Eleanor of Aquitaine Queen - Consort of France and Queen of England was one of the more celebrated discoveries in my family history. Firstly because she was a person of such high notoriety in history Secondly I had not learned any facts of her life before discovering her in my research.
I now know:
Eleanor of Aquitaine was A Trailblazer for Women in Power.
That she had Scandalous Love Affairs.
Eleanor is known as The Queen Who Refused to Be Silenced.
She was a Feminist Icon Ahead of her time and a Trailblazer for Women in Power.
Eleanor was also described as the Most Beautiful and Powerful Woman of her time.
Birth, 6th Dec 1122 in France.
Died, 1st April 1204 France.
Burial, Royal Abbey of Our Lady of Fontevraud France, along with husband Henry II and their son Richard I the Lion Hart.
Parentes, William X Aquitaine and Aénor de Châtellerault.
Siblings of Eleanor, Petronilla of Aquitaine, c. 1125 – c.1151.
William Aigret, 1126 - 1130.
Marriages 1st Louis VII of France m 1137 - 1152. 2nd Henry II of England m 1152 - 1189.
Children of Eleanor and William VII:
Marie of France, 145 – 11 March 1198.
Alice of France, 1150 – 1197/1198.
Children of Eleanor and Henry II:
William IX, 17 August 1153 – 1156.
Henry the Young King, 28 February 1155 – 11 June 1183.
Matilda, June 1156 — June/July 1189.
Richard I the Lion Heart of England, 8 September 1157 – 6 April 1199.
Geoffrey II, 1158 – 19 August 1186.
Eleanor of England, – 31 October 1214.
Joan of England, October 1165 – 4 September 1199.
John Lackland King of England 24 December 1166 – 19 October 1216.
Eleanore is my 24th great-grandmother through her son John Lackland and my 3rd great-grandmother Sarah Acton.
One of the most outstanding female figures of the Middle Ages and a fascinating character in her own right, Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine and Countess of Poitou was born around 1122, the daughter of William X of Aquitaine and Aenor of Châtellerault, the daughter of Aimeric I, Vicomte of Chatellerault.
Early Life
Eleanor's paternal grandfather, William IX, Duke of Aquitaine was, by all accounts, a colourful character with an infectious joie de vivre, a musician and poet, he came to be acknowledged as the first of the troubadours. He had abducted Dangereuse, the wife of Aimeric I, Vicomte of Chatellerault and made her his long-term mistress, flaunting their relationship by displaying her naked image on his shield. His wife, Phillipa of Toulouse, retired into a nunnery. At the prompting of Dangereuse, William IX married his son and heir William, to her daughter Aenor. This complicated family situation resulted in Eleanor's maternal grandmother being the mistress of her paternal grandfather. The future William X and Aenor produced three children, a son, William Aigret, who died young, and two daughters, Eleanor and Petronella, the children were nurtured in the troubadour culture of the warm south at her grandfather's court, with its cult of courtly love.
Marriage to Louis VI of France
William X succeeded his father as Duke of Aquitaine and in 1137, set out on a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. James of Compostella, leaving his daughters in the charge of Geoffrey de Lauroux, Archbishop of Bordeaux. He failed to return, on the journey home he was taken gravely ill and died on the 9th of April, 1137. Eleanor, then aged about 15, became one of the most powerful heiresses in Europe, her father had named Louis VI of France, known as the Fat, her guardian. At the time of William X of Aquitaine's death, Louis VI was himself mortally ill, and vastly obese, he was confined to his bed. He decided to marry his new ward to his teenage son, Louis, the heir to France, thereby acquiring the vast lands and wealth of Aquitaine for the French crown.
Louis and Eleanor were duly married at the cathedral of Saint-André in Bordeaux on the 12th of July 1137. The newlywed pair possessed disparate personalities, Eleanor was high-spirited, worldly and strong-headed; Louis was pious, meek and monkish. Louis VI died a few days after the wedding, making Eleanor Queen Consort of France. Eleanor's sister, Petronella, brought to the French court, engaged in an illicit affair with Raoul I of Vermandois who attempted to repudiate his wife, the niece of the powerful Theobald of Champagne, to marry Petronella. Louis VII, encouraged by Eleanor, supported Petronella and Raoul. War broke out as a result. The town of Vitry was burnt and the townspeople sought refuge in a church, which burned down. More than one thousand perished in the flames. The sensitive Louis' conscience was sorely troubled by the affair and he was plagued by the screams of the dying.
Peace was eventually restored and King Louis decided to go on a crusade to the Holy Land to expiate his sins. Eleanor also enthusiastically took up the cross and persuaded her husband to allow her and her ladies to accompany him. The Second Crusade achieved little and it was rumoured that Eleanor indulged in an extramarital affair with her uncle, Raymond of Antioch.
Eleanor and Louis produced two daughters, Marie (1145-1198), who later married Henry I, Count of Champagne and Alix (1151-1198), who married Theobald V, Count of Blois. However the couple became increasingly estranged as the years passed, Eleanor found her meek and devout husband boring and the marriage was finally annulled on 11th March 1152. Louis acquired custody of the couple's daughters and Eleanor retained the rich lands of Aquitaine.
Marriage to Henry II
Once again a wealthy heiress in her own right, attempts were made to abduct Eleanor to acquire her estates. Only six weeks after her annulment, Eleanor married for a second time to the young Henry Plantagenet, Duke of Normandy and Count of Anjou, a man eleven years her junior. Both were strong characters, accustomed to having their way and resultantly the stage was set for an extremely stormy and tumultuous union. A man of immense energy and dynamic personality, Henry possessed the fearful Angevin temper, apparently a dominant family trait. In his notorious and uncontrollable rages, he would lie on the floor and chew at the rushes and was never slow to anger. Eleanor had previously been the lover of his father Geoffrey Plantagenet, Count of Anjou who advised his son against the marriage.
On the death of King Stephen in 1154, Henry ascended to the throne of England at the age of 21. The tempestuous union of Henry and Eleanor was to produce a large and dysfunctional family of eight children, their firstborn, William, Count of Poitiers (b. 1153) the traditional title of the heirs to the Dukes of Aquitaine, died in infancy, he was followed by another son Henry, (1155-1183), known as the Young King, then came a daughter Matilda (1156-1189), followed by a third son, the future Richard the Lionheart (1157-1199), and Geoffrey, Duke of Brittany (1158-1186), then came two more daughters, Eleanor (1162-1214) and Joanna (1165-1199) and finally, that afterthought of his parents cooling passion, John (1166-1216).
Like his grandfather before him, Henry was a man of strong passions and a serial adulterer, he incensed his passionate and strong-willed wife by introducing his bastard son, Geoffrey, the son of Hikenai, a woman of loose morals, into the royal nursery in the early days of their marriage. Eleanor, a proud woman, found this insult difficult to stomach. Much to the chagrin of his wife, he later took Rosamund Clifford as his long-term mistress. Eleanor was aware that he was particularly enamoured of Rosamund and she was to become the mother of two of his many illegitimate children. The neglected Queen returned to her native Aquitaine, establishing her court and taking Richard along with her, who was designated her heir. Spurned by her husband's neglect, Eleanor encouraged her brood of unruly and discontented sons to rebel against their father and in 1173 was captured by Henry whilst attempting to join her sons in Paris.
She spent the next fifteen years as her husband's prisoner, during which time her eldest surviving son, Henry, the Young King "a restless youth, born for the undoing of many" died while in revolt against his father. Her fourth son, Geoffrey, was killed at a tournament in Paris on August 19, 1186, at the age of twenty-eight, he was reputed to have been trampled to death in the melee.
Widowhood
When Henry died on July 6, 1189, her favourite son Richard ascended the throne of England and one of his first acts was to order the release of his revered mother. He was to prove to be an absentee king and soon after his coronation, inspired no doubt by the tales of his mother's crusade, left England to take part in the Third Crusade. Eleanor escorted his intended bride, Berengaria of Navarre, who was to join him on the crusade, from Spain to Sicily, for their marriage. Their union produced no children. On his return journey, Richard was taken captive and held for ransom. Eleanor campaigned tirelessly for his release, addressing the Pope in an outraged letter of complaint as "Eleanor, by the wrath of God, Queen of England". She delivered his ransom.
When Richard was mortally wounded at the Siege of Chaluz, she rushed to be with him at the end. On 6th April 1199 "he ended his earthly day" in her arms and she escorted his body to Fontevrault for burial.
She supported her youngest son John as King of England in preference to her grandson, Arthur of Brittany. Now in her late seventies, Eleanor's travels were far from over, a peace treaty was negotiated between England and France, now ruled by Louis VI's astute and wily son, Phillip Augustus, to be cemented by the marriage of the Dauphin Louis and Eleanor's grandaughter, Blanche, daughter of Alfonso VIII, King of Castile and Eleanor of England, she undertook the journey over the Pyrenees to Castille to escort the bride to France.
Arthur of Brittany attempted to recover his inheritance from John and in the summer of 1202, besieged his octegenarian grandmother at Mirebeau Castle which she valiantly held for John. Eleanor resorted to delaying tactics while sending an urgent message to her son for aid. John responded with alacrity, covering the 80-mile distance from Le Mans in 48 hours, he came to the aid of his mother and took Arthur prisoner. Arthur was later murdered at Rouen by his ruthless uncle. Eleanor's reaction to his disappearance has gone unrecorded, although it led Shakespeare to refer to her as a 'a cankered grandam'.
Eleanor retired to Fontevrault, where she hoped to find peace and took the veil. Her magnificent constitution was at last exhibiting signs of failing and she was reported to be often unwell, she was visited there by John. Richard's 'saucy castle' Chateau Gaillard, fell to the French and as Phillip began the dismemberment of the crumbling French Angevin Empire, Eleanor sank into a coma, the annals of Fontevrault recorded that she 'existed as one already dead to the world'. Eleanor of Aquitaine died in 1204 and was buried at Fontevrault, the mausoleum of the early Plantagenets, by her husband, Henry II and her best-loved son, Richard. Constructed in the thirteenth century, and ravaged by time and revolution, her painted effigy depicts her reading a book, reflecting her love of learning.
Further reading:
The Pantagenets, The Kings Who Made England, by Dan Jones
Copyright © Noel Bond. Researched and written by Noel Bond, No written part of this Blog may be reproduced in any form, by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author.
Opmerkingen