Eleanor of Aquitaine: Queen of France and Then of England

Eleanor of Aquitaine (c. 1122–1204) was the heiress to one of the largest and richest territories in medieval France. She married first Louis VII, king of France, and then Henry II, king of England, and she was the mother of two English kings, Richard I and John. Few women of the Middle Ages held so much land, travelled so widely or stayed politically active for so long.

An heiress of Aquitaine

Eleanor was born around 1122, probably in Poitiers or Bordeaux, the elder daughter of William X, duke of Aquitaine and count of Poitou. Her grandfather, William IX, is remembered as the earliest troubadour whose poems survive, and the court in which she grew up was a centre of the new lyric poetry in the Occitan language.

The duchy of Aquitaine stretched from the Loire to the Pyrenees and was larger than the lands directly controlled by the French king. When Eleanor’s brother died young, she became heir. William X died on pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in April 1137, having placed his daughter under the protection of King Louis VI of France.

Queen of France

Louis VI quickly arranged for Eleanor to marry his son and heir, also named Louis. The wedding took place in Bordeaux on 25 July 1137. Within days Louis VI died, and the young couple became king and queen of France; Eleanor was about fifteen.

The marriage was an uneasy one. Louis was pious and serious; contemporaries described Eleanor as lively and strong-willed. In 1144 they attended the consecration of Abbot Suger’s new choir at Saint-Denis, and in 1145 Eleanor gave birth to their first daughter, Marie.

In 1147 Eleanor joined her husband on the Second Crusade, travelling with a large retinue. At Antioch in 1148 she sided with her uncle Raymond, prince of Antioch, over the direction of the campaign, and rumours spread of an improper relationship between them. Historians regard these rumours as unproven. Louis forced her to leave with him, and the crusade ended in failure.

A second daughter, Alix, was born around 1150, but no son followed. On 21 March 1152 a church council at Beaugency annulled the marriage on the grounds that the couple were related within the forbidden degrees. Eleanor’s lands returned to her, and both daughters stayed with Louis.

Queen of England

Eight weeks later, on 18 May 1152, Eleanor married Henry, count of Anjou and duke of Normandy, at Poitiers. He was about eleven years younger than she was and the leading claimant to the English throne after the civil war known as the Anarchy. The marriage alarmed Louis VII, because Henry now controlled more of France than the French king did.

In December 1154 Henry and Eleanor were crowned king and queen of England at Westminster. Their combined lands, often called the Angevin Empire by modern historians, stretched from the Scottish border to the Pyrenees.

Between 1153 and 1166 Eleanor bore Henry eight children: William, who died in childhood, Henry (later called the Young King), Matilda, Richard, Geoffrey, Eleanor, Joan and John. During the early years of the reign she often acted for her husband in England or in her own duchy while he was elsewhere. Writs issued in her name show her ordering officials, settling disputes and raising money, especially in the late 1150s when Henry was campaigning on the continent.

The couple’s children were central to Henry’s plans. Their daughters made important foreign marriages: Matilda to Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony and Bavaria, Eleanor to Alfonso VIII of Castile, and Joan to William II of Sicily. The sons were each intended to rule part of the family’s lands, an arrangement that would later lead to bitter rivalry among them.

Rebellion and captivity

From the late 1160s Eleanor lived mainly in Poitiers, governing Aquitaine with her son Richard, who was being prepared to inherit it. In 1173 the Young King, Richard and Geoffrey rebelled against their father, with the support of Louis VII. Eleanor backed her sons.

She was captured while trying to travel to the French court. The chronicler Gervase of Canterbury says she was disguised in men’s clothing. The revolt collapsed in 1174, and Henry kept Eleanor in custody, mostly in England, for about fifteen years. The conditions varied; she sometimes appeared at court on major occasions, but she was not free to act.

Queen mother and regent

Henry II died on 6 July 1189, and Richard immediately ordered his mother’s release. While Richard prepared for and fought in the Third Crusade, Eleanor, now in her late sixties, worked to keep his kingdom secure. In 1191 she crossed the Alps to bring Berengaria of Navarre to Sicily to marry him.

When Richard was captured on his way home and held by the Emperor Henry VI, Eleanor helped raise the enormous ransom and travelled to Germany in person. He was released in February 1194.

After Richard’s death in April 1199, Eleanor supported her youngest son, John, against the claim of her grandson Arthur of Brittany. In 1200, at about seventy-eight, she crossed the Pyrenees to Castile to collect her granddaughter Blanche, who was to marry the heir to the French throne. In 1202 she was besieged by Arthur’s forces at Mirebeau until John arrived and captured him.

Eleanor had long been a benefactor of Fontevraud, a wealthy abbey in Anjou ruled by an abbess, where both men and women lived under the same head. Henry II and Richard I had already been buried there. Eleanor then retired to the abbey, where she died on 1 April 1204. Within three months Philip II of France had completed his conquest of Normandy, and much of the Angevin inheritance north of the Loire was lost to John.

Myths and facts

Eleanor attracted legends even in her own lifetime. A later story claims she poisoned Rosamund Clifford, Henry II’s mistress; there is no contemporary evidence for it, and it first appears long after both women had died.

The image of Eleanor presiding over formal courts of love at Poitiers comes from Andreas Capellanus’s treatise On Love, a literary work, and is not accepted as a description of real events. Her personal role as a patron of poets is also harder to prove than is often claimed, although a later poet, Layamon, says that Wace presented his Roman de Brut to her.

Popular culture has kept her famous. The play and film The Lion in Winter (1968), with Katharine Hepburn as Eleanor, imagines a Christmas gathering in 1183 and is a drama, not a historical record.

Timeline

• c. 1122: Eleanor is born, elder daughter of William X of Aquitaine.
• 25 July 1137: She marries the future Louis VII in Bordeaux; days later she becomes queen of France.
• 1147–1149: She accompanies Louis on the Second Crusade.
• 21 March 1152: The marriage is annulled at Beaugency.
• 18 May 1152: She marries Henry of Anjou at Poitiers.
• 19 December 1154: Henry and Eleanor are crowned king and queen of England.
• 1173–1174: She supports her sons’ revolt and is taken into custody.
• 1189: Henry II dies and Richard I frees his mother.
• 1194: She helps secure Richard’s release from captivity in Germany.
• 1 April 1204: Eleanor dies at Fontevraud Abbey.

Why it matters

Eleanor’s marriages decided who would control western France for half a century and set the stage for long rivalry between the kings of England and France. Her later career showed that a widowed queen mother could wield real authority. Through her descendants, she became an ancestor of many of Europe’s ruling families.