Eleanor of Aquitaine
Queen of France, Queen of England
Eleanor of Aquitaine is iconic. Probably the most famous woman of the middle ages, she is the only woman to have ever worn the crowns of both England and France.
Eleanor’s long life saw her weather the dangers of crusade, scandal, siege, imprisonment and betrayal to emerge as the great matriarch of Europe. When her first husband, Louis VII, led the Second Crusade, Eleanor went with him, only to find herself mired in scandal. Eleanor’s uncle Raymond of Toulouse, Prince of Antioch, welcomed Eleanor warmly and lavished such attention on her that rumours arose of an affair. Despite a lack of concrete evidence, Eleanor spent most of the crusade under close guard on her husband’s orders.
Louis and Eleanor’s marriage had been dealt a fatal blow; they left the Holy Land in 1149 and their divorce was finally proclaimed in March 1152. By May 1152 Eleanor was married again, to the man who would become her first husband’s greatest rival. Henry of Anjou became King of England in 1154 and eventually built an empire that extended 1,000 miles, from Scotland in the north to the Pyrenees in the south. Later rumours again mired Eleanor in scandal, accusing her of murdering Henry’s lover Rosamund Clifford. In one extravagant version, Rosamund was hidden in her secret bower within a maze but, with the help of a silken thread, a jealous Eleanor still found her and stabbed her while she bathed. In another the discarded queen forced Rosamund to drink from a poison cup. Of course, a closely guarded prisoner in Old Sarum or at Winchester as
Eleanor was at the time of Rosamund’s death, it was impossible for her to do any such thing.
Eleanor did, however, commit one of the most heinous crimes a woman could in the medieval world: she rebelled against her husband. In 1173 CE her eldest son by Henry, also called Henry, rebelled against his father and fled to the French court for support. His father-in-law, King Louis VII, welcomed the disgruntled Angevin prince and Eleanor of Aquitaine, having sided with her sons against her husband, sent two of her other sons, 15-year-old Richard and 14-year-old Geoffrey, to join their older brother at the French court, while she rallied her barons in Poitou to their cause. In 1174 CE, when the rebellion failed, Henry accepted the submission of his sons. Eleanor, who was captured as she rode towards safety in France, was not so fortunate. While it was not encouraged for sons to rebel against their father, it could be seen as boys flexing their muscles. For a wife to rebel against her husband was practically unheard of, and therefore deserved harsher punishment. Unforgiven and defeated, Eleanor was sent to perpetual imprisonment in various castles. She was only released after Henry II’S death, when her favourite son, Richard I, the Lionheart, ascended England’s throne.
If she had done everything of which she was accused – murder, incest, adultery and rebellion – Eleanor would be the ultimate she-wolf. As it was, her rebellion, an act unprecedented for a queen, meant she paid the price with her freedom for the next 15 years.
“Eleanor did, however, commit one of the most heinous crimes a woman could in the medieval world”