The Unofficial British Royal Family Pages

Wednesday 23 February 2005

Europe's Most Notorious Woman
Or, How Eleanor Changed the Fate of Western Europe

Long before Camilla became the third person in a marriage. Before Wallis caused a King to resign his throne. Even before Anne Boleyn lost her head, one English consort established herself as a woman of dubious reputation. Had the tabloids been around in the 12th century, Eleanor of Aquitaine’s beauty and outrageous behavior would have made her the star of every supermarket check-out lane.

At the tender age of 15, Eleanor inherited Aquitaine, arguably the richest and most important fiefdom in western Europe. Along with the sunny duchy of Aquitaine, she had inherited a sunny and playful disposition from her forebears, including her grandfather, the rascally William IX of Aquitaine whose reputation as the first proponent of "courtly love" and boisterous sexual escapades had scandalized (and amused) France. In fact, Eleanor was the product of a marriage between William’s son and the daughter of William’s mistress. Though not incestuous, the marriage of the children of the two insatiable and aging lovers certainly did not pass without comment.

While the Court of Aquitaine might not today be considered the most appropriate place to raise a young lady, Eleanor certainly blossomed there and, throughout her life, remained dedicated to her duchy and her people, even when duty drew her to the far corners of the known world.

At 15 years old, Eleanor could never have imagined the life that awaited her. In an age when the chroniclers frequently failed to note the names much less the activities of women, Eleanor emerged as someone who could not be ignored. Defying the life expectancy of a 12th-century woman, she lived well into her eighties and, it could reasonably be said, lived many lifetimes. Here is the story of the first of these lives.

Chroniclers and poets tell us that Eleanor was remarkably beautiful although no one bothered to record the color of her eyes or her hair. She was certainly no less attractive than the rich duchy she inherited. Indeed the two together made a prize many a noble lord would have liked to claim. Unfortunately for the ambitious men of France, Eleanor’s care had been entrusted to her overlord, the King of France who wasted no time in sending his heir Louis to marry her. Louis and Eleanor were very close in age but not in temperament. Flighty, vivacious and flirtatious, Eleanor was hardly the ideal life companion for the quiet, studious and pious Louis. Shortly after the wedding, the King died, leaving 16-year-old Louis with a tempestuous bride and a tumultuous kingdom. But, young men like to please their pretty brides and Louis was no exception.

Louis was patient when people criticized Eleanor’s spendthrift ways, her passion for fashion, her large entourage of followers and hangers-on. While he spent much of his time in the company of monks and priests, he indulged Eleanor in almost everything she wanted. Louis even indulged her younger sister, Petronilla, for Eleanor's sake.

Like Eleanor, young Petronilla inherited the boisterous ways of William IX and it was not long before her unseemly behavior caused a scandal. The pretty princess fell in love with Raoul of Vermandois, a married man more than twice her age. Amidst much scandal, the lovers received Eleanor’s encouragement to follow their hearts. However, Raoul’s wife and her family (long-time enemies of Aquitaine) were not interested in blessing the budding romance. After all, estates and power as well as family honor hung in the balance.

At Eleanor’s insistence, Louis persuaded some local bishops to annul Raoul’s marriage to his first wife, which led the Pope to excommunicate the bishops and the sinful couple. Louis then decided to punish Raoul’s in-laws, and led an army against them. As the king laid siege to one of his opponents’ towns, his soldiers and the fire they had set got out of control. Soon, a thousand innocents were trapped and burned to death in the local church. Gentle Louis was horrified as he listened to their screams and smelt their burning flesh. He never really recovered from the horrifying incident, and while he became more pious and melancholy, there is no evidence that he blamed Eleanor for the disaster. Raoul and Petronilla’s marriage was eventually blessed and life returned to normal.

As the years passed, however, Louis and Eleanor grew more distant from each other. Although Louis loved Eleanor, her meddling in politics caused him many headaches. His well-known patience was also tested by Eleanor’s flirtations, a habit she may have indulged because her husband was less-than-attentive in the marriage bed. In fact, the couple had been married eight years before their first child, a daughter, was born.

Nevertheless, nothing dimmed Eleanor’s high spirits and Louis continued to indulge her. When he decided to go on Crusade, Eleanor insisted on going, too. She quickly assembled her own mounted company of lady-soldiers who adopted a very masculine uniform of white tunics with leggings and leather boots to join the King’s army. These oddly attired women were all young, lovely and spirited like the Queen. Their presence on the Crusade no doubt caused distractions and, on at least one occasion, led to tragedy. Louis had sent Eleanor and her party ahead of the army to make camp on a plateau, but the valley below looked cooler and more lovely. In defiance of the King’s orders, the travelers decided to make camp there instead. When the French army arrived, it was forced to take a narrow passage down into the valley and was ambushed by the waiting enemy. Thousands of Frenchmen died, and the King himself was nearly lost, but again, history does not record whether Louis blamed Eleanor.

As the Crusaders pressed on, they arrived in the elegant and exotic environment of Antioch where Eleanor’s handsome young uncle, Raymond of Poitiers, son of William IX, ruled. Raymond, with his own ambitions in mind, sought to use Eleanor’s influence to convince Louis to fight to protect Antioch before going to Jerusalem. Uncle and niece began spending too much time together and rumors spread that they were engaging in a sexual affair. Whether the rumors were true or not, their shared heritage as descendants of William IX certainly convinced people they could be, especially when Eleanor insisted upon staying with Raymond. When Louis refused to leave her behind, Eleanor "dropped her bombshell," as biographer Alison Weir says. Eleanor told Louis she wanted a divorce, insisting she was certain God disapproved of their marriage because they were fourth cousins. As proof, she offered the fact that they had no sons. Heartbroken, Louis seemed to acquiesce. Then, in the middle of the night, the King’s men stole into Eleanor’s chamber and kidnapped her, forcing her to rejoin the French on the march to Jerusalem. Needless to say, this did not have a soothing effect on their marriage.

After a humiliating defeat at Damascus, Louis and Eleanor spent nearly a year in Jerusalem, but their estrangement continued to grow. As they returned to Europe on separate ships, Eleanor’s vessel was captured by the Byzantine emperor. She was rescued by Sicilians, but her boat faced treacherous weather and, for awhile, it was feared that she had been lost at sea. When the unsinkable Queen finally landed in Italy, she and Louis sought marital advice from the Pope himself. Eleanor told the Pope she thought the marriage wasn’t valid, but the Pope sided with Louis who had expressed how much he loved his wife. The Pope forced them to reconcile, even insisting that they must sleep together. When Eleanor became pregnant, everyone assumed the Pope’s blessing had worked, but the birth of a second daughter made even the devout Louis question whether God was indeed punishing him for marrying his cousin.

As Louis debated whether divorcing Eleanor, and thereby losing Aquitaine, was God’s will, he was distracted by a wayward vassal, Geoffrey Count of Anjou. Geoffrey had inherited Anjou and had captured Normandy by force. He was quickly becoming more powerful than the King himself and did not mind reminding the King by picking fights when he could. When the King summoned Geoffrey and his teenaged son, Henry, to pay homage to him, he could not have imagined the wheels he set in motion

Strapping young Henry was the heir not only of his father, but also of his mother Matilda, daughter of King Henry I of England, whose English throne had been usurped by her cousin, Stephen. Prince Henry was not considered a devastatingly handsome man—he was ruddy, stocky and not particularly well kempt—but he was attractive and he had great energy and even greater ambition. When Eleanor saw the virile youngster, who was 11 years her junior, she conceived a dangerous plan for the future.

After Geoffrey and Henry left Paris, Eleanor renewed her pleas for an annulment and Louis, in desperate need of a male heir, agreed. Within six months the marriage was annulled. The still loving and somewhat na�ve Louis allowed Eleanor to keep Aquitaine without attaching any strings. She was therefore free to govern the province and marry as she chose.

Eleanor eluded several would-be abductors who longed to get their hands on the beautiful ex-Queen and her rich duchy. When she arrived in her capitol, she delivered her coup de grace, inviting Prince Henry to come to her. Henry, who had been preparing for an invasion of England, rushed south to marry the alluring Eleanor. To add insult to Louis’ injury, Eleanor was even more closely related to her second husband than to her first.

The couple quickly set about consolidating and expanding their combined power. Putting Eleanor’s riches to good use, Henry attacked England and successfully forced King Stephen to recognize him as the heir to the English throne. Less than two years after relinquishing her French crown, Eleanor gained the English one. When Stephen died, Henry and Eleanor controlled an empire that stretched from the Scottish borderlands, through most of France to the Pyrennes Mountains. Next to their expansive domains, Louis’ kingdom was tiny and poor.

The jubilant Eleanor also quickly produced sons for her new husband, while Louis’ second wife delivered only girls. In her early thirties, Eleanor had escaped an unhappy marriage, regained control of her dower lands, selected her own husband and helped to create an empire. The dynasty she founded with Henry would control England and fight against Louis’ descendants in France for centuries to come.

- Cheryl