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

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The crusade did not go well, and Eleanor and Louis grew increasingly estranged. After several fraught years during which Eleanor sought an annulment and Louis faced increasing public criticism, they were eventually granted an annulment on the grounds of consanguinity (being related by blood) in 1152 and separated, their two daughters left in the custody of the king. Eleanor Becomes Queen of England An avid horsewoman, she led an active life until she inherited her father’s title and extensive lands upon his death when she was 15, becoming in one stroke duchess of Aquitaine and by far the most eligible single young woman in Europe. She was placed under the guardianship of the king of France, and within hours was betrothed to his son and heir, Louis. The king sent an escort of 500 men to convey the news to Eleanor and transport her to her new home. 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] Weir approaches Eleanor`s story with an objective eye and a mass of source material. The result is as vivid as it is informative." ( The Times) Evocative…A rich tapestry of a bygone age, and a judicious assessment of her subject's place within it." ( Newsday)

Despite there not being as much Eleanor as I'd have liked, the Plantagenets and Henry II and his sons were still a really batshit crazy family and their antics and shenanigans are so entertaining that it kept me reading anyway.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. [9] [16] 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 his son Louis to be married to Eleanor, with Abbot Suger in charge of the wedding arrangements. Louis was sent to Bordeaux with an escort of 500 knights, along with Abbot Suger, Theobald II, Count of Champagne, and Raoul I, Count of Vermandois. I do think it is a good book, and good history. But it is not a biography of Eleanor. There have been numerous comments that the problems with the book revolve around there just not being enough direct material available to do a biography, and they're entirely justified. Large sections of the book go by with notes of 'Eleanor does not appear in any of the chronicles of this period'. Eleanor is the subject of A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver, a children's novel by E. L. Konigsburg. 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. [32] 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." [33] Revolt and capture [ edit ]

The Court of Love in Poitiers [ edit ] The Palace of Poitiers, the seat of the counts of Poitou and dukes of Aquitaine in the 10th through to the 12th centuries, where Eleanor's highly literate and artistic court inspired tales of Courts of Love. 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. Weir doesn't speculate on the daily prodding Eleanor might have given her sons to make war on their father, but she presents evidence to demonstrate that she tried to temper their wars against each other. Her efforts on behalf of the kidnapped Richard are extraordinary. There is no record, but legend has it that she sought leniency for her imprisoned (by her son) grandson and other legends have it that she killed him.

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Eleanor of Aquitaine also formally took up the cross symbolic of the Second Crusade during a sermon preached by Bernard of Clairvaux. In addition, she had been corresponding with her uncle Raymond, Prince of Antioch, who was seeking further protection from the French crown against the Saracens. Eleanor recruited some of her royal ladies-in-waiting for the campaign as well as 300 non-noble Aquitainian vassals. She insisted on taking part in the Crusades as the feudal leader of the soldiers from her duchy. She left for the Second Crusade from Vézelay, the rumoured location of Mary Magdalene's grave, in June 1147.

When her son Richard became King of England he had led a failed attempt to capture Jerusalem for the Christians and was unable to succeed. On his return overland he secretly traveled through Austria but was discovered by his new enemy Duke Leopold and imprisoned in Vienna. Eleanor assumed the role of temporary ruler of England in the meantime. They asked for a ransom of several hundred thousand silver marks and eventually received it, a total more than the annual coffers of the King of England. John was waiting in the wings.

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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).

Swabey, Fiona (2004). Eleanor of Aquitaine, Courtly Love, and the Troubadours. Greenwood. ISBN 978-0-313-32523-6. Wikipedia articles incorporating a citation from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica with Wikisource reference Seward, Desmond (1978). Eleanor of Aquitaine: The Mother Queen. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 978-0-7153-7647-8. ; Eleanor of Aquitaine: The Mother Queen of the Middle Ages (2014 edition) at Google Books Segundo libro que compré en Reino Unido - concretamente, en la londinense abadía de Westminster - guiada por una corazonada y en el que no he podido estar más acertada (toma pareado). O tengo mucha suerte o será que los libros de divulgación histórica made in Britain son buenos de per se.

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. This book is well-written and extensive research has been conducted during its compilation. The analysis is presented in a subtle manner. One of my favorite aspects of this book is that Weir roots out substantiated rumors and exposes their origins. For example, the murder of Rosamund; some of the legends associated with Eleanor's murder of Rosamund began after all parties were dead and were developed to satisfy political agendas, some even naming the wrong queen named Eleanor entirely! As Eleanor travelled to Poitiers, two lords— Theobald V, Count of Blois, and Geoffrey, Count of Nantes, brother of Henry II, Duke of Normandy—tried to kidnap and marry her to claim her lands. As soon as she arrived in Poitiers, Eleanor sent envoys to Henry, Duke of Normandy and future king of England, asking him to come at once to marry her. On 18 May 1152 ( Whit Sunday), eight weeks after her annulment, Eleanor married Henry "without the pomp and ceremony that befitted their rank." [25] The conflict that ensued culminated in the massacre of hundreds of innocents in the town of Vitry—during a siege of the town, a great number of the populace took refuge in a church, which was set aflame by Louis’s troops. Dogged by guilt over his role in the tragedy for years, Louis responded eagerly to the Pope’s call for a crusade in 1145. Eleanor joined him on the dangerous–and ill fated–journey west. 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 ]