Eleanor was a very strong-willed woman of her time. She was said to be very beautiful with a wonderful personality. She was the wife of King Louis VII of France and accompanied him on the Second Crusade. It seems she found Louis less than exciting in sexual matters, saying that when she married him she thought she was marrying a man, but found she'd married a monk. Anyway, they were divorced. The legality was that Louis divorced Eleanor, but she was the instigator of the process. She then married Henry Plantagenet who became King Henry II of England. Among their children were Richard (who became King Richard I of England, also known as the Lionheart) and John (who became ... er ... King John). So in her life she was the wife of two kings and the mother of two kings. Impressive, eh?
While Henry II held a great deal of land in France, Eleanor held Aquitaine in her own right. Pretty good for a woman.
Eleanor was also a great supporter of chivalry and the spirit of courtly love.
Even though Henry had her imprisoned for many years at Chinon, she had an indominatable spirit. On Henry's death, Richard had his mother released. While Richard was away on the Third Crusade, Eleanor was joint-regent in England.
Come on now, don't you think she's inspirational? I think she was wonderful, and way ahead of her time.Why is Eleanor of Aquitaine seen as an inspirational figure in history?
I think she is inspirational in particular to older women, because her most active and influential years were when she was an old woman.
She was 67 when she was released from prison by her son Richard (Henry II had kept her imprisoned for 15 years for siding with her sons in their rebellion against him). On her release she made a triumphal progress, granting amnesty to prisoners and assuring the country's loyalty to Richard. She ruled as regent during his absence on the Crusades, defended his possession from her younger son John, and personally arranged the ransom and release of Richard when he was imprisoned by the Emperor of Austria.
After the death of Richard and the succession of her youngest, John, she worked to protect his interests. She retired to the convent at Fontrevault, in France, but at the age of 80 she travelled to Castille, in spain, to bring back her granddaughter Blanche to be a bride to the son of the King of France. And she still wasn't finished. She defeneded Aquitaine, Anjour and Mirabeau against the forces of Arthur of Brittany, who was challenging John's right to the throne.
As we;; as her polticial role, Eleanor was also important as a patron of the arts. She established a brilliant court in the city of Poitiers, southern France, where she acted as patron to the troubadours and to authors, including the famous female poet Marie de France. She gathered together the finest poets, musicians and scholars and founded religious and educational establishments in both France and England.
She provided forces for the Crusades.
http://cla.calpoly.edu/~dschwart/engl513鈥?/a>
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A622595
http://www.historynet.com/eleanor-of-aqu鈥?/a>
http://departments.kings.edu/womens_hist鈥?/a>
http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/KELEL鈥?/a>
http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-7486-鈥?/a>
She was married to King Louis VII but then divorced and married King Henry II. She was mad when Henry made a tomb for his mistress that seemed more extravagant than hers so went against Henry with his son, Richard. She was considered to be beautiful.
Eleanor of Aquitaine was one of the most powerful and fascinating personalities of feudal Europe. At age 15 she married Louis VII, King of France, bringing into the union her vast possessions from the River Loire to the Pyrenees. Only a few years later, at age 19, she knelt in the cathedral of V茅zelay before the celebrated Abb茅 Bernard of Clairvaux offering him thousands of her vassals for the Second Crusade. It was said that Queen Eleanor appeared at V茅zelay dressed like an Amazon galloping through the crowds on a white horse, urging them to join the crusades.
While the church may have been pleased to receive her thousand fighting vassals, they were less happy when they learned that Eleanor, attended by 300 of her ladies, also planned to go to help ';tend the wounded.';
The presence of Eleanor, her ladies and wagons of female servants, was criticized by commentators throughout her adventure. Dressed in armor and carrying lances, the women never fought. And when they reached the city of Antioch, Eleanor found herself deep in a renewed friendship with Raymond, her uncle, who had been appointed prince of the city. Raymond, only a few years older than Eleanor, was far more interesting and handsome than Eleanor's husband, Louis. When Raymond decided that the best strategic objective of the Crusade would be to recapture Edessa, thus protecting the Western presence in the Holy Land, Eleanor sided with his view. Louis, however, was fixated on reaching Jerusalem, a less sound goal. Louis demanded that Eleanor follow him to Jerusalem. Eleanor, furious, announced to one and all that their marriage was not valid in the eyes of God, for they were related through some family connections to an extent prohibited by the Church. Wounded by her claim, Louis nonetheless forced Eleanor to honor her marriage vows and ride with him. The expedition did fail, and a defeated Eleanor and Louis returned to France in separate ships.
On her way home, while resting in Sicily, Eleanor was brought the news that her fair haired uncle had been killed in battle, and his head delivered to the Caliph of Baghdad. Although her marriage to Louis continued for a time, and she bore him two daughters, the relationship was over. In 1152 the marriage was annulled and her vast estates reverted to Eleanor's control. Within a year, at age thirty, she married twenty year old Henry who two years later became king of England.
In the papal bull for the next Crusade, it expressly forbade women of all sorts to join the expedition. All the Christian monarchs, including King Louis, agreed to this. But by this time Eleanor had problems of her own in her marriage to King Henry II of England.
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In a way Eleanor of Aquitaine's life had barely begun after she returned to France from her travels on the Second Crusade. She lived until her eighties, becoming one of the great political and wealthy powers of medieval Europe.
Eleanor was wealthy because she was heiress of the duchy of Aquitaine, one of the greatest fiefs in Europe. Aquitaine was like a separate nation with lands extending in southwestern France from the river Loire to the Pyrenees. Eleanor's court was a trend setter in the medieval world, known for its sophistication and luxury. Heavily influenced by the Spanish courts of the Moors, it gave patronage to poets and encouraged the art of the troubadours, some of whom were believed to be in love with the beautiful Eleanor. One story is that in her effort to shed her rough knights of their unruly ways, she made up a mock trial in which the court ladies sat on an elevated platform and judged the knights, who read poems of homage to women and acted out proper courting techniques. The men wore fancy clothes - flowing sleeves, pointed shoes - and wore their hair long.
During their adventures on the Second Crusade, it became apparent that her marriage with dour, severe King Louis VII of France was ill matched. The marriage was annulled on a technicality, and Eleanor left her two daughters by him to be raised in the French court. Within a short time Eleanor threw herself into a new marriage, a stormy one to Henry of Anjou, an up and coming prince eleven years younger than she. Their temperaments as well as their wealth in land were well matched; her new husband became Henry II king of England in 1154.
For the next thirteen years Eleanor constantly bore Henry children, five sons and three daughters. (William, Henry, Richard I ';the Lionheart';, Geoffrey, John ';Lackland';, Mathilda, Eleanor, and Joan). Richard and John became, in turn, kings of England. Henry was given the title ';the young king'; by his father, although father Henry still ruled. Through tough fighting and clever alliances, and with a parcel of children, Henry and Eleanor created an impressive empire. As well, Eleanor was an independent ruler in her own right since she had inherited the huge Duchy
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