#eleanor of aquitaine
So I’m looking to finally wrap up my Queens of England series with the last few Queens that I’ve been putting off for a while. I’m also putting together a post with links to all the previous posts in the series so they can all be easily found.
I’ve come across a problem though. I made a post in the series about Eleanor of Aquitatine, that I am sure of, however it seems I have accidentally deleted the post. The post itself was from about two years ago or more. I know it’s a long shot but I was wondering if any of my current followers reblogged it at the time or have seen it for me to try and get it reposted back onto my blog. I just really don’t want to have to redo it if there’s a chance it can be found.
Edit - I may also have lost a post about Maria Fitzherbet a ‘not quite’ queen of England as I termed her. So if anyone’s seen that too?
This badass here was the coolest woman of the Middle Ages. She was the daughter of William X, duke of Aquitaine and Count of Poitiers. When she was fifteen, her daddy died and she inherited his lands. She married Louis VII and became queen of France. She accompanied her husband to the Holy Land on a crusade, where she is rumored to have cheated on him (possibly with her uncle Raymond of Poitiers). Her and her ladies dressed as Amazons and were badasses, but the Second Crusade was a disaster. Louis was not only a boring lover, he was also at the time an ineffectual military leader. Under the pretext of consanguinity (they were third cousins) and the wife’s supposed inability to bear sons (they had two daughters together), Eleanor was repudiated. She said kthanxbye and bounced with her lands. Some dude tried to kidnap her and force her to marry him but she was like HELL NO. She married Henry, Duke of Normandy, who was eleven years younger than her (what a cougar! and she might have had an affair with his father prior to their wedding). Two years later, Henry became king of England. Throughout their marriage, she gave him five sons and three daughters (in your face, Louis!). She supported her sons in their rebellion against their father, so Henry imprisoned her for sixteen years. When Henry died, Eleanor’s favorite son, Richard the Lionheart, became king and released his mommy at once. Aged approximatively 67 at the time of her liberation, she became queen dowager. She died at 82 years old! She is, to my knowledge, the only woman to have ever been queen of France and of England. Three of her sons ruled over England (Henry, Richard and John), and two of her daughters were also queens (Eleanor and Joan). Throughout history, people have accused her of every vice (notably to have poisoned Henry’s mistress, the Fair Rosamund) but such allegations are false and were only invented in attempt to discredit a queen who, in a time where so little opportunities were given to women, displayed great fierceness and power.
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As the world collectively crawls, gibbering and raving toward the end of the American presidential election, the medieval roots of society’s expectations of women are once again very firmly on display.
Case in point – the life and times of one of the three medieval women you have heard of – Eleanor of Aquitaine. Eleanor was, by all accounts, an absolute bad ass. She lead armies both in Europe and on the Second Crusade. She was a highly skilled ruler who reigned in her husband’s absence from the country. She was also a total babe.
For all these reasons, the modern imagination loves Eleanor. She won Katherine Hepburn an Oscar, and pops up in most Robin Hood movies. (Yes, even that really bad Russel Crowe one.) This is why you know her name.
Whilst we appreciate Eleanor, her mind, influence, and general kick-arsery now, everything we love about her now meant she was often reviled in her own time, and for decades after her death.
Eleanor managed to run herself into trouble because she was intent on exercising power in the public sphere.
The trouble began when she was on Crusade with her first husband, King of France Louis VII. While the two were staying with Eleanor’s uncle Raymond, then prince of Antioch, they began fighting over military tactics. Louis wanted to march into Jerusalem then and there in order to fulfill his vow as a pilgrim. Eleanor, on the other hand, was not a fucking idiot, and as a result thought that maybe they should join forces with her uncle instead. You know, given that he lived in the Outremer and maybe had, like, insight into local customs and the lay of the land and whatnot.
But Louis would insist upon being an idiot, so Eleanor was like, yeah we’re done here and decided to divorce mofo and find her a man who would listen to reason. That’s when men started talking shit.
EnterJohn of Salisbury, Bishop of Chartres, scholar, and total hater. John took it upon himself to point out that Eleanor questioning her husband’s stupid military strategy and the legality of their marriage wasn’t ladylike. Women, of course, were meant to be submissive and nod and smile while their husbands made idiotic decisions. Meanwhile everyone at court in Antioch was also scandalised by Eleanor’s stubborn insistence on having a brain, and bitches started gossiping. This trickled down to the crusaders’ camps, and suddenly the French forces were hating on Eleanor as well, but not content to gossip about the fact that she had free will, they started saying she was banging her uncle.
When Eleanor moved on to Henry Plantagenet about two seconds after she divorced Louis’s lame ass (#ByeFelipe), people continued to hate. Soon chroniclers in England were intimating that Eleanor had shagged her new father in law when she was still married to Louis, and so her new marriage was unlawful.
English writers joined the hater patrol at this point and started waxing rhapsodic about the virtue of previous Norman English queens, all of whom were apparently basic as hell, knew their place, and never dared to question a man ever.
Eleanor DGAF. Eleanor had England to rule because her husband was basically in France for the majority of their marriage. Eleanor knew that someone had to pull England back together after years of civil war, and she was just the bitch to do it. But as the royal administration grew, Eleanor had less power and she got bored.
Eventually she fucked back off to rule Poitiers, but figured while she was at it, she might as well get her sons to revolt against their father. Henry was always fucking with Aquitaine, which Eleanor was just trying to rule like a normal person. She also wanted her son Richard (you know, The Lionheart) a place of succession.
This did not go down well. Henry took Eleanor prisoner and dragged her back to England, imprisoning her at Sarum.
Eventually Henry’s dumb ass died, though, and Eleanor was ruling again while Richard went off on the Third Crusade. She continued to wield influence in her homelands as well, and made it to the age of 82, which was no small feat in the medieval period.
Medieval people still hated her, though. By the late medieval period people were saying she’d fucked Saladin. They said she was a jealous bitch and had murdered Henry’s lover Rosemund Clifford. Hell that one was so popular it was repeated into the modern period, with the added embellishment that she’d killed Henry as well. By the nineteenth century, historians – actual historians who should know better – were still insisting that Eleanor had been shagging the locals whilst in Antioch. (A wag of the finger at Agnes Strickland.)
Eleanor, of course, was only guilty of one crime – desiring power. The fact that she was well educated, versed in statecraft, had commanded successful military campaigns, and possessed one of the finest minds of her time was moot. She was a woman. Women were meant to quietly birth children, look pleasing, and stay out of the way as their husbands ruled. By insisting she had anything to add to the world of politics, she opened herself up to hatred, rumor, and questions about her sex life.
Now we love her, because we love the idea of powerful women. We romanticise women who are unashamed of their own intelligence and power – provided that they are not attempting to wield it over us ourselves. The idea of a powerful woman is not just fine, it’s to be celebrated, provided that it remains an idea, and no threat to the status quo.
For over seven hundred years after Eleanor’s death people were calling her a bitch for daring to have ambition. Ask yourself how far we’ve come.
