Eleanor of Aquitaine was one of Europe's strongest and most fascinating medieval women. She was the wife of two kings and the mother of three, but she was also a political powerhouse in her own right.
In a nutshell, she went on the Second Crusade. She pursued an annulment for her first marriage to Louis VII of France and then turned around and married his archrival, the future Henry II of England, a scant two months later. She held her own in her tumultuous second marriage, even supporting her sons when they revolted against Henry. She outlived Henry, remained involved in the lives of her children, and finally retired to be a nun two years before her death.
My thoughts
I first encountered Eleanor of Aquitaine when I saw Lion in Winter in high school. The cast was impressive—Peter O'Toole, Anthony Hopkins, Timothy Dalton, Nigel Terry—and Katharine Hepburn's Eleanor was proud, regal, and utterly captivating. (Bonus trivia tidbit: Hepburn was actually descended from Eleanor.) But it still took me 10 years to get around to reading Alison Weir's biography (I got sidetracked by those glamorous Tudors).
Weir's biography is thorough and enlightening, no small task when you consider that medieval sources and incredibly limited, and those that have survived tend not to focus on women, no matter how powerful they are. (Eleanor sometimes disappears from contemporary records for months at a time, and Weir has to resort to household accounts and educated guesses to determine where Eleanor was.) To complicate matters further, Eleanor was a controversial figure who was regarded with hostility and suspicion. Despite the limitations, Weir's portrait of Eleanor depicts a truly remarkable woman who took charge of her own destiny.
Bottom line
Well worth the read if you have any interest at all in medieval history.
Fine print
Eleanor of Aquitaine: A Life, by Alison Weir
Genre: History
Photo from Goodreads
I bought this book.
Read December 2009 (review from my book log)
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