Eleanor was one of the greatest women in history. She was a lover of literature, arts, crusades, ruling, making her children look good, and most of all a lover of love.
She married her first husband, Louis VII king of France, when she was relatively young, uniting the realm of the franks with Aquitaine, making French boarders similar looking how they look today. Her and Louis had two children, two daughters, and went on a less than successful crusade together. After that, she decided she had enough of him and they got a divorce. (This may or may not have to do with Rumors she was sleeping with her Uncle).
In the divorce settlement, Louis got the kids, and Eleanor, well she got to keep Aquitaine. As in, most of France:
(Map from Historical Atlas by William Shepard)
All that purple stuff now belongs to her and her second husband, (who was nine years younger than her and happened to be her third cousin) Henry II King of France! Yeah, who said Medieval Women couldn't have property and rights and stuff... Not Eleanor.Who said you can't marry your cousin??? Not Eleanor!!! She had a happy marriage with Henry, they had eight kids. Then, when she got sick of him, she decided her son should be king of England, and she was imprisoned for that. But, Henry let her out, and she went back to her home town of Poitier, to do whatever she wanted, and she wanted to do some crazy stuff. (Not with her Uncle this time).
Her and her daughter Marie of Tours created the first courts of love, where troubadours told stories, sang songs, and put on plays. She wrote the rules of love with Andreas Capellanus. And this gave birth to the Courtly Love phenomenon.
The idea of courtly love is essentially that you should have a secret affair with a man, and said man should do whatever you want, whenever you want it, and anything and everything for you no matter the cost. One should give gifts, secret meetings, kisses, but not consummate the relationship.
This is where we get beautiful art objects like this casket:
(Casket in British Museum)
This went on for a while until Henry II died and her son Richard the Lionheart became king. In between her widdow hood and her death Eleanor had the joy of settiling all kinds of disputes between her children and grandchildren and their spouses. At this point she had family everywhere, Castile, England, France, Saxony, Brittany, and Sicily!
Imagine the issues.
Eleanor lived so she outlived all but her youngest son and her daughter Eleanor of Castille. And she was buried beside her husband at Fontevraud Abbey with a beautiful tomb effigy.
This is also a reminder that ALLmost all sculpture in midieval times were beautifully painted. Her clothes have beautiful little designs on them. One can only imagine the beautiful textiles she might have worn, but that is a topic for another day.
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