OVERVIEW

Born in 1122 (an estimated date—her parents were married in 1121), Eleanor was the eldest daughter of Guillaume X duke of Aquitaine and his duchess, Aenor de Chatellerault. When Guillaume X died while on pilgrimage in 1137, Eleanor inherited his lands; now duchess of the richest and largest province in France (Aquitaine, in southwestern France, stretched from the river Loire to the Pyrenees and functioned like a separate nation) and also countess of Poitiers, the teenage Eleanor was the most eligible bride in Europe. A marriage was arranged for her with King Louis VII of France, and he fell deeply in love with her. The two even went on a Crusade to Damascus together—but failed in the attempt to rescue the Frankish kingdoms. After many years their marriage began to fail as well, especially because they had managed to produce only two daughters, and Louis needed a son for the throne. In 1152, they dissolved the marriage by mutual consent, being granted an annulment due to consanguinity (their bloodlines were too close, being third cousins), leaving them free to marry again.

Within six weeks of the annulment, Eleanor married Henry count of Anjou and duke of Normandy. When he became King Henry II of England, the merger of their landholdings created an empire. With Henry, Eleanor had five sons and three daughters over the next 13 years: William, Henry, Richard, Geoffrey, John, Matilda, Eleanor, and Joanna. The years between Henry’s accession and the birth of Prince John were tumultuous: the fight to claim Toulouse, the inheritance of Eleanor’s grandmother and father, was a failure; and the feud between the king and Thomas Becket, the archbishop of Canterbury, became known all over the continent (see the chapter on Thomas Becket). By late 1166, after the birth of her final child, Eleanor separated from Henry and moved home to Poitiers.

It was in Poitiers that the famous “Court of Love” or “Court of Ladies” began. Away from Henry’s adulteries and constant warfare, Eleanor was able to develop her own court that encouraged music, literature, and what we think of today as “chivalric” manners. In 1173, however, the younger Henry made a bid for power against the king, along with his brothers Richard and Geoffrey, and the ensuing revolt resulted in Eleanor being imprisoned for the next 16 years. Upon Henry Il’s death in 1189, she was freed, and Richard became king. While Richard went off on the Third Crusade, she ruled England in his stead, and, after he died, she helped King John rule as well, even in her late seventies. She died in 1204 at the surprisingly advanced age of 82 and was buried in Fontevrault Abbey.