Eleanor Of Aquitaine: By the Wrath of God, Queen of England

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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. [23] Henry donated much money to Godstow Nunnery in Oxfordshire, where Rosamund was buried. She did one thing, however, that proved disastrous for both Henry’s reign and her own liberty. In 1173, Eleanor’s sons, Henry ‘the Young King’, Richard (later called Lionheart) and Geoffrey of Brittany, rebelled against their father, encouraged by Louis VII. Most chroniclers agree that Eleanor supported their revolt. Why she did so isn’t clear, but Henry was publicly unfaithful and the couple had long been estranged. Eleanor probably urged her southern vassals to aid her rebel sons. A famous troubadour, Bertran de Born, supported the young Henry’s revolt – earning himself a memorable place in Dante’s hell as a false counsellor. So quarrelsome was the whole Angevin family that one chronicler, Richard of Devizes, compared them to the house of Oedipus. At any event, the rebellion went badly. It was crushed by Henry’s troops and his heir, the Young King, died on campaign. Eleanor was arrested and imprisoned in various castles over the next sixteen years; she wasn’t released until Henry’s death in 1189. Although most sources condemn her part in the revolt, she had sympathisers even at the time. Geoffrey of Monmouth had compiled the so-called prophecies of Merlin in the 1130s, and now a series of interpreters came forth to identify the ‘eagle of the broken covenant’ as Queen Eleanor, spreading her regal wings over two realms and encouraging the precocious flight of her ‘eaglets’. Elvins, Mark Turnham (2006). Gospel Chivalry: Franciscan Romanticism. Gracewing. ISBN 978-0-85244-664-5.

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. married Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony and Bavaria; had issue, including Otto IV, Holy Roman Emperor Eleanor of Aquitaine will be published as a beautifully bound limited edition by The Folio Society in 2015, with new colour illustrations.Kelly, Amy (1978) [1950]. Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Four Kings. Harvard University Press. ; Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Four Kings (1978 edition) at Google Books She said: 'I believe that histo­ry is about people, not just Acts, wars or politics. It's about per­sonalities. I enjoy exploring how everyday lives were lived. I like to try to get a sense of charac­ter, to feel as if the subject is really alive. The lives of women were often governed by everyday cus­toms, the sort of domestic details that male historians have tended to gloss over.' 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 criticised by church elders, particularly Bernard of Clairvaux [17] 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 behaviour baffled and vexed him. Much money went into making the austere Cité Palace in Paris more comfortable for Eleanor's sake. [13] Conflict [ edit ]

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. [30] Jean Plaidy's novel The Courts of Love, fifth in the 'Queens of England' series, is a fictionalised autobiography of Eleanor of Aquitaine. Eleanor was related to Henry even more closely than she had been to Louis: they were cousins to the third degree through their common ancestor Ermengarde of Anjou, wife of Robert I, Duke of Burgundy and Geoffrey, Count of Gâtinais, and they were also descended from King Robert II of France. A marriage between Henry and Eleanor's daughter Marie had earlier been declared impossible due to their status as third cousins once removed. It was rumoured by some that Eleanor had had an affair with Henry's own father, Geoffrey V, Count of Anjou, who had advised his son to avoid any involvement with her. 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. a b c Weir, Alison (2007). Eleanor of Aquitaine: By the Wrath of God, Queen of England. London: Vintage. p.352. ISBN 978-0-099-52355-0.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".

She died in 1204, easily, ‘as a candle in the sconce goeth out’. The nuns of Fontevraud recorded that, ‘by her renown for unmatched goodness, she surpassed almost all the queens of the world’. Like Queen Victoria, she could be described as the ‘grandmother of Europe’, for among her eleven children were three kings, while her daughters all married great princes. Unlike Victoria, who merely reigned, Eleanor ruled a kingdom. 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 Oléron 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. Wikipedia articles incorporating a citation from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica with Wikisource reference

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Here is where the sources get interesting, for chroniclers do not agree on how the separation came about. Several say that Louis ‘repudiated’ his queen, either because he was upset by the consanguinity or because she hadn’t borne a son (though they attribute the second motive to his barons, who are often depicted as anxious to avoid civil wars over succession). But John of Salisbury, Gervase of Canterbury and William of Newburgh all say that the initiative was with Eleanor. Gervase claims that she used consanguinity as a ‘pretext’ and William that she ‘grew most irritated with the king’s habits and … said that she had married a monk, not a king’. Louis had in fact been raised in a monastery. The cleric Stephen of Paris agreed that he ‘was entirely ecclesiastical in his conversation and habits’, though from him that was high praise. Queen of England [ edit ] Henry II of England, drawn by Matthew Paris The marriage of Eleanor of Aquitaine to Henry of Anjou and Henry's subsequent succession to the throne of England created the Angevin Empire.