontevraud Abbey, Fontevraud, France.5
In a way Eleanor of Aquitaine's life had barely begun after she returned to France from her travels on the Second Crusade. She lived until her eighties, becoming one of the great political and wealthy powers of medieval Europe. Eleanor was wealthy because she was heiress of the duchy of Aquitaine, one of the greatest fiefs in Europe. Aquitaine was like a separate nation with lands extending in southwestern France from the river Loire to the Pyrenees. Eleanor's court was a trend setter in the medieval world, known for its sophistication and luxury. Heavily influenced by the Spanish courts of the Moors, it gave patronage to poets and encouraged the art of the troubadours, some of whom were believed to be in love with the beautiful Eleanor. One story is that in her effort to shed her rough knights of their unruly ways, she made up a mock trial in which the court ladies sat on an elevated platform and judged the knights, who read poems of homage to women and acted out proper courting techniques. The men wore fancy clothes - flowing sleeves, pointed shoes - and wore their hair long.
During their adventures on the Second Crusade, it became apparent that her marriage with dour, severe King Louis VII of France was ill matched. The marriage was annulled on a technicality, and Eleanor left her two daughters by him to be raised in the French court. Within a short time Eleanor threw herself into a new marriage, a stormy one to Henry of Anjou, an up and coming prince eleven years younger than she. Their temperaments as well as their wealth in land were well matched; her new husband became Henry II king of England in 1154.
For the next thirteen years Eleanor constantly bore Henry children, five sons and three daughters. (William, Henry, Richard I "the Lionheart", Geoffrey, John "Lackland", Mathilda, Eleanor, and Joan). Richard and John became, in turn, kings of England. Henry was given the title "the young king" by his father, although father Henry still ruled. Through tough fighting and clever alliances, and with a parcel of children, Henry and Eleanor created an impressive empire. As well, Eleanor was an independent ruler in her own right since she had inherited the huge Duchy of Aquitaine and Poitiers from her father when she was 15.
However all was not well between Henry and Eleanor. When her older sons were of age, her estrangement from her husband grew. In 1173 she led her three of her sons in a rebellion against Henry, surprising him with this act of aggression so seemingly unusual for a woman. In her eyes it was justified. After two decades of child bearing, putting up with his infidelities, vehemently disagreeing with some of his decisions, and, worst of all, having to share her independence and power, Eleanor may have hoped that her prize would have been the right to rule Aquitaine with her beloved third son Richard, and without Henry. The rebellion was put down, however, and fifty-year-old Eleanor was imprisoned by Henry in various fortified buildings for the next fifteen years.
In 1189, Henry died. On the accession of her son Richard I to kingship, Eleanor's fortunes rose again. When Richard was fighting in the Holy Land she repeatedly intervened to defend his lands - even against her son John. When he was captured on his way home, she used her considerable influence to help raise the ransom and secure Richard's release. Her relentless work on behalf of her favorite son increased her fame as an extremely able politician.
Eleanor traveled constantly, even in her old age. Running from one end of Europe to another, she often risked her life in her efforts to maintain the loyalty of the English subjects, cement marriage alliances, and manage her army and estates. By this time she had many grandchildren. Possibly one of her wisest acts was to travel to Spain to chose and collect her thirteen year old grand daughter Blanche of Castile to become the bride of Louis VIII of France, the grandson of her first husband Louis VII! Blanche eventually proved a rival to Eleanor in political influence and success as queen of France. Eleanor also, when almost seventy, rode over the Pyrenees to collect her candidate to be Richard's wife, (Berengaria, the daughter of King Sancho the Wise of Navarre). She then traversed the Alps, traveling all the way down the Italian peninsula, to bring Berengaria to Sicily. Berengaria then travelled to Cyprus, where Richard married her at Limossol on May 12, 1191.
Eleanor died in 1204 at her favorite religious house, the abbey of Fontevrault, where she had retreated to find peace during various moments of her life.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleanor_of_Aquitaine
Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine (1122[1]–1 April 1204) was one of the wealthiest and most powerful women in Europe during the High Middle Ages.
Eleanor succeeded her father as Duchess of Aquitaine and Countess of Poitiers at the age of fifteen, and thus became the most eligible bride in Europe. Three months after her accession she married Louis, son and junior co-ruler of her guardian, King Louis VI. As Queen of the Franks, she participated in the unsuccessful Second Crusade. Soon after the Crusade was over, Louis VII and Eleanor agreed to dissolve their marriage, because of Eleanor's own desire for divorce and also because the only children they had were two daughters - Marie, and Alix. The royal marriage was annuled on 11 March, 1152, on the grounds of consanguinity within the fourth degree. Their daughters were declared legitimate and custody of them awarded to Louis, while Eleanor's lands were restored to her.
As soon as she arrived in Poitiers, Eleanor proposed to the eleven years younger Henry, Duke of the Normans. On May 18, 1152, six weeks after the annulment of her first marriage, Eleanor married the Duke of the Normans. On 25 October, 1154 her husband ascended the throne of the Kingdom of England, making Eleanor Queen of the English. Over the next thirteen years, she bore Henry five sons, two of whom would become king, and three daughters. However, Henry and Eleanor eventually became estranged. She was imprisoned between 1173 and 1189 for supporting her son's revolt against King Henry II.
Eleanor was widowed on 6 July 1189. Her husband was succeeded by their son, Richard the Lionheart, who soon released his mother. Now queen mother, Eleanor acted as a regent for her son while he went off on the Third Crusade. Eleanor survived her son Richard and lived well into the reign of her youngest son King John. By the time of her death she had outlived all of her children except for King John and Leonora, Queen of Castile. Contents [hide]
* 1 Early life * 2 Inheritance * 3 First marriage o 3.1 Conflict o 3.2 Crusade * 4 Annulment of first marriage * 5 Second marriage o 5.1 Myth of the "Court of Love" in Poitiers o 5.2 Revolt and capture o 5.3 Years of imprisonment 1173–1189 * 6 Widowhood * 7 In historical fiction * 8 Ancestry * 9 Issue * 10 Notes * 11 Biographies and printed works * 12 External links
[edit] Early life Coat of arms of the duchy of Aquitaine.
Eleanor or Aliénor was the oldest of three children of William X, Duke of Aquitaine, and his duchess Aenor de Châtellerault, the daughter of Aimeric I, Vicomte of Chatellerault and countess Dangereuse, who was William IX, Duke of Aquitaine the Troubadour's longtime mistress as well as Eleanor's maternal grandmother. Her parents' marriage had been arranged by Dangereuse with her paternal grandfather, the Troubadour. Eleanor was 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 and Eleanor in English.
By all accounts, Eleanor's father ensured that she had the best possible education. Although her native tongue was Poitevin, she was taught to read and speak Latin, was well versed in music and literature, and schooled in riding, hawking, and hunting. Eleanor was extroverted, lively, intelligent, and strong willed. She was regarded as a great beauty by her contemporaries, none of whom, however, left a surviving description that includes the colour of her hair or eyes. Although the ideal beauty of the time was a silvery blonde with blue eyes, she may have inherited her colouring from her father and grandfather, who were both brown-eyed with copper-red hair. In the spring of 1130, when Eleanor was eight, her four-year-old brother William Aigret and their mother died at the castle of Talmont, on Aquitaine's Atlantic coast. Eleanor became the heir to her father's domains. Aquitaine was the largest and richest province of France; Poitou and Aquitaine together were almost one-third the size of modern France. Eleanor had only one other legitimate sibling, a younger sister named Aelith but always called Petronilla. Her half brothers, William and Joscelin, were acknowledged by William X as his sons—not as his heirs—and by his daughters as brothers. Later, during the first four years of Henry II's reign, all three siblings joined Eleanor's royal household.
[edit] Inheritance
In 1137, Duke William X set out from Poitiers to Bordeaux, taking his daughters with him. Upon reaching Bordeaux, he left Eleanor and Petronilla in the charge of the Archbishop of Bordeaux, one of the Duke's few loyal vassals who could be entrusted with the safety of the duke's daughters. The duke then set out for the Shrine of Saint James of Compostela, in the company of other pilgrims; however, on Good Friday 9 April 1137, he was stricken with sickness, possibly food poisoning. He died that evening, having bequeathed Aquitaine to Eleanor.
Eleanor, aged about fifteen, became the Duchess of Aquitaine, and thus the most eligible heiress in Europe. As these were the days when kidnapping an heiress was seen as a viable option for obtaining a title, William had dictated a will on the very day he died, bequeathing his domains to Eleanor and appointing King Louis VI (nicknamed "the Fat") as her guardian. William requested the King to take care of both the lands and the duchess, and to also find her a suitable husband. However, until a husband was found, the King had the legal right to Eleanor's lands. The Duke also insisted to his companions that his death be kept a secret until Louis was informed — the men were to journey from Saint James across the Pyrenees as quickly as possible, to call at Bordeaux to notify the Archbishop, and then to make all speed to Paris, to inform the King.
The King of France himself was also gravely ill at that time, suffering "a flux of the bowels" (dysentery) from which he seemed unlikely to recover. Despite his immense obesity and impending mortality, however, Louis the Fat remained clear-minded. To his concerns regarding his new heir, Prince Louis (the former heir, Philip, having died from a riding accident), was added joy over the death of one of his most cantankerous vassals — and the availability of the best Duchy in France. Presenting a solemn and dignified manner to the grieving Aquitainian messengers, upon their departure he became overjoyed, stammering in delight.
Rather than act as guardian to the Duchess and duchy, he decided, he would marry the duchess to his heir and bring Aquitaine under the French Crown, thereby greatly increasing the power and prominence of France and the Capets. Within hours, then, Louis had arranged for his son, Prince Louis, to be married to Eleanor, with Abbot Suger in charge of the wedding arrangements. Prince Louis was sent to Bordeaux with an escort of 500 knights, as well as Abbot Suger, Theobald II, Count of Champagne and Count Ralph of Vermandois.
[edit] First marriage Wedding of Louis and Eleanor
Louis arrived in Bordeaux on 11 July.[citation needed] On 25 July 1137 the couple were married in the Cathedral of Saint-André in Bordeaux by the Archbishop of Bordeaux, Geoffrey de Lauroux[2] (in whose keeping Eleanor and Petronilla had been left). It was a magnificent ceremony with almost a thousand guests. However, there was a catch: the land would remain independent of France and Eleanor's oldest son would be both King of France and Duke of Aquitaine. Thus, her holdings would not be merged with France until the next generation. She gave Louis a wedding present that is still in existence, a rock crystal vase, currently on display at the Louvre.
Possessing a high-spirited nature, Eleanor was not popular with the staid northerners (according to sources, Louis´ mother, Adélaide de Maurienne, thought her flighty and a bad influence) — she was not aided by memories of Queen Constance, the Provencial wife of Robert II, tales of whose immodest dress and language were still told with horror.[3]
Her conduct was repeatedly criticized by Church elders (particularly Bernard of Clairvaux and Abbot Suger) as indecorous. The King, however, was madly in love with his beautiful and worldly bride and granted her every whim, even though her behavior baffled and vexed him to no end. Much money went into beautifying the austere Cite Palace in Paris for Eleanor's sake.[citation needed]
[edit] Conflict
Though Louis was a pious man he soon came into a violent conflict with Pope Innocent II. In 1141, the archbishopric of Bourges became vacant, and the King put forward as a candidate one of his chancellors, Cadurc, whilst vetoing the one suitable candidate, Pierre de la Chatre, who was promptly elected by the canons of Bourges and consecrated by the Pope. Louis accordingly bolted the gates of Bourges against the new Bishop; the Pope, recalling William X's similar attempts to exile Innocent's supporters from Poitou and replace them with priests loyal to himself, blamed Eleanor, saying that Louis was only a child and should be taught manners. Outraged, Louis swore upon relics that so long as he lived Pierre should never enter Bourges. This brought the interdict upon the King's lands. Pierre de la Chatre was given refuge by Theobald II, Count of Champagne.
Louis became involved in a war with Count Theobald of Champagne by permitting Raoul I, Count of Vermandois and seneschal of France, to repudiate his wife (Leonora), Theobald's niece, and to marry Petronilla of Aquitaine, Eleanor's sister. Eleanor urged Louis to support her sister's illegitimate marriage to Raoul of Vermandois. Champagne had also offended Louis by siding with the pope in the dispute over Bourges. The war lasted two years (1142–44) and ended with the occupation of Champagne by the royal army. Louis was personally involved in the assault and burning of the town of Vitry. More than a thousand people (1300, some say) who had sought refuge in the church died in the flames.
Horrified, and desiring an end to the war, Louis attempted to make peace with Theobald in exchange for supporting the lift of the interdict on Raoul and Petronilla. This was duly lifted for long enough to allow Theobald's lands to be restored; it was then lowered once more when Raoul refused to repudiate Petronilla, prompting Louis to return to the Champagne and ravage it once more.
In June, 1144, the King and Queen visited the newly built cathedral at Saint-Denis. Whilst there, the Queen met with Bernard of Clairvaux, demanding that he have the excommunication of Petronilla and Raoul lifted through his influence on the Pope, in exchange for which King Louis would make concessions in Champagne, and recognise Pierre de la Chatre as archbishop of Bourges. Dismayed at her attitude, Bernard scolded her for her lack of penitence and her interference in matters of state. In response, Eleanor broke down, and meekly excused her behaviour, claiming to be bitter because of her lack of children. In response to this, Bernard became more kindly towards her: "My child, seek those things which make for peace. Cease to stir up the King against the Church, and urge upon him a better course of action. If you will promise to do this, I in return promise to entreat the merciful Lord to grant you offspring."
In a matter of weeks, peace had returned to France: Theobald's provinces had been returned, and Pierre de la Chatre was installed as Archbishop of Bourges. In April 1145, Eleanor gave birth to a daughter, Marie.
Louis, however still burned with guilt over the massacre at Vitry-le-Brûlé, and desired to make a Pilgrimage to the Holy Land in order to atone for his sins. Fortuitously for him, in the Autumn of 1145, Pope Eugenius requested Louis to lead a Crusade to the Middle East, to rescue the Frankish Kingdoms there from disaster. Accordingly, Louis declared on Christmas Day 1145 at Bourges his intention of going on a crusade.
[edit] Crusade
Eleanor of Aquitaine took up the crusade during a sermon preached by Bernard of Clairvaux. She was followed by some of her royal ladies-in-waiting as well as 300 non-noble vassals. She insisted on taking part in the Crusades as the feudal leader of the soldiers from her duchy. The story that she and her ladies dressed as Amazons is disputed by serious historians; however, her testimonial launch of the Second Crusade from Vézelay, the rumored location of Mary Magdalene´s burial, dramatically emphasized the role of women in the campaign.
The Crusade itself achieved little. Louis was a weak and ineffectual military leader with no concept of maintaining troop discipline or morale, or of making informed and logical tactical decisions. In eastern Europe, the French army was at times hindered by Manuel I Comnenus, the Byzantine Emperor, who feared that it would jeopardize the tenuous safety of his empire; however, during their 3-week stay at Constantinople, Louis was fêted and Eleanor was much admired. She is compared with Penthesilea, mythical queen of the Amazons, by the Greek historian Nicetas Choniates; he adds that she gained the epithet chrysopous (golden-foot) from the cloth of gold that decorated and fringed her robe. Louis and Eleanor stayed in the Philopation palace, just outside the city walls. Second Crusade council: Conrad III of Germany, Eleanor's husband Louis VII of France, and Baldwin III of Jerusalem
From the moment the Crusaders entered Asia Minor, the Crusade went badly. The King and Queen were optimistic — the Byzantine Emperor had told them that the German Emperor Conrad had won a great victory against a Turkish army (where in fact the German army had been massacred), and the company was still eating well. However, whilst camping near Nicea, the remnants of the German army, including a dazed and sick Emperor Conrad, began to straggle into the French camp, bringing news of their disaster. The French, with what remained of the Germans, then began to march in increasingly disorganized fashion, towards Antioch. Their spirits were buoyed on Christmas Eve — when they chose to camp in the lush Dercervian valley near Ephesus, they were ambushed by a Turkish detachment; the French proceeded to slaughter this detachment and appropriate their camp.
Louis then decided to directly cross the Phrygian mountains, in the hope of speeding his approach to take refuge with Eleanor's uncle Raymond in Antioch. As they ascended the mountains, however, the army and the King and Queen were left horrified by the unburied corpses of the previously slaughtered German army.
On the day set for the crossing of Mount Cadmos, Louis chose to take charge of the rear of the column, where the unarmed pilgrims and the baggage trains marched. The vanguard, with which Queen Eleanor marched, was commanded by her Aquitainian vassal, Geoffrey de Rancon; this, being unencumbered by baggage, managed to reach the summit of Cadmos, where de Rancon had been ordered to make camp for the night. De Rancon however chose to march further, deciding in concert with the Count of Maurienne (Louis´ uncle) that a nearby plateau would make a better camp: such disobedience was reportedly common in the army, due to the lack of command from the King.
Accordingly, by midafternoon, the rear of the column — believing the day's march to be nearly at an end — was dawdling; this resulted in the army becoming divided, with some having already crossed the summit and others still approaching it. It was at this point that the Turks, who had been following and feinting for many days, seized their opportunity and attacked those who had not yet crossed the summit. The Turks, having seized the summit of the mountain, and the French (both soldiers and pilgrims) having been taken by surprise, there was little hope of escape: those who tried were caught and killed, and many men, horses and baggage were cast into the canyon below the ridge. William of Tyre placed the blame for this disaster firmly on the baggage — which was considered to have belonged largely to the women.
The King, ironically, was saved by his lack of authority — having scorned a King's apparel in favour of a simple solder's tunic, he escaped notice (unlike his bodyguards, whose skulls were brutally smashed and limbs severed). He reportedly "nimbly and bravely scaled a rock by making use of some tree roots which God had provided for his safety," and managed to survive the attack. Others were not so fortunate: "No aid came from Heaven, except that night fell."[citation needed]
The official scapegoat for the disaster was Geoffrey de Rancon, who had made the decision to continue, and it was suggested that he be hanged (a suggestion which the King ignored). Since he was Eleanor's vassal, many believed that it was she who had been ultimately responsible for the change in plan, and thus the massacre. This did nothing for her popularity in Christendom — as did the blame affixed to her baggage, and the fact that her Aquitainian soldiers had marched at the front, and thus were not involved in the fight. Eleanor's reputation was further sullied by her supposed affair with her uncle Raymond of Poitiers, Prince of Antioch.
While in the eastern Mediterranean, Eleanor learned about maritime conventions developing there, which were the beginnings of what would become admiralty law. She introduced those conventions in her own lands, on the island of Oleron in 1160 and later in England as well. She was also instrumental in developing trade agreements with Constantinople and ports of trade in the Holy Lands.
[edit] Annulment of first marriage
Even before the Crusade, Eleanor and Louis were becoming estranged. The city of Antioch had been annexed by Bohemond of Hauteville in the First Crusade, and it was now ruled by Eleanor's flamboyant uncle, Raymond of Antioch, who had gained the principality by marrying its reigning Princess, Constance of Antioch. Clearly, Eleanor supported his desire to re-capture the nearby County of Edessa, the cause of the Crusade; in addition, having been close to him in their youth, she now showed excessive affection towards her uncle — whilst many historians today dismiss this as familial affection (noting their early friendship, and his similarity to her father and grandfather), most at the time firmly believed the two to be involved in an incestuous and adulterous affair. Louis was directed by the Church to visit Jerusalem instead. When Eleanor declared her intention to stand with Raymond and the Aquitaine forces, Louis had her brought out by force. His long march to Jerusalem and back north debilitated his army, but her imprisonment disheartened her knights, and the divided Crusade armies could not overcome the Muslim forces. For reasons unknown, likely the Germans' insistence on conquest, the Crusade leaders targeted Damascus, an ally until the attack. Failing in this attempt, they retired to Jerusalem, and then home. Eleanor and her first husband
Home, however, was not easily reached. The royal couple, on separate ships due to their disagreements, were first attacked in May by Byzantine ships attempting to capture both (in order to take them to Byzantium, according to the orders of the Emperor). Although they escaped this predicament unharmed, stormy weather served to drive Eleanor's ship far to the south (to the Barbary Coast), and to similarly lose her husband. Neither was heard of for over two months: at which point, in mid-July, Eleanor's ship finally reached Palermo in Sicily, where she discovered that she and her husband had both been given up for dead. The King still lost, she was given shelter and food by servants of King Roger of Sicily, until the King eventually reached Calabria, and she set out to meet him there. Later, at King Roger's court in Potenza, she learnt of the death of her uncle Raymond; this appears to have forced a change of plans, for instead of returning to France from Marseilles, they instead sought the Pope in Tusculum, where he had been driven five months before by a Roman revolt.
Pope Eugenius III did not, as Eleanor had hoped, grant a divorce; instead, he attempted to reconcile Eleanor and Louis, confirming the legality of their marriage, and proclaiming that no word could be spoken against it, and that it might not be dissolved under any pretext. Eventually, he arranged events so that Eleanor had no choice but to sleep with Louis in a bed specially prepared by the Pope. Thus was conceived their second child — not a son, but another daughter, Alix of France. The marriage was now doomed. Still without a son and in danger of being left with no male heir, facing substantial opposition to Eleanor from many of his barons and her own desire for divorce, Louis had no choice but to bow to the inevitable. On 11 March, 1152, they met at the royal castle of Beaugency to dissolve the marriage. Archbishop Hugh Sens, Primate of France, presided, and Louis and Eleanor were both present, as were the Archbishops of Bordeaux and Rouen. Archbishop Samson of Reims acted for Eleanor. On 21 March, the four archbishops, with the approval of Pope Eugenius, granted an annulment due to consanguinity within the fourth degree (Eleanor and Louis were third cousins, once removed and shared common ancestry with Robert II of France). Their two daughters were, however, declared legitimate and custody of them awarded to King Louis. Archbishop Sampson received assurances from Louis that Eleanor's lands would be restored to her.
[edit] Second marriage Henry II of England The marriage of Eleanor of Aquitaine to Henry of Anjou and Henry's subsequent succession to the throne of England created an empire.
Two lords — Theobald V, Count of Blois, son of the Count of Champagne, and Geoffrey VI, Count of Anjou (brother of Henry, Count of Anjou and Duke of Normandy) — tried to kidnap Eleanor to marry her and claim her lands on Eleanor's way to Poitiers. As soon as she arrived in Poitiers, Eleanor sent envoys to Henry Count of Anjou and Duke of Normandy, asking him to come at once and marry her. On 18 May, 1152 (Whit Sunday), six weeks after her annulment, Eleanor married Henry 'without the pomp and ceremony that befitted their rank'.[4] At that moment, Eleanor became Duchess of the Normans and Countess of the Angevins, while Henry became Duke of Aquitaine and Count of Poitiers. She was about 11 years older than he, and related to him more closely than she had been to Louis. Eleanor and Henry were half, third cousins through their common ancestor Ermengarde of Anjou (wife to Robert I, Duke of Burgundy and Geoffrey, Count of Gâtinais); they were also both descendants of Robert II of Normandy. A marriage between Henry and Eleanor's daughter, Marie, had indeed been declared impossible for this very reason. One of Eleanor's rumoured lovers had been Henry's own father, Geoffrey of Anjou, who had advised his son to avoid any involvement with her.
Over the next thirteen years, she bore Henry five sons and three daughters: William, Henry, Richard, Geoffrey, John, Matilda, Eleanor, and Joan. John Speed, in his 1611 work History of Great Britain, mentions the possibility that Eleanor had a son named Philip, who died young. His sources no longer exist and he alone mentions this birth.[5]
Henry was by no means faithful to his wife and had a reputation for philandering. Their son, William, and Henry's illegitimate son, Geoffrey, were born just months apart. Henry fathered other illegitimate children throughout the marriage. Eleanor appears to have taken an ambivalent attitude towards these affairs: for example, Geoffrey of York, an illegitimate son of Henry and a prostitute named Ykenai, was acknowledged by Henry as his child and raised at Westminster in the care of the Queen.
The period between Henry's accession and the birth of Eleanor's youngest son was turbulent: Aquitaine, as was the norm, defied the authority of Henry as Eleanor's husband; attempts to claim Toulouse, the rightful inheritance of Eleanor's grandmother and father, were made, ending in failure; the news of Louis of France's widowhood and remarriage was followed by the marriage of Henry's son (young Henry) to Louis' daughter Marguerite; and, most climactically, the feud between the King and Thomas à Becket, his Chancellor, and later his Archbishop of Canterbury. Little is known of Eleanor's involvement in these events. By late 1166, and the birth of her final child, however, Henry's notorious affair with Rosamund Clifford had become known, and her marriage to Henry appears to have become terminally strained.
1167 saw the marriage of Eleanor's third daughter, Matilda, to Henry the Lion of Saxony; Eleanor remained in England with her daughter for the year prior to Matilda's departure to Normandy in September. Afterwards, Eleanor proceeded to gather together her movable possessions in England and transport them on several ships in December to Argentan. At the royal court, celebrated there that Christmas, she appears to have agreed to a separation from Henry. Certainly, she left for her own city of Poitiers immediately after Christmas. Henry did not stop her; on the contrary, he and his army personally escorted her there, before attacking a castle belonging to the rebellious Lusignan family. Henry then went about his own business outside Aquitaine, leaving Earl Patrick (his regional military commander) as her protective custodian. When Patrick was killed in a skirmish, Eleanor (who proceeded to ransom his captured nephew, the young William Marshal), was left in control of her inheritance.
[edit] Myth of the "Court of Love" in Poitiers This section does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed. (April 2008)
Of all her influence on culture, Eleanor's time in Poitier was perhaps the most critical and yet the least is known of what happened. Away from Henry, Eleanor was able to develop her own court in Poitier. At a small cathedral still stands the stained glass commemorating Eleanor and Henry with a family tree growing from their prayers. Her court style was to encourage the cult of courtly love. Apparently, however, both King and church expunged the records of the actions and judgments taken under her authority. A small fragment of the court letters, codes and practices were written by Andreas Capellanus. It appears that one activity in the court style was for 12 men and women to hear cases of love between individuals. This forum was the forerunner of the jury system that she would implement in England after releasing all prisoners upon Henry's death. The proceedings of the court are speculative, though the legends of the court have endured.
Henry concentrated on controlling his increasingly-large empire, badgering Eleanor's subjects in attempts to control her patrimony of Aquitaine and her court at Poitiers. Straining all bounds of civility, Henry caused Archbishop Thomas Becket to be murdered at the altar of the church in 1170 (though there is considerable debate as to whether it was truly Henry's intent to be permanently rid of his archbishop). This aroused Eleanor's horror and contempt, along with most of Europe's.
Eleanor's marriage to Henry was tumultuous and argumentative. However, despite his mistresses and Eleanor's imprisonment, Eleanor once remarked, "My marriage to Henry was a much happier one than my marriage to Louis." Eleanor and Henry did deeply love and respect one another and they did all they could to keep their family together as a whole. In their years together they raised their children and saw their grandchildren grow up. Eleanor and Henry, despite the rebellion of their children, and the times in which they lived, lived out their years with relative happiness.
[edit] Revolt and capture
In March 1173, aggrieved at his lack of power and egged on by his father's enemies, the younger Henry launched the Revolt of 1173–1174. He fled to Paris. From there 'the younger Henry, devising evil against his father from every side by the advice of the French King, went secretly into Aquitaine where his two youthful brothers, Richard and Geoffrey, were living with their mother, and with her connivance, so it is said, he incited them to join him'.[6] The Queen sent her younger sons to France 'to join with him against their father the King'.[7] Once her sons had left for Paris, Eleanor encouraged the lords of the south to rise up and support them.[8] Sometime between the end of March and the beginning of May, Eleanor left Poitiers to follow her sons to Paris but was arrested on the way and sent to the King in Rouen. The King did not announce the arrest publicly. For the next year, her whereabouts are unknown. On 8 July, 1174, Henry took ship for England from Barfleur. He brought Eleanor on the ship. As soon as they disembarked at Southampton, Eleanor was taken away either to Winchester Castle or Sarum Castle and held there.
[edit] Years of imprisonment 1173–1189
Eleanor was imprisoned for the next sixteen years, much of the time in various locations in England. During her imprisonment, Eleanor had become more and more distant with her sons, especially Richard (who had always been her favorite). 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 triangular castle which is believed to have been one of her prisons. Royal styles of Eleanor of Aquitaine
Reference style Her Grace Spoken style Your Grace Alternative style My Lady
Henry lost his great love, Rosamund Clifford, in 1176. He had met her in 1166 and began the liaison in 1173, supposedly contemplating divorce from Eleanor. Rosamond was one among Henry's many mistresses, but although he treated earlier liaisons discreetly, he flaunted Rosamond. This notorious affair caused a monkish scribe with a gift for Latin to transcribe Rosamond's name to "Rosa Immundi", or "Rose of Unchastity". Likely, Rosamond was one weapon in Henry's efforts to provoke Eleanor into seeking an annulment (this flared in October 1175). Had she done so, Henry might have appointed Eleanor abbess of Fontevrault (Fontevraud), requiring her to take a vow of poverty, thereby releasing her titles and nearly half their empire to him, but Eleanor was much too wily to be provoked into this. Nevertheless, rumours persisted, perhaps assisted by Henry's camp, that Eleanor had poisoned Rosamund. No one knows what Henry believed, but he did donate much money to the Godstow Nunnery in which Rosamund was buried.
In 1183, Young Henry tried again. In debt and refused control of Normandy, he tried to ambush his father at Limoges. He was joined by troops sent by his brother Geoffrey and Philip II of France. Henry's troops besieged the town, forcing his son to flee. Henry the Young wandered aimlessly through Aquitaine until he caught dysentery. On Saturday, 11 June 1183, the Young King realized he was dying and was overcome with remorse for his sins. When his father's ring was sent to him, he begged that his father would show mercy to his mother, and that all his companions would plead with Henry to set her free. The King sent Thomas of Earley, Archdeacon of Wells, to break the news to Eleanor at Sarum.[9] Eleanor had had a dream in which she foresaw her son Henry's death. In 1193 she would tell Pope Celestine III that she was tortured by his memory.
In 1183, Philip of France claimed that certain properties in Normandy belonged to The Young Queen but Henry insisted that they had once belonged to Eleanor and would revert to her upon her son's death. For this reason Henry summoned Eleanor to Normandy in the late summer of 1183. She stayed in Normandy for six months. This was the beginning of a period of greater freedom for the still supervised Eleanor. Eleanor went back to England probably early in 1184.[8] Over the next few years Eleanor often traveled with her husband and was sometimes associated with him in the government of the realm, but still had a custodian so that she was not free.
[edit] Widowhood
Upon Henry's death on July 6, 1189, just days after suffering an injury from a jousting match, Richard was his undisputed heir. One of his first acts as king was to send William the Marshal to England with orders to release Eleanor from prison, but her custodians had already released her. [10]
Eleanor rode to Westminster and received the oaths of fealty from many lords and prelates on behalf of the King. She ruled England in Richard's name, signing herself as 'Eleanor, by the grace of God, Queen of England'. On 13 August, 1189, Richard sailed from Barfleur to Portsmouth, and was received with enthusiasm. She ruled England as regent while Richard went off on the Third Crusade. She personally negotiated his ransom by going to Germany.
Eleanor survived Richard and lived well into the reign of her youngest son King John. In 1199, under the terms of a truce between King Philip II of France and King John, it was agreed that Philip's twelve-year-old heir Louis would be married to one of John's nieces of Castile. John deputed Eleanor to travel to Castile to select one of the princesses. Now 77, Eleanor set out from Poitiers. Just outside Poitiers she was ambushed and held captive by Hugh IX of Lusignan, which had long ago been sold by his forebears to Henry II. Eleanor secured her freedom by agreeing to his demands and journeyed south, crossed the Pyrenees, and travelled through the Kingdoms of Navarre and Castile, arriving before the end of January, 1200.
King Alfonso VIII and Queen Leonora of Castile had two remaining unmarried daughters, Urraca and Blanche. Eleanor selected the younger daughter, Blanche. She stayed for two months at the Castilian court. Late in March, Eleanor and her granddaughter Blanche journeyed back across the Pyrenees. When she was at Bordeaux where she celebrated Easter, the famous warrior Mercadier came to her and it was decided that he would escort the Queen and Princess north. "On the second day in Easter week, he was slain in the city by a man-at-arms in the service of Brandin",[7] a rival mercenary captain. This tragedy was too much for the elderly Queen, who was fatigued and unable to continue to Normandy. She and Blanche rode in easy stages to the valley of the Loire, and she entrusted Blanche to the Archbishop of Bordeaux, who took over as her escort. The exhausted Eleanor went to Fontevrault, where she remained. In early summer, Eleanor was ill and John visited her at Fontevrault. Plaster statue of Eleanor and Henry II at Fontevraud Abbey
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 Fontevrault for her capital Poitiers to prevent her grandson Arthur, John's enemy, from taking control. Arthur learned of her whereabouts and besieged her in the castle of Mirabeau. As soon as John heard of this he marched south, overcame the besiegers and captured Arthur. Eleanor then returned to Fontevrault where she took the veil as a nun.
Eleanor died in 1204 and was entombed in Fontevraud Abbey next to her husband Henry and her son Richard. Her tomb effigy shows her reading a Bible and is decorated with magnificent jewelry. By the time of her death she had outlived all of her children except for King John and Queen Leonora. She was the patroness of such literary figures as Wace, Benoît de Sainte-More, and Chrétien de Troyes.
[edit] In historical fiction
Eleanor and Henry are the main characters in James Goldman's play The Lion in Winter, which was made into a film starring Peter O'Toole and Katharine Hepburn in 1968 (for which Hepburn 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), and remade for television in 2003 with Patrick Stewart and Glenn Close (for which Close won the Golden Globe Award for Best Performance by an Actress In A Mini-series or Motion Picture Made for Television and was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress - Miniseries or a Movie).
The depiction of Eleanor in the play Becket, which was filmed in 1964 with Pamela Brown as Eleanor, contains historical inaccuracies, as acknowledged by the author, Jean Anouilh.
In 2004, Catherine Muschamp's one-woman play, Mother of the Pride, toured the UK with Eileen Page in the title role. In 2005, Chapelle Jaffe played the same part in Toronto.
The character "Queen Elinor" appears in William Shakespeare's King John, along with other members of the family. On television, she has been portrayed in this play by Una Venning in the BBC Sunday Night Theatre version (1952) and by Mary Morris in the BBC Shakespeare version (1984).
She figures prominently in Sharon Kay Penman's novels, When Christ And His Saints Slept, Time and Chance, and Devil's Brood. Penman has also written a series of historical mysteries where she, in old age, sends a trusted servant to unravel various puzzles.
Eleanor has also featured in a number of screen versions of Ivanhoe and the Robin Hood story. She has been played by Martita Hunt in The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men (1952), Jill Esmond in the British TV adventure series The Adventures of Robin Hood (1952–1953), Phyllis Neilson-Terry in the British TV adventure series Ivanhoe (1958), Yvonne Mitchell in the BBC TV drama series The Legend of Robin Hood (1975), Siân Phillips in the TV series Ivanhoe (1997), and Tusse Silberg in the TV series The New Adventures of Robin Hood (1997).
She has also been portrayed by Mary Clare in the silent film Becket (1923), based on a play by Alfred Lord Tennyson, Prudence Hyman in the British children's TV series Richard the Lionheart (1962), and Jane Lapotaire in the BBC TV drama series The Devil's Crown (1978), which dramatised the reigns of Henry II, Richard I and John. Most recently she was portrayed by Lynda Bellingham in the BBC One series Robin Hood (2006 TV series).
Eleanor of Aquitaine Ancestry
Ancestors of Eleanor of Aquitaine
Issue
By Louis VII of France (married 12 July 1137, annulled 21 March 1152)
Marie, Countess of Champagne 1145 11 March 1198 married Henry I, Count of Champagne; had issue
Alix, Countess of Blois 1151 1198 married Theobald V, Count of Blois; had issue
By Henry II of England (married 18 May 1152, widowed 6 July 1189)
William, Count of Poitiers 17 August 1153 April 1156 never married; no issue
Henry the Young King 28 February 1155 11 June 1183 married Marguerite of France; no issue
Matilda, Duchess of Saxony June 1156 13 July 1189 married Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony; had issue
Richard I of England 8 September 1157 6 April 1199 married Berengaria of Navarre; no issue
Geoffrey II, Duke of Brittany 23 September 1158 19 August 1186 married Constance, Duchess of Brittany; had issue
Leonora, Queen of Castile 13 October 1162 31 October 1214 married Alfonso VIII of Castile; had issue
Joan, Queen of Sicily October 1165 4 September 1199 married 1) William II of Sicily 2) Raymond VI of Toulouse; had issue
John of England 24 December 1167 19 October 1216 married 1) Isabella, Countess of Gloucester 2) Isabella of Angoulême; had issue
Notes
1. ^ The exact date of Eleanor's birth is not known, but the year is known from the fact that the lords of Aquitaine swore fealty to her on her fourteenth birthday in 1136. Some chronicles give her date of birth as 1120, but her parents almost certainly married in 1121.
2. ^ Kristiana Gregory, Crown Jewel of Aquitaine, 2002, p.182
3. ^ Meade, Marion (2002). Eleanor of Aquitaine. Phoenix Press. pp. 51. "...[Adelaide] perhaps [based] her preconceptions on another southerner, Constance of Provence...tales of her allegedly immodest dress and language still continued to circulate amongst the sober Franks."
4. ^ Chronique de Touraine
5. ^ Weir, Alison, Eleanor of Aquitaine: A Life, pages 154-155, Ballantine Books, 1999
6. ^ William of Newburgh
7. ^ a b Roger of Hoveden
8. ^ a b Eleanor of Aquitaine. Alison Weir 1999
9. ^ Ms. S. Berry, Senior Archivist at the Somerset Archive and Record Service, identified this "archdeacon of Wells" as Thomas of Earley, noting his family ties to Henry II and the Earleys' philanthropies (Power of a Woman, ch. 33, and endnote 40).
10. ^ Eleanor of Aquitaine. Alison Weir 1999.
Biographies and printed works
* Eleanor of Aquitaine: Lord and Lady, John Carmi Parsons & Bonnie Wheeler (2002) * Queen Eleanor: Independent Spirit of the Medieval World, Polly Schover Brooks (1983) (for young readers) * Eleanor of Aquitaine: A Biography, Marion Meade (1977) * Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Four Kings, Amy Kelly (1950) * Eleanor of Aquitaine: The Mother Queen, Desmond Seward (1978) * Eleanor of Aquitaine: A Life, Alison Weir (1999) * Le lit d'Aliénor, Mireille Calmel (2001) * "The Royal Diaries, Eleanor Crown Jewel of Aquitaine", Kristiana Gregory (2002) * Women of the Twelfth Century, Volume 1 : Eleanor of Aquitaine and Six Others, Georges Duby * A Proud Taste For Scarlet and Miniver, E. L. Konigsburg * The Book of Eleanor: A Novel of Eleanor of Aquitaine, Pamela Kaufman (2002) * The Courts of Love, Jean Plaidy (1987) * Power of a Woman. Memoirs of a turbulent life: Eleanor of Aquitaine, Robert Fripp (2006)
External links
* The Eleanor Vase preserved at the Louvre Images of Medieval Art and Architecture * RoyaList Online interactive family tree (en)
Eleanor of Aquitaine (in French: Aliénor d’Aquitaine, Éléonore de Guyenne) (1122[note 1] – 1 April 1204) was one of the wealthiest and most powerful women in Western Europe during the High Middle Ages. As well as being Duchess of Aquitaine in her own right, she was queen consort of France 1137-1152 and queen consort of England 1154-1189. She was the patroness of such literary figures as Wace, Benoît de Sainte-More, and Chrétien de Troyes.
Eleanor succeeded her father as suo jure Duchess of Aquitaine and Countess of Poitiers at the age of fifteen, and thus became the most eligible bride in Europe. Three months after her accession she married Louis VII, son and junior co-ruler of her guardian, King Louis VI. As Queen of the Franks, she participated in the unsuccessful Second Crusade. Soon after the Crusade was over, Louis VII and Eleanor agreed to dissolve their marriage, because of Eleanor's own desire for divorce and also because the only children they had were two daughters - Marie and Alix. The royal marriage was annulled on 11 March 1152, on the grounds of consanguinity within the fourth degree. Their daughters were declared legitimate and custody of them awarded to Louis, while Eleanor's lands were restored to her.
As soon as she arrived in Poitiers, Eleanor became engaged to the eleven years younger Henry II, Duke of the Normans. On 18 May 1152, eight weeks after the annulment of her first marriage, Eleanor married the Duke of the Normans. On 25 October 1154 her husband ascended the throne of the Kingdom of England, making Eleanor Queen of the English. Over the next thirteen years, she bore Henry eight children: five sons, two of whom would become king, and three daughters. However, Henry and Eleanor eventually became estranged. She was imprisoned between 1173 and 1189 for supporting her son Henry's revolt against her husband, King Henry II.
Eleanor was widowed on 6 July 1189. Her husband was succeeded by their son, Richard the Lionheart, who immediately moved to release his mother. Now queen mother, Eleanor acted as a regent for her son while he went off on the Third Crusade. Eleanor survived her son Richard and lived well into the reign of her youngest son King John. By the time of her death she had outlived all of her children except for King John and Eleanor, Queen of Castile. Recent scholarship has put forward new, original sources (letters to and from Eleanor.
Eleanor or Aliénor was the oldest of three children of William X, Duke of Aquitaine, whose glittering ducal court was on the leading edge of early–12th-century culture, and his wife, Aenor de Châtellerault, the daughter of Aimeric I, Viscount of Châtellerault, and Dangereuse, who was William IX's longtime mistress as well as Eleanor's maternal grandmother. Her parents' marriage had been arranged by Dangereuse with her paternal grandfather, the Troubadour.
Eleanor was 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 and Eleanor in English.[1] There is, however, an earlier Eleanor on record: Eleanor of Normandy, William the Conqueror's aunt, who lived a century earlier than Eleanor of Aquitaine.
By all accounts, Eleanor's father ensured that she had the best possible education.[2] Although her native tongue was Poitevin, she was taught to read and speak Latin, was well versed in music and literature, and schooled in riding, hawking, and hunting.[3] Eleanor was extroverted, lively, intelligent, and strong willed. In the spring of 1130, when Eleanor was eight, her four-year-old brother William Aigret and their mother died at the castle of Talmont, on Aquitaine's Atlantic coast. Eleanor became the heir presumptive to her father's domains. The Duchy of Aquitaine was the largest and richest province of France; Poitou (where Eleanor spent most of her childhood) and Aquitaine together were almost one-third the size of modern France. Eleanor had only one other legitimate sibling, a younger sister named Aelith but always called Petronilla. Her half brothers, William and Joscelin, were acknowledged by William X as his sons, but not as his heirs. Later, during the first four years of Henry II's reign, all three siblings joined Eleanor's royal household. [edit]Inheritance
In 1137, Duke William X set out from Poitiers to Bordeaux, taking his daughters with him. Upon reaching Bordeaux, he left Eleanor and Petronilla in the charge of the Archbishop of Bordeaux, one of the Duke's few loyal vassals who could be entrusted with the safety of the duke's daughters. 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 9 April 1137.[4][5]
Eleanor, aged about fifteen, became the Duchess of Aquitaine, and thus the most eligible heiress in Europe. As these were the days when kidnapping an heiress was seen as a viable option for obtaining a title, William had dictated a will on the very day he died, bequeathing his domains to Eleanor and appointing King Louis VI of France as her guardian.[6] William requested the King to take care of both the lands and the duchess, and to also find her a suitable husband.[2] However, until a husband was found, the King had the legal right to Eleanor's lands. The Duke also insisted to his companions that his death be kept a secret until Louis was informed — the men were to journey from Saint James across the Pyrenees as quickly as possible, to call at Bordeaux to notify the Archbishop, and then to make all speed to Paris, to inform the King.
The King of France himself was also gravely ill at that time, suffering "a flux of the bowels" (dysentery) from which he seemed unlikely to recover. Despite his immense obesity and impending mortality, however, Louis the Fat remained clear-minded. To his concerns regarding his new heir, Louis, who had been destined for the monastic life of a younger son (the former heir, Philip, having died from a riding accident),[7] was added joy over the death of one of his most powerful vassals — and the availability of the best duchy in France. Presenting a solemn and dignified manner to the grieving Aquitainian messengers, upon their departure he became overjoyed, stammering in delight. Rather than act as guardian to the Duchess and duchy, he decided, he would marry the duchess to his heir and bring Aquitaine under the French Crown, thereby greatly increasing the power and prominence of France and the Capets. Within hours, then, Louis had arranged for his son, Prince Louis, to be married to Eleanor, with Abbot Suger in charge of the wedding arrangements. Prince Louis was sent to Bordeaux with an escort of 500 knights, as well as Abbot Suger, Theobald II, Count of Champagne and Count Ralph of Vermandois.
On 25 July 1137 the couple were married in the Cathedral of Saint-André in Bordeaux by the Archbishop of Bordeaux.[2] Immediately after the wedding, the couple were enthroned as Duke and Duchess of Aquitaine.[2][2] However, there was a catch: the land would remain independent of France and Eleanor's oldest son would be both King of the Franks and Duke of Aquitaine. Thus, her holdings would not be merged with France until the next generation. She gave Louis a wedding present that is still in existence, a rock crystal vase, currently on display at the Louvre.[2][7][8] Eleanor's tenure as junior Queen of the Franks lasted only few days. On 1 August, Eleanor's father-in-law died and her husband became sole monarch. Eleanor was anointed and crowned Queen of the Franks on Christmas Day of the same year.[2][5]
Possessing a high-spirited nature, Eleanor was not popular with the staid northerners (according to sources, Louis´ mother, Adélaide de Maurienne, thought her flighty and a bad influence) — she was not aided by memories of Queen Constance, the Provençal wife of Robert II, tales of whose immodest dress and language were still told with horror.[9]
Her conduct was repeatedly criticized by Church elders (particularly Bernard of Clairvaux and Abbot Suger) as indecorous. The King, however, was madly in love with his beautiful and worldly bride and granted her every whim, even though her behavior baffled and vexed him to no end. Much money went into beautifying the austere Cité Palace in Paris for Eleanor's sake.[7]
hough Louis was a pious man he soon came into a violent conflict with Pope Innocent II. In 1141, the archbishopric of Bourges became vacant, and the King put forward as a candidate one of his chancellors, Cadurc, whilst vetoing the one suitable candidate, Pierre de la Chatre, who was promptly elected by the canons of Bourges and consecrated by the Pope. Louis accordingly bolted the gates of Bourges against the new Bishop; the Pope, recalling William X's similar attempts to exile Innocent's supporters from Poitou and replace them with priests loyal to himself, blamed Eleanor, saying that Louis was only a child and should be taught manners. Outraged, Louis swore upon relics that so long as he lived Pierre should never enter Bourges. This brought the interdict upon the King's lands. Pierre de la Chatre was given refuge by Theobald II, Count of Champagne. Louis became involved in a war with Count Theobald of Champagne by permitting Raoul I, Count of Vermandois and seneschal of France, to repudiate his wife Eléonore of Blois, Theobald's sister, and to marry Petronilla of Aquitaine, Eleanor's sister. Eleanor urged Louis to support her sister's illegitimate marriage to Raoul of Vermandois. Champagne had also offended Louis by siding with the Pope in the dispute over Bourges. The war lasted two years (1142–44) and ended with the occupation of Champagne by the royal army. Louis was personally involved in the assault and burning of the town of Vitry. More than a thousand people (1300, some say) who had sought refuge in the church died in the flames. Horrified, and desiring an end to the war, Louis attempted to make peace with Theobald in exchange for supporting the lift of the interdict on Raoul and Petronilla. This was duly lifted for long enough to allow Theobald's lands to be restored; it
Eleanor of Aquitaine (or Aliénor), Duchess of Aquitaine and Gascony and Countess of Poitou (1122[1] – April 1, 1204) was one of the wealthiest and most powerful women in Europe during the High Middle Ages. She was Queen consort of both France (to Louis VII) and England (to Henry II) in turn, and the mother of two kings of England, Richard the Lionheart and John Lackland. She is well known for her involvement in the Second Crusade.
Eleanor of Aquitaine is considered by many to have been the most powerful and enlightened woman of her age, if not the entire medieval epoch. She was born in 1122 on Bordeaux in the country of Aquitaine, having for a father the future duke of Aquitaine, William X, and her mother Aenor of Chatellerault. In Aquitaine women had liberties rarely found elsewhere in Europe and they mixed freely with men. Her personality, as she grew older, owed a lot to this atmosphere of civility.
The first man to exhort an enormous impression upon her was her grandfather, William IX, Duke of Aquitaine, known as the Troubadour (Guilhem loTrobador). "He was a man of extraordinary complexity, alternately idealistic and cynical, ruthless but impractical . . . Nevertheless contemporaries undoubtedly respected him as a mighty prince and a brave knight." Her father, William X, was just as complex and colorful as his father, however known also for aggressiveness. He quarreled often wit
House
House of Poitiers Father
William X, Duke of Aquitaine Mother
Aenor de Châtellerault Born
1122 or 1124 Poitiers, Bordeaux, or Nieul-sur-l'Autise Died
1 April 1204 (aged c. 81/82) Poitiers Burial Fontevraud Abbey, Fontevraud Religion
Roman Catholicism
French and English Monarch. Duchess and heiress of Aquitaine and Gascogne, Countess of Poitou. Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine inherited the duchy of Aquitaine from her father in 1137. In the same year, on July 25., she married Louis of France. The couple were very different., Louis had been raised at a monastery and was very calm and she was a with an independent spirit. In 1147 they both joined the Crusade. During their stay in Antioch she was suspected to have a liaison with her uncle Raymond de Poitiers, who reigned as Prince of Antioch, and she had to return to France alone. She gave birth to two daughters, Marie and Alix, that where later married to two brothers.
In March 1152 she divorced Louis and married again in May the 19 year old Henry Plantagenet, which led to a scandal. With the divorce and remarriage Louis not only lost a wife, that he had apparently loved, but also her inheritance which consisted of the West and a large part of Southern France.
In 1154 Henry became King and his sphere of influence extended thereby from Scotland to the Pyreneeses. Over the years they had 8 children. In the beginning the marriage seems to have been very happy, but later Henry started to have affairs. With much energy she made political schemes against her husband. In 1173 she encouraged her three oldest sons to rebel against him and to claim their inheritances early.
In 1174 Henry defeated his sons and captured Eleonore. He imprisoned her for most of the following 16 years. She was released when the message of his death reached her prison. While Richard was on a Crusade she ruled the country very skillfully.
She traveled all her life governing her children's possession in France. In the Winter of 1199/1200 with the high age of 77 she travelled over the Pyreneeses to Castile to visit her daughter Aenor and accompany her granddaughter Blanca to France to marry the dauphin. In later years she more often retired to e Abbey of Fontevraud where she died and was buried beside her husband and two of her children. She had survived her husbands and eight of her ten children. During the Revolution her body was exhumed, her bones scattered and never recovered. (bio by: Lutetia)
Family links:
Parents: Guillaume X of Aquitaine (1099 - 1137) Aenor de Châtellerault (1103 - 1130) Spouses: King Louis VII (1120 - 1180)* Henry II (1133 - 1189)* Children: Marie de Champagne (1145 - 1198)* William IX Plantagenet-de Poitiers (1153 - 1156)* Henry Plantagenet (1155 - 1183)* Mathilda Plantagenet (1156 - 1189)* Richard I (1157 - 1199)* Geoffrey II Plantagenet (1158 - 1186)* Eleanor Plantagenet (1162 - 1214
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Eleanor of Aquitaine (1122[1] or 1124 – 1 April 1204) was queen consort of France (1137–1152) and England (1154–1189) and duchess of Aquitaine in her own right (1137–1204). As a member of the Ramnulfids (House of Poitiers) rulers in southwestern France, she was one of the wealthiest and most powerful women in western Europe during the High Middle Ages. She was patron of literary figures such as Wace, Benoît de Sainte-Maure, and Bernart de Ventadorn. She led armies several times in her life and was a leader of the Second Crusade.
As duchess of Aquitaine, Eleanor was the most eligible bride in Europe. Three months after becoming duchess upon the death of her father, William X, she married King Louis VII of France, son of her guardian, King Louis VI. As queen of France, she participated in the unsuccessful Second Crusade. Soon afterwards, Eleanor sought an annulment of her marriage,[2] but her request was rejected by Pope Eugene III.[3] However, after the birth of her second daughter Alix, Louis agreed to an annulment, as 15 years of marriage had not produced a son.[4] The marriage was annulled on 21 March 1152 on the grounds of consanguinity within the fourth degree. Their daughters were declared legitimate, custody was awarded to Louis, and Eleanor's lands were restored to her.
As soon as the annulment was granted, Eleanor became engaged to the duke of Normandy, who became King Henry II of England in 1154. Henry was her third cousin and 11 years younger. The couple married on Whitsun, 18 May 1152, eight weeks after the annulment of Eleanor's first marriage, in Poitiers Cathedral. Over the next 13 years, she bore eight children: five sons, three of whom became kings; and three daughters. However, Henry and Eleanor eventually became estranged. Henry imprisoned her in 1173 for supporting their son Henry's revolt against him. She was not released until 6 July 1189, when Henry died and their second son, Richard the Lionheart, ascended the throne.
As queen dowager, Eleanor acted as regent while Richard went on the Third Crusade; on his return, Richard was captured and held prisoner. Eleanor lived well into the reign of her youngest son, John.
Early life
Eleanor's year of birth is not known precisely: a late 13th-century genealogy of her family listing her as 13 years old in the spring of 1137 provides the best evidence that Eleanor was perhaps born as late as 1124.[5] On the other hand, some chronicles mention a fidelity oath of some lords of Aquitaine on the occasion of Eleanor's fourteenth birthday in 1136. This, and her known age of 82 at her death make 1122 more likely the year of birth.[1] Her parents almost certainly married in 1121. Her birthplace may have been Poitiers, Bordeaux, or Nieul-sur-l'Autise, where her mother and brother died when Eleanor was 6 or 8.[6]
Eleanor (or Aliénor) was the oldest of three children of William X, Duke of Aquitaine, whose glittering ducal court was renowned in early 12th-century Europe, and his wife, Aenor de Châtellerault, the daughter of Aimery I, Viscount of Châtellerault, and Dangereuse de l'Isle Bouchard, who was William IX's longtime mistress as well as Eleanor's maternal grandmother. Her parents' marriage had been arranged by Dangereuse with her paternal grandfather William IX.
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.
By all accounts, Eleanor's father ensured that she had the best possible education.[7] Eleanor came to learn arithmetic, the constellations, and history.[4] She also learned domestic skills such as household management and the needle arts of embroidery, needlepoint, sewing, spinning, and weaving.[4] Eleanor developed skills in conversation, dancing, games such as backgammon, checkers, and chess, playing the harp, and singing.[4] Although her native tongue was Poitevin, she was taught to read and speak Latin, was well versed in music and literature, and schooled in riding, hawking, and hunting.[8] Eleanor was extroverted, lively, intelligent, and strong-willed. Her four-year-old brother William Aigret and their mother died at the castle of Talmont on Aquitaine's Atlantic coast in the spring of 1130. Eleanor became the heir presumptive to her father's domains. The Duchy of Aquitaine was the largest and richest province of France. Poitou, where Eleanor spent most of her childhood, and Aquitaine together were almost one-third the size of modern France. Eleanor had only one other legitimate sibling, a younger sister named Aelith, also called Petronilla. Her half-brother Joscelin was acknowledged by William X as a son, but not as his heir. The notion that she had another half-brother, William, has been discredited.[9] Later, during the first four years of Henry II's reign, her siblings joined Eleanor's royal household.
Inheritance
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, aged 12 to 15, then became the duchess of Aquitaine, and thus the most eligible heiress in Europe. As these were the days when kidnapping an heiress was seen as a viable option for obtaining a title, William dictated a will on the very day he died that bequeathed his domains to Eleanor and appointed King Louis VI of France as her guardian.[10] William requested of the king that he take care of both the lands and the duchess, and find her a suitable husband.[7] However, until a husband was found, the king had the legal right to Eleanor's lands. The duke also insisted to his companions that his death be kept a secret until Louis was informed; the men were to journey from Saint James of Compostela across the Pyrenees as quickly as possible to call at Bordeaux to notify the archbishop, then to make all speed to Paris to inform the king.
The king of France, known as Louis the Fat, was also gravely ill at that time, suffering from a bout of dysentery from which he appeared unlikely to recover. Yet despite his impending death, Louis's mind remained clear. His heir, Prince Louis, had originally been destined for the monastic life of a younger son, but had become the heir apparent when his elder brother Philip died from a riding accident in 1131.[11]
The death of William, one of the king's most powerful vassals, made available the most desirable duchy in France. While presenting a solemn and dignified face to the grieving Aquitainian messengers, Louis exulted when they departed. Rather than act as guardian to the duchess and duchy, he decided to marry the duchess to his 17-year-old heir and bring Aquitaine under the control of the French crown, thereby greatly increasing the power and prominence of France and its ruling family, the House of Capet. Within hours, the king had arranged for Prince Louis to be married to Eleanor, with Abbot Suger in charge of the wedding arrangements. Prince Louis was sent to Bordeaux with an escort of 500 knights, along with Abbot Suger, Theobald II, Count of Champagne, and Count Ralph.
First marriage
At left, a 14th-century representation of the wedding of Louis and Eleanor; at right, Louis leaving on Crusade.
At left, a 14th-century representation of the wedding of Louis and Eleanor; at right, Louis leaving on Crusade.
Eleanor's grandfather, William IX of Aquitaine, gave her this rock crystal vase, which she gave to Louis as a wedding gift. He later donated it to the Abbey of Saint-Denis. This is the only surviving artifact known to have belonged to Eleanor.
Eleanor's grandfather, William IX of Aquitaine, gave her this rock crystal vase, which she gave to Louis as a wedding gift. He later donated it to the Abbey of Saint-Denis. This is the only surviving artifact known to have belonged to Eleanor.
On 25 July 1137, Eleanor and Louis were married in the Cathedral of Saint-André in Bordeaux by the archbishop of Bordeaux.[7] Immediately after the wedding, the couple were enthroned as duke and duchess of Aquitaine.[7] However, there was a catch: the land would remain independent of France until Eleanor's oldest son became both king of France and duke of Aquitaine. Thus, her holdings would not be merged with France until the next generation. As a wedding present she gave Louis a rock crystal vase {fr}, currently on display at the Louvre.[7][11][12] Louis gave the vase to the Basilica of St Denis. This vase is the only object connected with Eleanor of Aquitaine that still survives.[13]
Louis's tenure as count of Poitou and duke of Aquitaine and Gascony lasted only a few days. Although he had been invested as such on 8 August 1137, a messenger gave him the news that Louis VI had died of dysentery on 1 August while he and Eleanor were making a tour of the provinces. He and Eleanor were anointed and crowned king and queen of France on Christmas Day of the same year.[7][14]
Possessing a high-spirited nature, Eleanor was not popular with the staid northerners; according to sources, Louis's mother Adelaide of Maurienne thought her flighty and a bad influence. She was not aided by memories of Constance of Arles, the Provençal wife of Robert II, tales of whose immodest dress and language were still told with horror.[a] Eleanor's conduct was repeatedly criticized by church elders, particularly Bernard of Clairvaux and Abbot Suger, as indecorous. The king was madly in love with his beautiful and worldly bride, however, and granted her every whim, even though her behavior baffled and vexed him. Much money went into making the austere Cité Palace in Paris more comfortable for Eleanor's sake.[11]
Conflict
Although Louis was a pious man, he soon came into a violent conflict with Pope Innocent II. In 1141, the Archbishopric of Bourges became vacant, and the king put forward as a candidate one of his chancellors, Cadurc, while vetoing the one suitable candidate, Pierre de la Chatre, who was promptly elected by the canons of Bourges and consecrated by the Pope. Louis accordingly bolted the gates of Bourges against the new bishop. The Pope, recalling similar attempts by William X to exile supporters of Innocent from Poitou and replace them with priests loyal to himself, blamed Eleanor, saying that Louis was only a child and should be taught manners. Outraged, Louis swore upon relics that so long as he lived Pierre should never enter Bourges. An interdict was thereupon imposed upon the king's lands, and Pierre was given refuge by Theobald II, Count of Champagne.
Louis became involved in a war with Count Theobald by permitting Raoul I, Count of Vermandois and seneschal of France, to repudiate his wife Eléonore of Blois, Theobald's sister, and to marry Petronilla of Aquitaine, Eleanor's sister. Eleanor urged Louis to support her sister's marriage to Count Raoul. Theobald had also offended Louis by siding with the Pope in the dispute over Bourges. The war lasted two years (1142–44) and ended with the occupation of Champagne by the royal army. Louis was personally involved in the assault and burning of the town of Vitry. More than a thousand people who sought refuge in the church there died in the flames. Horrified, and desiring an end to the war, Louis attempted to make peace with Theobald in exchange for his support in lifting the interdict on Raoul and Petronilla. This was duly lifted for long enough to allow Theobald's lands to be restored; it was then lowered once more when Raoul refused to repudiate Petronilla, prompting Louis to return to Champagne and ravage it once more.
In June 1144, the king and queen visited the newly built monastic church at Saint-Denis. While there, the queen met with Bernard of Clairvaux, demanding that he use his influence with the Pope to have the excommunication of Petronilla and Raoul lifted, in exchange for which King Louis would make concessions in Champagne and recognise Pierre de la Chatre as archbishop of Bourges. Dismayed at her attitude, Bernard scolded Eleanor for her lack of penitence and interference in matters of state. In response, Eleanor broke down and meekly excused her behaviour, claiming to be bitter because of her lack of children. In response, Bernard became more kindly towards her: "My child, seek those things which make for peace. Cease to stir up the king against the Church, and urge upon him a better course of action. If you will promise to do this, I in return promise to entreat the merciful Lord to grant you offspring." In a matter of weeks, peace had returned to France: Theobald's provinces were returned and Pierre de la Chatre was installed as archbishop of Bourges. In April 1145, Eleanor gave birth to a daughter, Marie.
Louis, however, still burned with guilt over the massacre at Vitry and wished to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land to atone for his sins. In autumn 1145, Pope Eugene III requested that Louis lead a Crusade to the Middle East to rescue the Frankish Kingdoms there from disaster. Accordingly, Louis declared on Christmas Day 1145 at Bourges his intention of going on a crusade.
Crusade
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 the Crusader kingdom 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. The story that she and her ladies dressed as Amazons is disputed by historians, sometimes confused with the account of King Conrad's train of ladies during this campaign in Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. She left for the Second Crusade from Vézelay, the rumored location of Mary Magdalene's grave in June 1147.
The Crusade itself achieved little. Louis was a weak and ineffectual military leader with no skill for maintaining troop discipline or morale, or of making informed and logical tactical decisions. In eastern Europe, the French army was at times hindered by Manuel I Comnenus, the Byzantine Emperor, who feared that the Crusade would jeopardize the tenuous safety of his empire. Notwithstanding, during their three-week stay at Constantinople, Louis was fêted and Eleanor was much admired. She was compared with Penthesilea, mythical queen of the Amazons, by the Greek historian Nicetas Choniates. He added that she gained the epithet chrysopous (golden-foot) from the cloth of gold that decorated and fringed her robe. Louis and Eleanor stayed in the Philopation palace just outside the city walls.
Second Crusade council: Conrad III of Germany, Eleanor's husband Louis VII of France, and Baldwin III of Jerusalem
Second Crusade council: Conrad III of Germany, Eleanor's husband Louis VII of France, and Baldwin III of Jerusalem
From the moment the Crusaders entered Asia Minor, things began to go badly. The king and queen were still optimistic —the Byzantine Emperor had told them that the German King Conrad had won a great victory against a Turkish army when in fact the German army had been massacred. However, while camping near Nicea, the remnants of the German army, including a dazed and sick King Conrad, staggered past the French camp, bringing news of their disaster. The French, with what remained of the Germans, then began to march in increasingly disorganized fashion towards Antioch. They were in high spirits on Christmas Eve, when they chose to camp in a lush valley near Ephesus. Here they were ambushed by a Turkish detachment, but the French proceeded to slaughter this detachment and appropriate their camp.
Louis then decided to cross the Phrygian mountains directly in the hope of reaching Eleanor's uncle Raymond in Antioch more quickly. As they ascended the mountains, however, the army and the king and queen were horrified to discover the unburied corpses of the German army previously slaughtered there.
On the day set for the crossing of Mount Cadmus, Louis chose to take charge of the rear of the column, where the unarmed pilgrims and the baggage trains marched. The vanguard, with which Queen Eleanor marched, was commanded by her Aquitainian vassal, Geoffrey de Rancon. Unencumbered by baggage, they reached the summit of Cadmus, where Rancon had been ordered to make camp for the night. Rancon, however, chose to continue on, deciding in concert with Amadeus III, Count of Savoy, Louis's uncle, that a nearby plateau would make a better campsite. Such disobedience was reportedly common.
Main article: Battle of Mount Cadmus
Accordingly, by mid-afternoon, the rear of the column —believing the day's march to be nearly at an end —was dawdling. This resulted in the army becoming separated, with some having already crossed the summit and others still approaching it. At this point the Turks, who had been following and feinting for many days, seized their opportunity and attacked those who had not yet crossed the summit. The French, both soldiers and pilgrims, taken by surprise, were trapped. Those who tried to escape were caught and killed. Many men, horses, and much of the baggage were cast into the canyon below. The chronicler William of Tyre, writing between 1170 and 1184 and thus perhaps too long after the event to be considered historically accurate, placed the blame for this disaster firmly on the amount of baggage being carried, much of it reputedly belonging to Eleanor and her ladies, and the presence of non-combatants.
The king, having scorned royal apparel in favour of a simple pilgrim's tunic, escaped notice, unlike his bodyguards, whose skulls were brutally smashed and limbs severed. He reportedly "nimbly and bravely scaled a rock by making use of some tree roots which God had provided for his safety" and managed to survive the attack. Others were not so fortunate: "No aid came from Heaven, except that night fell."[15]
Official blame for the disaster was placed on Geoffrey de Rancon, who had made the decision to continue, and it was suggested that he be hanged, a suggestion which the king ignored. Since Geoffrey was Eleanor's vassal, many believed that it was she who had been ultimately responsible for the change in plan, and thus the massacre. This suspicion of responsibility did nothing for her popularity in Christendom. She was also blamed for the size of the baggage train and the fact that her Aquitainian soldiers had marched at the front and thus were not involved in the fight. Continuing on, the army became split, with the commoners marching toward Antioch and the royalty traveling by sea. When most of the land army arrived, the king and queen had a dispute. Some, such as John of Salisbury and William of Tyre, say Eleanor's reputation was sullied by rumours of an affair with her uncle Raymond. However, this rumor may have been a ruse, as Raymond, through Eleanor, had been trying to induce Louis to use his army to attack the actual Muslim encampment at nearby Aleppo, gateway to retaking Edessa, which had all along, by papal decree, been the main objective of the Crusade. Although this was perhaps the better military plan, Louis was not keen to fight in northern Syria. One of Louis's avowed Crusade goals was to journey in pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and he stated his intention to continue. Reputedly Eleanor then requested to stay with Raymond and brought up the matter of consanguinity —the fact that she and her husband, King Louis, were perhaps too closely related. Consanguinity was grounds for annulment in the medieval period. But rather than allowing her to stay, Louis took Eleanor from Antioch against her will and continued on to Jerusalem with his dwindling army.[16]
Louis's refusal and his forcing her to accompany him humiliated Eleanor, and she maintained a low profile for the rest of the crusade. Louis's subsequent assault on Damascus in 1148 with his remaining army, fortified by King Conrad and Baldwin III of Jerusalem, achieved little. Damascus was a major wealthy trading centre and was under normal circumstances a potential threat, but the rulers of Jerusalem had recently entered into a truce with the city, which they then forswore. It was a gamble that did not pay off, and whether through military error or betrayal, the Damascus campaign was a failure. Louis's long march to Jerusalem and back north, which Eleanor was forced to join, debilitated his army and disheartened her knights; the divided Crusade armies could not overcome the Muslim forces, and the royal couple had to return home. The French royal family retreated to Jerusalem and then sailed to Rome and made their way back to Paris.
While in the eastern Mediterranean, Eleanor learned about maritime conventions developing there, which were the beginnings of what would become admiralty law. She introduced those conventions in her own lands on the island of Oleron in 1160 (with the "Rolls of Oléron") and later in England as well. She was also instrumental in developing trade agreements with Constantinople and ports of trade in the Holy Lands.
Annulment
Even before the Crusade, Eleanor and Louis were becoming estranged, and their differences were only exacerbated while they were abroad. Eleanor's purported relationship with her uncle Raymond,[17] the ruler of Antioch, was a major source of discord. Eleanor supported her uncle's desire to re-capture the nearby County of Edessa, the objective of the Crusade. In addition, having been close to him in their youth, she now showed what was considered to be "excessive affection" toward her uncle. Raymond had plans to abduct Eleanor, to which she consented.[18] While many historians[who?] today dismiss this as normal affection between uncle and niece, noting their early friendship and his similarity to her father and grandfather, some of Eleanor's adversaries interpreted the generous displays of affection as an incestuous affair.
Home, however, was not easily reached. Louis and Eleanor, on separate ships due to their disagreements, were first attacked in May 1149 by Byzantine ships attempting to capture both on the orders of the Byzantine Emperor. Although they escaped this attempt unharmed, stormy weather drove Eleanor's ship far to the south to the Barbary Coast and caused her to lose track of her husband. Neither was heard of for over two months. In mid-July, Eleanor's ship finally reached Palermo in Sicily, where she discovered that she and her husband had both been given up for dead. She was given shelter and food by servants of King Roger II of Sicily, until the king eventually reached Calabria, and she set out to meet him there. Later, at King Roger's court in Potenza, she learned of the death of her uncle Raymond, who had been beheaded by Muslim forces in the Holy Land. This news appears to have forced a change of plans, for instead of returning to France from Marseilles, they went to see Pope Eugene III in Tusculum, where he had been driven five months before by a revolt of the Commune of Rome.
Eugene did not, as Eleanor had hoped, grant an annulment. Instead, he attempted to reconcile Eleanor and Louis, confirming the legality of their marriage. He proclaimed that no word could be spoken against it, and that it might not be dissolved under any pretext. Eventually, he arranged events so that Eleanor had no choice[clarification needed] but to sleep with Louis in a bed specially prepared[how?] by the Pope.[19] Thus was conceived their second child —not a son, but another daughter, Alix of France.
The marriage was now doomed. Still without a son and in danger of being left with no male heir, facing substantial opposition to Eleanor from many of his barons and her own desire for annulment, Louis bowed to the inevitable. On 11 March 1152, they met at the royal castle of Beaugency to dissolve the marriage. Hugues de Toucy, archbishop of Sens, presided, and Louis and Eleanor were both present, as were the archbishop of Bordeaux and Rouen. Archbishop Samson of Reims acted for Eleanor.
On 21 March, the four archbishops, with the approval of Pope Eugene, granted an annulment on grounds of consanguinity within the fourth degree; Eleanor was Louis' third cousin once removed, and shared common ancestry with Robert II of France. Their two daughters were, however, declared legitimate. Children born to a marriage that was later annulled were not at risk of being "bastardized," because "[w]here parties married in good faith, without knowledge of an impediment, ... children of the marriage were legitimate." [Berman 228.][why?]) Custody of them was awarded to King Louis. Archbishop Samson received assurances from Louis that Eleanor's lands would be restored to her.
Second marriage
Henry II of England
Henry II of England
The marriage of Eleanor of Aquitaine to Henry of Anjou and Henry's subsequent succession to the throne of England created the Angevin Empire.
The marriage of Eleanor of Aquitaine to Henry of Anjou and Henry's subsequent succession to the throne of England created the Angevin Empire.
As Eleanor traveled 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."[20]
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 rumored 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.
On 25 October 1154, Henry became king of England. Eleanor was crowned queen of England by the archbishop of Canterbury on 19 December 1154.[14] She may not have been anointed on this occasion, however, because she had already been anointed in 1137.[21] Over the next 13 years, she bore Henry five sons and three daughters: William, Henry, Richard, Geoffrey, John, Matilda, Eleanor, and Joan. John Speed, in his 1611 work History of Great Britain, mentions the possibility that Eleanor had a son named Philip, who died young. His sources no longer exist, and he alone mentions this birth.[22]
Eleanor's marriage to Henry was reputed to be tumultuous and argumentative, although sufficiently cooperative to produce at least eight pregnancies. Henry was by no means faithful to his wife and had a reputation for philandering. Henry fathered other, illegitimate children throughout the marriage. Eleanor appears to have taken an ambivalent attitude towards these affairs. Geoffrey of York, for example, was an illegitimate son of Henry, but acknowledged by Henry as his child and raised at Westminster in the care of the queen.
During the period from Henry's accession to the birth of Eleanor's youngest son John, affairs in the kingdom were turbulent: Aquitaine, as was the norm, defied the authority of Henry as Eleanor's husband and answered only to their duchess. Attempts were made to claim Toulouse, the rightful inheritance of Eleanor's grandmother Philippa of Toulouse, but they ended in failure. A bitter feud arose between the king and Thomas Becket, initially his chancellor and closest adviser and later the archbishop of Canterbury. Louis of France had remarried and been widowed; he married for the third time and finally fathered a long-hoped-for son, Philip Augustus, also known as Dieudonne—God-given). "Young Henry," son of Henry and Eleanor, wed Margaret, daughter of Louis from his second marriage. Little is known of Eleanor's involvement in these events. It is certain that by late 1166, Henry's notorious affair with Rosamund Clifford had become known, and Eleanor's marriage to Henry appears to have become terminally strained.
In 1167, Eleanor's third daughter, Matilda, married Henry the Lion of Saxony. Eleanor remained in England with her daughter for the year prior to Matilda's departure for Normandy in September. In December, Eleanor gathered her movable possessions in England and transported them on several ships to Argentan. Christmas was celebrated at the royal court there, and she appears to have agreed to a separation from Henry. She certainly left for her own city of Poitiers immediately after Christmas. Henry did not stop her; on the contrary, he and his army personally escorted her there before attacking a castle belonging to the rebellious Lusignan family. Henry then went about his own business outside Aquitaine, leaving Earl Patrick, his regional military commander, as her protective custodian. When Patrick was killed in a skirmish, Eleanor, who proceeded to ransom his captured nephew, the young William Marshal, was left in control of her lands.
The Court of Love in Poitiers
Palace of Poitiers, seat of the counts of Poitou and dukes of Aquitaine in the 10th through 12th centuries, where Eleanor's highly literate and artistic court inspired tales of Courts of Love.
Palace of Poitiers, seat of the counts of Poitou and dukes of Aquitaine in the 10th through 12th centuries, where Eleanor's highly literate and artistic court inspired tales of Courts of Love.
Of all her influence on culture, Eleanor's time in Poitiers between 1168 and 1173 was perhaps the most critical, yet very little is known about it. Henry II was elsewhere, attending to his own affairs after escorting Eleanor there.[7] Some believe that Eleanor's court in Poitiers was the "Court of Love" where Eleanor and her daughter Marie meshed and encouraged the ideas of troubadours, chivalry, and courtly love into a single court. It may have been largely to teach manners, something the French courts would be known for in later generations. Yet the existence and reasons for this court are debated.
In The Art of Courtly Love, Andreas Capellanus, Andrew the chaplain, refers to the court of Poitiers. He claims that Eleanor, her daughter Marie, Ermengarde, Viscountess of Narbonne, and Isabelle of Flanders would sit and listen to the quarrels of lovers and act as a jury to the questions of the court that revolved around acts of romantic love. He records some twenty-one cases, the most famous of them being a problem posed to the women about whether true love can exist in marriage. According to Capellanus, the women decided that it was not at all likely.[23]
Some scholars believe that the "court of love" probably never existed since the only evidence for it is Andreas Capellanus' book. To strengthen their argument, they state that there is no other evidence that Marie ever stayed with her mother in Poitiers.[7] Andreas wrote for the court of the king of France, where Eleanor was not held in esteem. Polly Schoyer Brooks, the author of a non-academic biography of Eleanor, suggests that the court did exist, but that it was not taken very seriously, and that acts of courtly love were just a "parlor game" made up by Eleanor and Marie in order to place some order over the young courtiers living there.[24]
There is no claim that Eleanor invented courtly love, for it was a concept that had begun to grow before Eleanor's court arose. All that can be said is that her court at Poitiers was most likely a catalyst for the increased popularity of courtly love literature in the Western European regions.[25] Amy Kelly, in her article, "Eleanor of Aquitaine and Her Courts of Love," gives a very plausible description of the origins of the rules of Eleanor's court: "In the Poitevin code, man is the property, the very thing of woman; whereas a precisely contrary state of things existed in the adjacent realms of the two kings from whom the reigning duchess of Aquitaine was estranged."[26]
Revolt and capture
In March 1173, aggrieved at his lack of power and egged on by Henry's enemies, his son by the same name, the younger Henry, launched the Revolt of 1173–1174. He fled to Paris. From there, "the younger Henry, devising evil against his father from every side by the advice of the French king, went secretly into Aquitaine where his two youthful brothers, Richard and Geoffrey, were living with their mother, and with her connivance, so it is said, he incited them to join him."[27]One source claimed that the queen sent her younger sons to France "to join with him against their father the king."[28] Once her sons had left for Paris, Eleanor may have encouraged the lords of the south to rise up and support them.[7]
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.
Years of imprisonment 1173–1189
The obverse of Eleanor's seal. She is identified as Eleanor, by the Grace of God, Queen of the English, Duchess of the Normans. The legend on the reverse calls her Eleanor, Duchess of the Aquitanians and Countess of the Angevins.[14]
The obverse of Eleanor's seal. She is identified as Eleanor, by the Grace of God, Queen of the English, Duchess of the Normans. The legend on the reverse calls her Eleanor, Duchess of the Aquitanians and Countess of the Angevins.[14]
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 favorite. 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 triangular castle which is believed to have been one of her prisons.
Henry lost the woman reputed to be his great love, Rosamund Clifford, in 1176. He had met her in 1166 and had begun their liaison in 1173, supposedly contemplating divorce from Eleanor. This notorious affair caused a monkish scribe to transcribe Rosamund's name in Latin to "Rosa Immundi", or "Rose of Unchastity". The king had many mistresses, but although he treated earlier liaisons discreetly, he flaunted Rosamund. He may have done so to provoke Eleanor into seeking an annulment, but if so, the queen disappointed him. Nevertheless, rumours persisted, perhaps assisted by Henry's camp, that Eleanor had poisoned Rosamund. It is also speculated that Eleanor placed Rosamund in a bathtub and had an old woman cut Rosamund's arms.[18] Henry donated much money to Godstow Nunnery, where Rosamund was buried.
In 1183, the young King Henry tried again to force his father to hand over some of his patrimony. In debt and refused control of Normandy, he tried to ambush his father at Limoges. He was joined by troops sent by his brother Geoffrey and Philip II of France. Henry II's troops besieged the town, forcing his son to flee. After wandering aimlessly through Aquitaine, Henry the Younger caught dysentery. On Saturday, 11 June 1183, the young king realized he was dying and was overcome with remorse for his sins. When his father's ring was sent to him, he begged that his father would show mercy to his mother, and that all his companions would plead with Henry to set her free. Henry II sent Thomas of Earley, Archdeacon of Wells, to break the news to Eleanor at Sarum.[b] Eleanor reputedly had a dream in which she foresaw her son Henry's death. In 1193, she would tell Pope Celestine III that she was tortured by his memory.
King Philip II of France claimed that certain properties in Normandy belonged to his half-sister Margaret, widow of the young Henry, but Henry insisted that they had once belonged to Eleanor and would revert to her upon her son's death. For this reason Henry summoned Eleanor to Normandy in the late summer of 1183. She stayed in Normandy for six months. This was the beginning of a period of greater freedom for the still-supervised Eleanor. Eleanor went back to England probably early in 1184.[7] Over the next few years Eleanor often travelled with her husband and was sometimes associated with him in the government of the realm, but still had a custodian so that she was not free.
Widowhood
Upon the death of her husband Henry II on 6 July 1189, Richard I was the undisputed heir. One of his first acts as king was to send William Marshal to England with orders to release Eleanor from prison; he found upon his arrival that her custodians had already released her.[7] Eleanor rode to Westminster and received the oaths of fealty from many lords and prelates on behalf of the king. She ruled England in Richard's name, signing herself "Eleanor, by the grace of God, Queen of England." On 13 August 1189, Richard sailed from Barfleur to Portsmouth and was received with enthusiasm. Between 1190 and 1194, Richard was absent from England, engaged in the Third Crusade from 1190 to 1192 and then held in captivity by Henry VI, Holy Roman Emperor. During Richard's absence, royal authority in England was represented by a Council of Regency in conjunction with a succession of chief justiciars – William de Longchamp (1190–1191), Walter de Coutances (1191–1193), and finally Hubert Walter. Although Eleanor held no formal office in England during this period, she arrived in England in the company of Coutances in June 1191, and for the remainder of Richard's absence, she exercised a considerable degree of influence over the affairs of England as well as the conduct of Prince John. Eleanor played a key role in raising the ransom demanded from England by Henry VI and in the negotiations with the Holy Roman Emperor that eventually secured Richard's release.
Eleanor survived Richard and lived well into the reign of her youngest son, King John. In 1199, under the terms of a truce between King Philip II and King John, it was agreed that Philip's 12-year-old heir-apparent Louis would be married to one of John's nieces, daughters of his sister Eleanor of England, queen of Castile. John instructed his mother to travel to Castile to select one of the princesses. Now 77, Eleanor set out from Poitiers. Just outside Poitiers she was ambushed and held captive by Hugh IX of Lusignan, whose lands had been sold to Henry II by his forebears. Eleanor secured her freedom by agreeing to his demands. She continued south, crossed the Pyrenees, and travelled through the kingdoms of Navarre and Castile, arriving in Castile before the end of January 1200.
King Alfonso VIII and Eleanor's daughter, Queen Eleanor of Castile, had two remaining unmarried daughters, Urraca and Blanche. Eleanor selected the younger daughter, Blanche. She stayed for two months at the Castilian court, then late in March journeyed with granddaughter Blanche back across the Pyrenees. She celebrated Easter in Bordeaux, where the famous warrior Mercadier came to her court. It was decided that he would escort the queen and princess north. "On the second day in Easter week, he was slain in the city by a man-at-arms in the service of Brandin,"[28] a rival mercenary captain. This tragedy was too much for the elderly queen, who was fatigued and unable to continue to Normandy. She and Blanche rode in easy stages to the valley of the Loire, and she entrusted Blanche to the archbishop of Bordeaux, who took over as her escort. The exhausted Eleanor went to Fontevraud, where she remained. In early summer, Eleanor was ill, and John visited her at Fontevraud.
Tomb effigies of Eleanor and Henry II at Fontevraud Abbey
Tomb effigies of Eleanor and Henry II at Fontevraud Abbey
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.
Eleanor died in 1204 and was entombed in Fontevraud Abbey next to her husband Henry and her son Richard. Her tomb effigy shows her reading a Bible and is decorated with magnificent jewelry. By the time of her death she had outlived all of her children except for King John of England and Queen Eleanor of Castile.
Appearance
Contemporary sources praise Eleanor's beauty.[7] Even in an era when ladies of the nobility were excessively praised, their praise of her was undoubtedly sincere. When she was young, she was described as perpulchra – more than beautiful. When she was around 30, Bernard de Ventadour, a noted troubadour, called her "gracious, lovely, the embodiment of charm," extolling her "lovely eyes and noble countenance" and declaring that she was "one meet to crown the state of any king."[10][30] William of Newburgh emphasized the charms of her person, and even in her old age Richard of Devizes described her as beautiful, while Matthew Paris, writing in the 13th century, recalled her "admirable beauty."
In spite of all these words of praise, no one left a more detailed description of Eleanor; the colour of her hair and eyes, for example, are unknown. The effigy on her tomb shows a tall and large-boned woman with brown skin, though this may not be an accurate representation. Her seal of c.1152 shows a woman with a slender figure, but this is likely an impersonal image.[7]
Popular culture
Art
Judy Chicago's artistic installation The Dinner Party features a place setting for Eleanor.[31]
Books and dramas
Henry and Eleanor are the main characters in James Goldman's 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.
Jean Plaidy's novel 'The Courts of Love', fifth in the 'Queens of England' series, is a fictionalised autobiography of Eleanor of Aquitaine.
The character Queen Elinor appears in William Shakespeare's King John, with other members of the family. On television, she has been portrayed in this play by Una Venning in the BBC Sunday Night Theatre version (1952) and by Mary Morris in the BBC Shakespeare version (1984).
In Sharon Kay Penman's Plantagenet novels, she figures prominently in When Christ and His Saints Slept, Time and Chance, and Devil's Brood, and also appears in Lionheart and A King's Ransom, both of which focus on the reign of her son, Richard, as king of England. Eleanor also appears briefly in the first novel of Penman’s Welsh trilogy, Here Be Dragons. In Penman's historical mysteries, Eleanor, as Richard’s regent, sends squire Justin de Quincy on various missions, often an investigation of a situation involving Prince John. The four published mysteries are the Queen's Man, Cruel as the Grave, Dragon's Lair, and Prince of Darkness.
Eleanor is the subject of A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver, a children's novel by E.L. Konigsburg.
Historical fiction author Elizabeth Chadwick wrote a three-volume series about Eleanor: The Summer Queen (2013), The Winter Crown (2014) and The Autumn Throne (2016).
Film, radio and television
Katharine Hepburn as Queen Eleanor in The Lion in Winter (1968)
Katharine Hepburn as Queen Eleanor in The Lion in Winter (1968)
Eleanor has featured in a number of screen versions of the Ivanhoe and Robin Hood stories. She has been played by Martita Hunt in The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men (1952), Jill Esmond in the British TV adventure series The Adventures of Robin Hood (1955–1960), Phyllis Neilson-Terry in the British TV adventure series Ivanhoe (1958), Yvonne Mitchell in the BBC TV drama series The Legend of Robin Hood (1975), Siân Phillips in the TV series Ivanhoe (1997), and Tusse Silberg in the TV series The New Adventures of Robin Hood (1997). She was portrayed by Lynda Bellingham in the BBC series Robin Hood. Most recently, she was portrayed by Eileen Atkins in Robin Hood (2010).
In the 1964 film Becket, Eleanor is briefly played by Pamela Brown to Peter O'Toole's first performance as a young Henry II.
In the 1968 film The Lion in Winter, Eleanor is played by Katharine Hepburn, who won the third of her four Academy Awards for Best Actress for her portrayal, and Henry again is portrayed by O'Toole. The film is about the difficult relationship between them and the struggle of their three sons Richard, Geoffrey, and John for their father's favour and the succession. In the 2003 television film The Lion in Winter, Eleanor was played by Glenn Close alongside Patrick Stewart as Henry.
She was portrayed by Mary Clare in the silent film Becket (1923), by Prudence Hyman in Richard the Lionheart (1962), and twice by Jane Lapotaire in the BBC TV drama series The Devil's Crown (1978) and again in Mike Walker's BBC Radio 4 series Plantagenet (2010). In the 2010 film Robin Hood, starring Russell Crowe, Eleanor is played by Eileen Atkins. In the 2014 film Richard the Lionheart: Rebellion, Eleanor is played by Debbie Rochon.
Music
Eleanor and Rosamund Clifford, as well as Henry II and Rosamund's father, appear in Gaetano Donizetti's opera Rosmonda d'Inghilterra (libretto by Felice Romani), which was premiered in Florence, at the Teatro Pergola, in 1834.
Video games
In the 2019 video game expansion Civilization VI: Gathering Storm, Eleanor is a playable leader for the English and French civilizations.[32]
Ancestors
[show]Ancestors of Eleanor of Aquitaine
Issue
Issue of Eleanor & Henry
Issue of Eleanor & Henry
Name
Birth
Death
Marriage(s)
By Louis VII of France (married 12 July 1137, annulled 21 March 1152)
Marie, Countess of Champagne
1145
11 March 1198
married Henry I, Count of Champagne; had issue, including Marie, Latin Empress
Alix, Countess of Blois
1150
1198
married Theobald V, Count of Blois; had issue
By Henry II of England (married 18 May 1152, widowed 6 July 1189)
William IX, Count of Poitiers
17 August 1153
April 1156
died in infancy
Henry the Young King
28 February 1155
11 June 1183
married Margaret of France; no surviving issue.
Matilda, Duchess of Saxony and Bavaria
June 1156
13 July 1189
married Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony and Bavaria; had issue, including Otto IV, Holy Roman Emperor
Richard I of England
8 September 1157
6 April 1199
married Berengaria of Navarre; no issue
Geoffrey II, Duke of Brittany
23 September 1158
19 August 1186
married Constance, Duchess of Brittany; had issue
Eleanor, queen of Castile
13 October 1162
31 October 1214
married Alfonso VIII of Castile; had issue, including Henry I, king of Castile, Berengaria, queen regnant of Castile and queen of León, Urraca, queen of Portugal, Blanche, queen of France, Eleanor, queen of Aragon
Joan, queen of Sicily
October 1165
4 September 1199
married 1) William II of Sicily 2) Raymond VI of Toulouse; had issue
John, King of England
27 December 1166
19 October 1216
married 1) Isabella, Countess of Gloucester 2) Isabella, Countess of Angoulême; had issue, including Henry III, King of England, Richard, king of the Romans, Joan, queen of Scotland, Isabella, Holy Roman Empress
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