The problem of course is that ancient sources for Eleanor are thin. Most of what we know about her movements, what charters she signed, and her overall communications is very limited and comes from her kingly attachments. Meade is simply forced to use a very reduced set of source material from the age, most of which details her husband's movements or the chroniclers that make short reference when she's in procession. This all translates to a widely speculative biography where Meade takes the liberty to hypothesize and expand on the unknown. I'm not always sure Meade is successful in that. She lets herself speculate on how Eleanor felt about this or that and we have no way of knowing and Meade often justifies her actions which were tantamount to tyranny. She is successful though in outlining this Queens amazing life in amazing times. Matthew Paris, a well-regarded historian writing in the 13th century, gives three reasons for the divorce: consanguinity, the queen’s alleged adultery and the astonishing charge that ‘she was of the devil’s race.’ He meant it literally: Eleanor was like the folkloric figure of Mélusine, woman above and fish or serpent from the waist down, though she normally managed to conceal that trait. None of the Mélusine romances explicitly mention Eleanor, but they make suggestive links: she was either descended from such a creature or had inherited her lands. Caesarius of Heisterbach, a monk writing around 1230, observed that the English king (at that time Henry III, Eleanor’s grandson) was ‘said to be descended from a phantom mother’. Eleanor’s magical character might explain both Louis’s initial, passionate devotion to his queen and his later repugnance. One poet makes her tell her barons that the king had called her ‘something misshapen and unworthy of his bed’. Eleanor was imprisoned for the next 16 years, much of the time in various locations in England. During her imprisonment, Eleanor became more and more distant from her sons, especially from Richard, who had always been her favourite. [29] She did not have the opportunity to see her sons very often during her imprisonment, though she was released for special occasions such as Christmas. About four miles from Shrewsbury and close by Haughmond Abbey is "Queen Eleanor's Bower", the remains of a possible triangular timber castle which is believed to have been one of her prisons. Evocative... A rich tapestry of a bygone age and a judicious assessment of her subject's place within it." ( Newsday) Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine was one of the leading personalities of the Middle Ages and also one of the most controversial. She was beautiful, intelligent and wilful, and in her lifetime there were rumours about her that were not without substance. She had been reared in a relaxed and licentious court where the arts of the troubadours flourished, and was even said to have presided over the fabled Courts of Love. Eleanor married in turn Louis VII of France and Henry II of England, and was the mother of Richard the Lionheart and King John. She lived to be 82, but it was only in old age that she triumphed over the adversities and tragedies of her earlier years and became virtual ruler of England.

Marriage was central to the career of any queen. Twelfth-century theologians innovated in their insistence that consent – not sex, dowries or parental agreements – established a union. Hugh of Saint-Victor, for instance, said that marriage begins when a man and a woman agree to a lifelong union with ‘words in the present tense’ (not the future, which would merely indicate a betrothal). Such a marriage is valid in the absence of witnesses, parental approval or priestly blessing, even if consummation does not immediately follow. For obvious reasons, the aristocracy fought against this reform, and, as Sullivan points out, ‘consent’ should not be confused with ‘choice’. A daughter was supposed to comply with her father’s wishes, so when Eleanor married Louis VII of France in 1137, at the age of fifteen, we shouldn’t imagine it was for love, even if Louis was said to be taken with her beauty. Eleanor became queen of France and Louis duke of Aquitaine. His was the greater gain, since in the next generation the province would pass to the French crown – but only if Eleanor bore him a son. She did not. Elvins, Mark Turnham (2006). Gospel Chivalry: Franciscan Romanticism. Gracewing. ISBN 978-0-85244-664-5. Second Crusade council: Conrad III of Germany, Eleanor's husband Louis VII of France, and Baldwin III of Jerusalem

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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 Alison Weir has written a vivid biography which is also an impressive piece of detective work, for she has scrutinised the evidence to produce a credible and balanced account of the life of an extraordinary woman." ( The Sunday Telegraph) Civilization VI: Gathering Storm – First Look: Eleanor of Aquitaine (Trailer). Firaxis Games. 5 February 2019. Archived from the original on 11 December 2021 . Retrieved 18 February 2019.

The World of Eleanor of Aquitaine: Literature and Society in Southern France Between the Eleventh and Thirteenth Centuries, Marcus Graham Bull, 2005 Henry Plantagenet became the most radical monarch in English history. During the next thirty-five years he revolutionized government, streamlining it and making it so efficient the government could function king-less if necessary. Although some facts about the court remain in dispute amidst centuries of accumulated legend and myth, it seems that Eleanor, possibly accompanied by her daughter Marie, established a court that was largely focused on courtly love and symbolic ritual that was eagerly taken up by the troubadours and writers of the day and promulgated through poetry and song.This court was reported to have attracted artists and poets, and to have contributed to a flowering of culture and the arts. But to whatever extent such a court existed, it appears not to have survived Eleanor’s later capture and imprisonment, which effectively removed her from any position of power and influence for the next 16 years. Eleanor of Aquitaine: Imprisonment This isn’t about Eleanor, either, but the tales included here are contemporary to her and would have been familiar to both Eleanor and Henry II. The true identity of Marie de France is unknown, but one possibility is that she is actually Marie, the abbess of Shaftesbury, who was Henry II’s half-sister. The extraordinary life of Eleanor of Aquitaine is brilliantly recreated by Alison Weir in her winning biography." ( The Good Book Guide)

Louis’s monkish tendencies became all too apparent during the disastrous Second Crusade of 1147-49. Eleanor herself had taken the cross to accompany him to the East, but he showed no aptitude for strategy and seemed more interested in completing a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. After the French army suffered catastrophic losses, Eleanor abandoned him to travel with her more valiant uncle, Raymond of Antioch. Some claimed that they had an affair, though this seems unlikely. Later sources make the rumour still juicier: Eleanor’s lover was not her uncle but ‘the sultan of Babylon’. The Minstrel of Reims identified the sultan as Saladin, who was greatly admired in the West for his chivalry. Such an affair would have been impossible – Saladin was a child at the time – but the tale is interesting for its characterisation of Eleanor as a wildly transgressive, exotic figure. For the minstrel, she is both an excellent judge of character and an ‘evil woman’, betraying her faith as well as her husband. Her preference for virile courage over piety helps explain her attraction to the energetic Henry. Weir is so much the master of the period, so intuitive and unsentimental an interpreter of royal minds, and so upfront in her assumptions that I trusted her completely." ( The Boston Globe) Film, radio and television [ edit ] Katharine Hepburn as Queen Eleanor in The Lion in Winter (1968)

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 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. Middleton, John (1 June 2015). World Monarchies and Dynasties. Routledge. p.274. ISBN 978-1-317-45158-7.Jones, Dan (2013). The Plantagenets: The Kings who made England. London: William Collins. ISBN 978-0-00-721394-8. Contemporary sources praise Eleanor's beauty. [9] 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". [12] [38] William of Newburgh emphasised 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". Although the Church didn’t allow divorce, there was a loophole for the rich and powerful. This was consanguinity: a degree of kinship, not necessarily close, that rendered a marriage quasi-incestuous and thus displeasing to God. Disgruntled spouses might discover – even after having a daughter together – that they were third cousins. They could then try to persuade the pope to annul the marriage, which he might or might not do. Eugene III did agree to divorce Eleanor and Louis, but only after long resistance. He first required the couple to try to conceive again, resulting in the birth of a second daughter. (A son could have rendered the marriage permanent.) Just eight weeks after the annulment, Eleanor married Henry II of England, a fourth cousin. Fiona Harris-Stoertz, "Pregnancy and Childbirth in Twelfth-and Thirteenth-Century French and English Law". Journal of the History of Sexuality 21, n°. 2 (2012), pp. 263–281. JSTOR 41475080. The character Queen Elinor appears in William Shakespeare's The Life and Death of 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).

This really is a very good book. Marion Meade must be an incredible scholar to pull so much information about her life from such a long time ago. Through it one gets a sense of what life must have been like--at least for the powerful--in the 11th and 12th centuries in western Europe. It is interesting to see how much we know of a woman in that period, and what competence, energy, and ambition she had. A remarkable life, during a period of the world I don't think any of us would want to go live in if we had a choice. Eleanor of Aquitaine (1122 – April 1, 1204) was a medieval firebrand, and no question about it. These books about Eleanor of Aquitaine are historically-accurate testaments to this strong-willed woman of the Middle Ages. Who is Eleanor of Aquitaine? Wikipedia articles incorporating a citation from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica with Wikisource reference Louis became involved in a war with Count Theobald by permitting Raoul I, Count of Vermandois and seneschal of France, to repudiate his wife Eleanor of Champagne, Theobald's sister, and to marry Petronilla of Aquitaine, the Queen'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 sought refuge in the town church, but the church caught fire and everyone inside was burned alive. 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 The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, Howard Pyle, retelling the ballad Robin Hood and Queen Katherine, made the queen Queen Eleanor to fit historically with the rest of the work. 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 Aquitanian soldiers had marched at the front and thus were not involved in the fight. Continuing on, the army became split, with the commoners marching towards Antioch and the royalty travelling 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. Eleanor was born in what is now southern France, most likely in the year 1122. She was well educated by her cultured father, William X, Duke of Aquitaine, thoroughly versed in literature, philosophy, and languages and trained to the rigors of court life when she became her father’s heir presumptive at the age 5.