About book Eleanor Of Aquitaine: A Biography (1991)
Eleanor grew up in the Dukedom of Aquitaine at a time when most of France was ruled by England. In northern Europe, and England, women had little social standing. Aquitaine, in the south, named "land of waters" by the Romans, was a rich land, filled with orchards and vineyards; life was good for those in power. Leisure was preeminent and women were more highly respected. They could inherit property and many became wealthy landowners. Such was Eleanor's case. She had inherited Aquitaine, which made her a rich prize for any king. She was only fifteen when her father, the Duke, died, and King Louis the Fat (he was so enormous he was virtually unable to sit up) arranged a marriage between his second son, Louis, and the attractive Eleanor, now heir to the most prized lands in Europe. Louis was a retiring young man best suited, most thought, for the monastery. Eleanor wasted no time -- remember she was still an adolescent -- corrupting (in the mind of her mother-in-law) Louis to the more secular ways of the south. Their marriage was a catastrophe. He was ineffectual, indecisive, inadequate, generally most ofthe "in's" one can apply. Louis' Second Crusade was a disaster. The presence of Eleanor and her ladies with their enormous baggage train made travel difficult. The Pope's personal intervention, virtually dragging them to bed to force reconsumation of their marriage was the catalyst for the final dissolution, because the product of this pathetic reunion was a girl, and Louis' Capetians desperately needed a male to continue the line. Then Henry and the Plantagenets entered on the scene. Interestingly, Plantagenet was not a family name. It came from a nickname of Henry's father, Geoffrey of Anjou, who used to wear the yellow blossom of the broom plant, the planta genesta, in his hair. Eleanor was tired of Louis -- once she said it was like being married to a monk -- and when she met eighteen-year-old Henry, eleven years her junior and heir to Anjou and all of England, she fell head over heels in lust for him. Meade suspects that sexual attraction, richly spiced with political advantage, was a major justification for her divorce from Louis. Consanguinity was the publicly announced reason permitting annulment. She married Henry eight weeks later. It was a stinging slap at the Capetian, for he and Henry were bitter enemies. Henry Plantagenet became the most radical monarch in English history. During the next thirty-five years he revolutionized government, streamlining it and making it so efficient the government could function king-less if necessary. Eleanor played a major role in the reexamination of the role of women in the twelfth century. Even the Church abandoned its traditional view of women as an instrument of the devil, but women continued to oscillate between superiority and inferiority. Eleanor and her daughter by Louis, who lived with her as she approached her later forties and became estranged from Henry, made a conscious and deliberate effort to define the female role in a legal code of social conduct called Tractus de Amore et de Amoris & medies. It was loosely modeled after Ovid but is almost the opposite to his Art of Loving. Their tract proclaimed woman to be the" dominant figure, the man merely a pupil who must be carefully instructed until he becomes a fit partner for his lady. " Woman is supreme, a goddess to be approached by her man only with reverence. When Eleanor died at age 82, she had been a queen for sixty-six years. She produced several sons, including Richard Coeur-de-Lion, famous for his third crusade but notorious for his flaunted homosexuality (a problem because it meant he would produce no heir), and King John, whose meanness, recklessness and appalling judgment resulted in the Magna Carta. Perhaps because of his evil personality, he was the only English king ever named John. Eleanor was the glue that held the Plantagenets together, and after her death, her first husband's descendants made considerable inroads into Henry's Normandy and her beloved Aquitaine.
Eleanor of Aquitaine was indeed a woman worth a biography, even with the scanty details about her life as we have, as a very interesting historical figure of Medieval times between France and England. We do have plenty of information about her life but not about her the woman. Marion Meade makes this up I'm afraid with a lot of personal wishful thinking: where there's not one single physical detail to grab on to, she makes her come to live by inferences from her relationships with other people and by her own way of life. Where no witness can be called on to tell us how she felt, or what were the inclinations of her heart, Ms. Meade fills in the gap with her own stuff, which is not bad stuff if we speak in terms of fiction, even historical fiction. For she moves on swiftly through the myriad of happenings taking place family-wise and historical-wise strictly speaking. We attend the Crusades, we travel throughout most of modern France over and over, we witness battles, family feuds, coronations, the killing of Beckett, and much, much more. All of it interesting enough, and presented as in relation to Leonor's life. So historical facts abound. And it does not become entangled at all (it could easily have been). But I'd rather have made up the gaps myself. I think an honest historian needs to draw the line clearly between what we know and what we assume. Mixing fiction and history doesn't help credibility. Of course the creative facet of the author only operates on the deeply personal level; historical facts are not messed with. But nevertheless, when I am reading history I'd like the author to stick to the facts, and whatever incursions into fictional territory I'd like to be -at least- warned. Its a good read, though; a bit too long, but makes for a good history read.
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It's a pity that there's so little solid information about Eleanor of Aquitaine, leaving us to wonder about her motives, her actions, and her looks all these centuries later. Even the little we do know for sure about her makes her an extraordinary personage for any age.While I enjoyed this easy and informative read I could never shake the knowledge that it's often speculation--what she thought, how she felt--and so must be taken with a grain of salt. Still, I'm glad to have read it and will continue to read more on the era and look for more on Eleanor herself.
—Keonaona
I confess to being a little obsessed by Eleanor of Aquitaine - infact all medieval history. She was a fascinating individual who managed to live to the remarkable old age of 82 in the 12th century when most women died very young indeed - even Queens. She was Queen of 2 different countries, she travelled for 2 years from France overland to the Holy Land on a crusade with her husband the King of France, she gave birth to 10 children and her next husband (the King of England)incarcerated her for 15 years for organising a failed coup with her sons against him. She still refused to release her lands and wealth to him in return for liberation and it was only upon his death that her son Richard the Lionheart was able to grant her freedom. What a woman - all in the age of no dentistry, anaesthetic and antibiotics!
—Kate Stedman
Marion Meade is a lively writer, and this biography from the seventies is a viable introduction to the life of the great queen, albeit to be taken with a grain of salt. It is in this period that Richard the Lion Heart was believed to be gay, and the summer of love made us believe that the troubadours and Eleanor's family instituted an enlightened court where poetry and love ruled. Now these views are not fashionable, and it may be impossible to elucidate the mysteries of Eleanor's existence. Nonetheless, Meade, who has written well of Heloise and Abelard and of Dorothy Parker, brings a lively feminist perspective to the Aquitainian eagle.
—Laurie
