The Death of Eleanor of Aquitaine

Eleanor of Aquitaine was one of the most influential people of the medieval period, and one the most famous women in the history of Europe. She was the richest heiress in Europe at the age of 15, and arguably the greatest beauty as well. If her money didn’t hook a man, the fact she was hot enough to make even the devoutest of monks recant their vows would.

She wasn’t unaware of the power both her wealth and her looks brought her, either. During her lifetime she would wed two kings and give birth to three more. She was well-educated, a patron of the arts, high-spirited, and determined to control her own life as much as possible. Even though, taken on the whole, her life was more eventful than happy, no one can say she didn’t make every moment of it count.

In 1137, the newly-made Duchess of Aquitaine married the heir to the French throne, the future King Louis VII.

He adored her, but her unbreakable spirit caused a lot of resentment in the French court. Eleanor was not the kind of women, even as young as she was, to sit meekly while men planned. Over time, Louis and Eleanor would become estranged, although it appears that all the push for an annulment was on Eleanor’s end. Historical rumour persists that Louis was heartbroken when he realised his love for his bride was never – and would never – be requited.

As a final nail in the nuptial coffin, Eleanor met a man she found much more attractive and desirable as a husband –  the Duke of Normandy, the future King Henry II of England. As the character of Eleanor says in James Goldman’s  excellent play, The Lion in Winter, Henry “came down from the North to Paris with a mind like Aristotle’s and a form like mortal sin. We shattered the Commandments on the spot.” Henry was bold, vivacious, daring, as ginger in nature as he was in hair colour, and more than a decade younger than Eleanor. They hit it off like a house on fire, and they would eventually be consumed by the same conflagration.

Inasmuch as she had only born a daughter, Marie, rather than a male heir, Eleanor thought that she could end her marriage without much difficulty. However, when she asked Pope Eugene III  to grant her an annulment, he instead bullied her into reconciling briefly with Louis (probably at the king’s behest). During this rapprochement, Eleanor conceived another daughter, Alix of France.

The birth another girl was probably the ‘sign’ Eleanor wanted to prove that God was not in favour of her marriage to the French king. Louis VII, “facing substantial opposition to Eleanor from many of his barons and her own desire for divorce … bowed to the inevitable.” On 21 March 1152, the four archbishops of Sens, Bordeaux, Rouen, and Reims, acting “with the approval of Pope Eugene, granted an annulment on grounds of consanguinity within the fourth degree.” Since the marriage had been made in good faith and with a papal blessing, the two royal princesses from the union remained legitimate. As was customary, the children where given to their father, who legally owned his offspring. However, Eleanor’s dower lands were restored to her. She was again a beautiful heiress, and a free woman.

The queen was clearly not the maternal sort to be easily attached to her toddler/infant daughters (who were probably kept from her much of the time anyway), and spent no time weeping over the loss of her children. As soon as the ink hit the annulment papers, Eleanor made haste to Poitiers (evading two kidnapping attempts) and sent her people to let Henry know she was now free and able to marry him. Henry rushed to her side, and the couple were married on 18 May 1152. Eight weeks before, Eleanor had been Queen of France. Now she was the Duchess of Aquitaine and Normandy, as well as the Countess of Anjou, Maine, and Nantes. Two years later, she became a queen once more when she was crowned at Henry II’s side in England.

Although Henry and Eleanor had a tumultuous marriage (which is unsurprising when you consider that both spouses were such strong-willed people), it was a very fruitful one. Eleanor gave birth to eight children:

William IX, Count of Poitiers
Henry the Young King
Matilda, Duchess of Saxony
Richard I, King of England
Geoffrey II, Duke of Brittany
Eleanor, Queen of Castile
Joan, Queen of Sicily
John, King of England

In this second marriage, Eleanor developed more of a relationship with her offspring. Maybe it was the fact she saw them more often at a smaller English court that encouraged her to bond with them, but I think it more likely that she came to love the children as they aged and she grew to know them as people. Over time, the queen became strongly attached to some of the children, but not to all of them. She even seemed to actively dislike a few of her kids, particularly her youngest son, the future King John.

Eleanor’s loyalties lay with her eldest sons, Henry the Young King and Richard the Lionhearted,  especially after she and King Henry II became fully estranged. Of course, her husband was sleeping with everything in a skirt who would consent to do so (and maybe some who couldn’t really consent, if the accusations of his molestation of Richard’s child-fiancee, Alys of France, is true), so you can’t blame Eleanor for being angry with him. The enraged and unhappy queen even supported her sons in an unprecedented open rebellion against their father. 

The first historical fiction I ever read was Revolt of the Eaglets by Jean Plaidy, which recounted the rebellions of Henry II’s sons and their mother; it’s what got me hooked on Plantagenet history.

Eleanor would be imprisoned by her husband for more than 16 years as punishment for supporting the rebellion of Henry the Young King and two of his brothers against their father. It wasn’t until Henry II died in 1189 that the newly crowned Richard I could free his mother. 

Richard was considered to have always been his mother’s favourite child, and in turn he was particularly devoted to her and to the Duchy of Aquitaine for her sake. Eleanor served as King Richard’s regent and de facto ruler of England for the entirety of his reign. She actively encouraged him to spurn Alys of France (whom she seems to have unfairly blamed for the ‘affair’ with King Henry II) and to marry Berengaria of Navarre, first-born daughter of King Sancho VI of Navarre.  He married Berengaria even though he was technically still betrothed to Alys, and with his mother’s full backing he got away with the diplomatic offence of dumping the King of France’s sister. 

When Richard died without and heir and his brother John came to the throne, the now elderly dowager queen continued to rule England in reality, if not in name.

In 1199 Eleanor went to escort her granddaughter, Blanche of Castile, to France to marry the 12 year old heir-apparent to the throne, the future King Louis IX .  She was captured by Hugh IX of Lusignan, probably in retaliation for the fact her son, King John, had kidnapped and wed Hugh’s betrothed,  Isabella of Angoulême. Eleanor was able to negotiate her freedom and forge ahead to Castile, and in the spring of 1200 she set out with Blanche for Paris. Alas, the dowager queen grew so ill that she had to entrust her granddaughter to the guardianship of the Archbishop of Bordeaux, letting him finish the journey to the capital of France while Eleanor retired to Fontevraud in Anjou to recuperate.

While in Fontevraud, her grandson by Geoffrey II, Duke of Brittany, the 15 year old Arthur I, Duke of Brittany, besieged her at the castle of Mirebeau. King John rushed south with an army to save his mother, and captured his nephew. While imprisoned by King John, the young Arthur, the rightful heir of England’s throne, mysteriously disappeared. All the historical evidence suggests that John, a sadistic and weak bully, murdered his rival.

I think that Eleanor knew that John had murdered Arthur, and that is why she refused to help her youngest son hold on to the remains of the Angevin Empire any longer.  Instead, the dowager queen retired from the world and took the veil at Fontevraud Abbey. 

Soon after his mother abandoned him, most of King John’s regional allies in Anjou and Brittany deserted him as well. The locals turned to King Philip II of France, and the Duchy of Brittany, enraged by the loss of the duke, revolted against John’s tyrannical would-be rule and chose to support Alix of Thouars as the new duchess. By the time Eleanor died on 1 April 1204, John had lost most of his lands on the continent and had become known as John Lackland.

Eleanor of Aquitaine, former Queen of both France and England, had outlived both her previous husbands and all but two of her children — Queen Eleanor of Castile and her useless son King John. She was interred at Fontevraud Abbey, where she lies in state next to the tomb of King Henry II, and (more importantly) near to the effigy of her beloved son, King Richard I. Eventually,  King John’s wife, Isabella of Angoulême, would also be laid to rest near her former mother-in-law. One of Eleanor’s other daughters, Joan of England, Queen of Sicily, was also buried at her parent’s feet, but her effigy was destroyed in the French Revolution.

As the fictionalised King Henry II said in the aforementioned The Lion in Winter,  Eleanor of Aquitaine was ” a woman out of legend. Not in Alexandria, or Rome, or Camelot has there been such a queen.”