THE WIDOW

Who would now be the future king of England? Henry preferred John, making him king of Ireland in anticipation of his rule over England; Eleanor favored Richard, and when Richard asked Henry to confirm him as heir, Henry refused. To add insult to injury, the king had seduced Princess Alice, half-sister to the new king of France, Philip II (known as Philip Augustus), and taken her as his mistress even though she was betrothed to Richard—who was himself rumored to have been Philip’s lover. In 1189, Richard and Philip combined forces to attack Henry’s cities of Le Mans and Tours, but instead of a glorious war all they got was a peace treaty from Henry, because he had been injured in a joust and was dying from an ulcerated wound. Henry died on July 6, 1189, and Richard inherited the throne. One of his first acts was to release his mother, and she ruled England in his stead while he went on the Third Crusade to recover Jerusalem from the victorious Saladin. Eleanor was now 67 years old, but that did not stop her from arranging a marriage between Richard and Princess Berengaria, daughter of King Sancho of Navarre. In 1192 she negotiated Richard’s ransom after he was shipwrecked and taken prisoner by Duke Leopold of Austria and held in the Holy Roman Emperor’s castle at Hagenau. Eleanor spent most of 1193 collecting the ransom, which amounted to 35 tons of silver. Richard was released in December, and he and his mother toured their French and English territories and arranged a new coronation for Richard in celebration of his return from captivity.

The stress of intense power-brokering and intrigue took its toll on Eleanor, and in 1194 she retired to the Abbey of Fontevrault, her favorite place to rest and find peace. She stayed there for five years, lending her influence as needed, but was called out in 1199 when Richard was wounded in battle on March 25. He had been struck by an arrow; the wound turned gangrenous, and he sent for Eleanor when it was apparent that he would die. She raced the hundred miles to the fortress of Chalus to be with him, and he died in her arms on April 6. Now that Eleanor had left the abbey, she resumed her active involvement in politics and power-brokering: Richard had named John as his heir, and Eleanor managed to outmaneuver the scheming King Philip II, who was trying to put Arthur, Geoffrey’s son, on the throne of England. At the grand age of 77, Eleanor took control of Richard’s mercenary forces and helped John recapture territories lost during the fight for the throne, defended his lands while he was crowned at Westminster, took a tour of Aquitaine to remind its inhabitants who their duchess was, and went to Spain in 1200 to fetch her granddaughter Blanche of Castile, who was to marry Philip’s son and heir Louis.

In 1202, Eleanor was again drawn out of retirement when Philip tried yet again to seize French territories. In alliance with Arthur of Brittany, Philip attacked Normandy and then marched on Poitiers. Eleanor made her way to Poitiers to prevent Arthur—her grandson, but John’s enemy—from taking control, yet Arthur showed no respect for his 80-year-old grandmother and besieged her castle at Mirabeau. John fortunately arrived quickly and captured Arthur by surprise at dawn, taking all of his men as well. Arthur’s forces at the siege constituted almost all the rebels fighting against John, so this fiasco put an end to the civil war and secured John’s place on the throne of England, though since he soon alienated his allies and lost almost all of the continental empire of the Angevins to King Philip of France.

The crisis, however, took its toll on Eleanor’s health. In March 1204, she fell into a coma, in which she died peacefully on April 1. She was entombed in Fontevrault Abbey next to her husband Henry and her son Richard, and her effigy on the tomb shows her reading a Bible, her figure beautifully decorated with jewelry.