August 19, 2009 • 29 mins
Born in the 12th century in a world where women had few rights and little power, Eleanor of Aquitaine was a woman ahead of her time. Learn more about Eleanor of Aquitaine's rise to power in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Katie Lambert and joining me today is Sarah Dowdy.
How are you, Sarah. I'm doing well, Katie, har are
you good. We had a reader request for today's topic
(00:22):
from Alexandria and Vanessa. And her name is Eleanor of
Aquitaine and she was a very busy lady in her
eighty two years of life, extremely busy, and we should
say she was living in the twelfth century. So eighty
two is an impressive feat of its own. Well, it's
also hard because there's not a lot of source material
to go from now, a lot of primary sources from
(00:43):
the time, or at least not concerning women, because no
one cared to record what the women were doing. So
what we're doing is is piecing together a little that
we have ferried accounts exactly. So, Eleanor of Aquitaine was
the most powerful woman in twelfth century Europe according to
lots of accounts. She was also beautiful and rich and
(01:05):
has been described as vital, lively, headstrong, energetic, and intelligent.
And she was the sole heir of the Duke of Aquitaine.
His son died very young, so she was in a
very powerful position from childhood um and this made her
a pretty desirable match for the bachelors of Europe right
(01:29):
and her full title was Countess of Plateau and Duchess
of Aquitaine and Gascony, but that's a bit of a mouthful,
so she's usually known as a lot of land. It
is a lot of land. Her father, William, the tenth
Duke of Aquitaine, possessed the largest domains in northwest Europe.
He owned more land than the King of France, so
(01:50):
that's pretty impressive. She also had a sister whose name
I very much enjoyed, Petronila, under brother William McGray, the
one who died uard young, as Sarah had said. And
an interesting history about her family. In the year eleven thirty,
Bernard of Clairvaux told her father, William the Tents that
God disapproved of him because he was supporting the antipope
Anaclitus against Pope Innocent the Second, and so the Pope
(02:14):
x communicated him, and one day when Bernard was preaching
against William and a church, William burst in and he
was armed and prepared to take Bernard out, and Bernard
held up the bread and wine. William had some sort
of a fit and foamed at the mouth and fell
down on the ground and decided that was God telling
him to change his mind, and so he did. Yeah. Well.
(02:39):
In addition to in addition to having that's William was
also pretty interested in educating his daughters. He had them
instructed in Latin, and they grew up in a very
sophisticated core. We tend to think of any countesses or
dukes or what not being sophisticated, but in full century Europe,
(03:02):
that's definitely not. Some of these people are slightly separated
from being pretty crude, but in their court they had
troubadours and extended patronage to poets. Eleanor herself loved silky
gowns embroidered in gold thread and lots of jewelry. She
definitely had a taste for lecturing. And when her mother
(03:25):
and her brother died in That's where, that's when Eleanor
became the heiress of all of this land. And so
her father had vassals swear fealty to Eleanor on her
fourteenth birthday, and he made her the ward of Louis
the sixth, who was the king of France at the time,
and not long after that, her father goes on a
(03:46):
pilgrimage to Spain and drink contaminated water and ends up dying.
He actually made a will earlier in the day kind
of looking out for his daughter, asking that she would
be brought to Louie quickly before his death was announced,
because in this time it was pretty common for an
(04:06):
heiress to just be kidnapped or her land, So if
people knew about his death, his daughter was going to
be in great danger, right, So he specified that he
was going to make Louisa sixth her guardian, and also
that he wanted his daughter to marry Louisa sixth son.
And he also specified, which is the interesting part, that
(04:27):
Eleanor's lands were to be her own and they would
be inherited by her errors. So her land wasn't going
to be swallowed up as part of the Kingdom of France.
She was going to keep properties like Aquitaine. Yeah, so
she marries Louie the seventh at age fifteen and eleven
thirty seven, and she were read and liked that detail. Yes,
(04:49):
she had a thousand guests and shortly thereafter, which reminds
me of Mariantoinette. Louisa sixth died of dysenterry. This is
less than a month after their wedding ends. The new
couple became the King and Queen of France. So at fifteen,
she's queen shoved right into the spotlight, and life at
the French court was a little bit different. They didn't
have a literary tradition, they didn't have a lot of entertainment.
(05:12):
She brought in some troubadours and tried to improve court manners,
but was generally very bored and in the French court
the queen has no power. And also also Louis was
kind of a different husband. He had been a younger son,
so he wasn't destined to be king. He'd actually been
trained as a monk, so he was very pious and
(05:32):
he was besotted by his wife, but you know, kind
of naive would be a good word for him. And
also devoted to God and not so much to secular life.
And one problem in their marriage was that Louis didn't
sleep with her very often because he was, you know,
(05:53):
a monk, or was trained as a monk. He abided
by rules that said, you weren't supposed to have sexual
really with your wife on Sundays, Holy days, feast days,
during lent, during pregnancy, or during that time of months.
So this is a problem when you're trying to produce
an heir to the French throne. Especially. Yeah, he needed
(06:13):
a male heir, and but wasn't visiting her bed all
that often, so this will come up later as an issue.
Once again, sounds kind of Marie Antoina exactly. And his
adviser tried to curb Eleanor's power, so the only time
she ever got to sway his opinion was in private,
and that changed the French court because before that queens
(06:34):
at least had a little more power, but after this
that became more of a tradition to let the queen
have her say in private, but in public she just
had the role of that was decorative. Her mother in
law thought Eleanor spent too much money and shouldn't use
makeup and wasn't very pious, and fashions at the court
at the time were a little nuts, lots of fine
(06:56):
wool and silicon and fine linen and piles of jewelry,
and he was about to prove her piety, though with
a crusade plan. She decided to go along when Louie went,
and she and her ladies dressed as Amazon's it said,
and wore red boots. And we were reading one book
by Alison We're about Eleanor of Aquitaine that said it
(07:17):
was actually a credible account. Historians have been arguing with Amazon.
She says she thinks the Amazon thing could have happened,
and there were at least three hundred women along with Eleanor,
so they must have made quite a spectacle. Well, during
that time her marriage to Louis, it was already kind
of on the rocks, but things started to take a
(07:38):
turn for the worse. Um there was there were some
rumors that she might have cheated on her husband with
her uncle Raymond at Antioch, and she and her husband
were no longer sleeping together now. And also she sided
with Raymond against Louis. Raymond had said that they should
(07:58):
try to capture it Assa, and Louis said they should
try to capture Jerusalem, and siding with him really upset Louis,
and when he got upset with her, this is when
she brought up the fact that they were related and
they've known this for a long time, but consanguinity within
certain degrees wasn't allowed. They're not really closely related, but
(08:22):
enough for it to give grounds for an annulment, which
is what she wanted, which upset Louie quite a bit,
and he actually took her out of the city at
midnight and wouldn't let her say goodbye to Raymond, and
they went home, but the Pope, Pope be Genius, wouldn't
give them annulment, so they stayed together. They had two daughters,
(08:43):
but they had no heir in the years to come,
so then they thought that perhaps God really did disapprove
of their marriage, because not having a son and a
male heir was seen as celestial disapproval. So they did
get their marriage annulled in two and in accord with
her father's will. In the terms of their marriage, she
(09:03):
gets her land back exactly so she could go back
to Aquitaine if she wanted to. But of course, as
the great heiress, she was now pray and people seriously
tried to abduct her on her way home, so she
needed someone to protect her in a marriage and protect
her land and her interests, but she also wanted someone
she was more compatible with than she was with Louis,
because I didn't have a lot in common. So enter Henry,
(09:26):
Count of all Jou and Duke of Normandy. Eleanor essentially
proposes to Henry, yeah, sends him a note h They
had met before while she was married, and there were
rumors that she had actually had a sexual relationship with
Henry's father, Jeoffrey of Ajoux, before she met his son.
(09:49):
My favorite rumor about their family is that Henry supposedly
had a diabolical ancestress, Melusine, who was said to be
the devil's daughter. So people thought in their family she
like some flames strang around. People thought their family had
a bit of double try to it. He had red hair,
he was into diets and fasting. He was unpretentious, literate, forceful,
(10:14):
and complex. He also had quite the temper and quite
the sex drive. He was a womanizer and had lots
of illegitimate children. And so they get married in eleven two,
same year as the annulment, just a couple of months later. Uh.
And the odd thing here is they're just as related
(10:34):
as Eleanor and Louie were, in the same degrees in relation.
And also they were supposed to as Louise vassals. He
was a king of France, asked him if they could
get married, but they knew he wouldn't give permission, so
they just went ahead and did it, which was an
extremely provocative act. He could have started a war with
them if he wanted. And Henry was also louise archrival.
(10:56):
He had about the same amount of power and land,
and shortly after their marriage, Henry's crowned King of England
at Westminster uh In. This starts the rule of the Plantagenets,
who go on for the next three thirty years in
parts of the continent. They die out in England with
Richard the Third actually the Tutors take over. Henry was
(11:20):
a good governor. He was a good King of England.
He finally brought peace to the land. Although he may
not have been the best husband, he was good at
being king. He had a very messy family life, as
we will as soon as we will see. And during
this time, Eleanor didn't have much of a role. He
didn't give her much of one, so she did what
(11:41):
she could within the parameters of her powers. She gave
a lot of money to the Abbey of Fontravoo, and
she was the patronist to poets and true the doors,
and she had her own little court. His court was
really chaotic and messy and disgusting, like you'd mentioned they
could be. So she had her private terrifying in court
exactly when she kept very luxurious, and her only rule
(12:05):
was that men had to have tempt hair before her
that came before her unkempt fair enough Eleanor. Eleanor and
Henry were married for about forty years, and they had
lots of children, several of whom go on to be kings.
They had a tumultuous relationship and very rebellious children, quite
(12:25):
literally rebellious, as in these staged actual rebellions against their
father and their other siblings. Henry was not even remotely
faithful to Eleanor through any of these years, and he
started his affair with Rosamond and Clifford in even sixty five,
and her name would appear in stories in verse for centuries.
(12:46):
People were really interested in the idea of Rosamond, and
she'll come up later as well. But in eleven sixty
eight the marriage had started to go to pot and
Eleanor initiated a separation, and no one knows why. People
have said it was because he was unfaithful, but reading
Weird's books, she was saying she didn't think that was
a credible explanation, So it may just have been that
(13:07):
she was tired and the marriage hadn't gone very well
and things were starting to go downhill, and she moved
back to Aquitaine and set up a court at Potier.
At this point, though, things are still fairly amicable between them.
In eleven sixty eight, Henry sets up the Treaty of
mont Murial, I think uh, and kind of splits up
(13:29):
his domain between all his different sons, which is an
odd thing to do. He had every right to leave
all of his extensive lands to his eldest son, Um,
but he might have not thought they were capable of
managing it all. Regardless, he leaves Aquitaine to his son Richard,
who is Eleanor's favorite, so things are still, you know,
(13:52):
workable between them. Then in eleven seventy, Eleanor was in
Normandy at the time with her eldest son, also called Henry,
and her husband Henry. Henry the second decides it's time
for his son to become king, and that sounds odd
to us now we're used to children's seating their parents
(14:12):
after they've died, after they've died, but it was actually
a French customed to crown the air while the father
was still alive. But the Pope isn't okay with this
because it's the Archbishop of Canterbury's role to crown the king.
And this is Thomas Beckett and he's on the outs
(14:32):
with Henry and they used they used to be best
friends and had a falling out over which the things
were never the same after that, definitely not. But Henry
goes ahead crowns his son, who now goes by the
Young King. And the Young King is really popular. He's
extremely good looking. He was supposed to have taken after
(14:52):
his mother strongly. Um, but he's really contemptuous of his father.
He's real stubborn. He's kind of jealous of his younger
brothers who have their own duchies. Uh. He doesn't have
any of his own political power. He's destined to be
King of England. He kind of is. He's the junior
king now, but he doesn't have any of his own
(15:16):
right for the time being, he's got a political power.
He was kind of spoiled wasn't he, You were mentioning
they were very indulged, She was very spoiled. Both parents
really doated on the children, but in kind of an
unfortunate spin on it, they pit the children against the
other parents, because that always works out well. Yeah, um,
(15:39):
and Eleanor especially is considered to have worked on turning
her kids against their father and you know, inspiring their
ambitions to take over their political control a little early
in life. Speaking of political maneuvers, around this time, Beckett
(15:59):
is murdered at Canterbury, and it's very violent, and we're
kind of put forth a hypothesis that this might be
around the time when Eleanor really can't stand her husband.
She started to hate him at some point and there
was a switch, something happened, and no one quite knows
what it is, but I think that's a pretty It
goes from an amicable separation to she can't stand as good,
(16:24):
inciting her children to rebel against their mother. So was
he involved with the murder? He claimed he wasn't, and
he was extremely remorseful about about the whole thing. But
what level of intrigue he said, his lord's misunderstood words
(16:46):
against Beckett. So but in eleven seventy two, Eleanor starts
her her own maneuvers and has Richard invested as the
Duke of Aquitaine, and she calls him the great One.
He is her beloved, the favorite son, and she will
do anything she can to help him. And around the
same time, uh King Louis of France, his daughter is
(17:10):
married to the Young King, starts to talk to Young Henry,
also stirring up trouble, saying, you know, you maybe go
for some political power. It's not enough to just be
the young king exactly. Um So, by eleven seventy three,
Eleanor is backing up her son's and everybody's ready for
(17:31):
a rebellion. But Henry the Second hasn't even suspected his
wife is involved. It's pretty inconceivable that a wife would
incite her children to to do this, so it's not
even on his radar. But he's starting to keep a
pretty close eye on the young King and actually keeps
him close by his side and until he escapes to Paris.
(17:54):
And at that point Henry knows that King Louis is
in league with the young Kings, so his wife's ex
husband doesn't leave with his son, so that's really nice
for Henry the Second. Finally, Henry the Second starts to
suspect Eleanor has a role in this everybody is just
a little too well arranged for her to not be involved,
(18:17):
and he commands the Archbishop of Ruined to remind her
of her wifely duties. He sent through this long letter
and there's no evidence she ever replied, but she gets
a little concerned and decides that the decides that the
safest place for her to be is in Louise Court,
her old husband's, so she dresses in men's clothing rides
(18:41):
horse astride to Paris, but on the way she's apprehended
by Henry's men and sent to the king, and this
marks a period in her life that's not so great
for Eleanor. Henry didn't make any sort of public announcement
about it, but he put her in a fortress and
(19:01):
had her guarded for the rest of his life. So
she was a prisoner for the rest of her husband's life. Yeah,
and the rebellion doesn't even end up going very well.
There's little open warfare, even though a lot of towns
are plundered, and Henry's son seemed very intent on destroying
their father's land. As the tide begins to turn and
(19:24):
Henry the Second looks like he's gonna win come out
on top and this rebellion his enemies start to sue
for peace, but he's still convinced that he's not going
to have total victory and peace until he atones for
Beckett's murder and makes proper pennants. Uh. This isn't to
say he was, you know, admitting involvement in it, but
(19:47):
just to atone for he and Beckett's estrangement. So he
actually goes to Canterbury and uh does extreme pennants, starves himself,
gets flogged by monks, and literally the next day things
look up and there ends up being peace in England,
and he's really generous about the fact generous sons were
(20:11):
treason us. Um he gives them land still no power,
so it's likely they're not going to be satisfied. The
only person who he won't give amnesty to is Eleanor,
but he doesn't quite feel the same about his son's
After that, his old favorites are no longer his favorites.
The littlest Boy is his favorite one, and also his
(20:33):
illegitimate son just good by him, right, Um, So Eleanor
is going to stay in prison, that looks like, and
she's not allowed to talk to the kids because she
might incite them through rebel again. But prison isn't as
quite as bad as it sounds. She's staying in nice
households and has a small retinue, very small. But Henry
(20:58):
begins living openly with his mistress the aforementioned Rosamond to Clifford,
which had to be a bit of a slap in
the face to Eleanor. Yeah, and by eleven seventy five
he's starting to think about having the marriage annuld. But
there's a problem with that, um. Eleanor is not interested.
(21:20):
She's already had one an element. I think she's done
with a whole annulment thing. It's it's a good deal
for him. He considers forcing her basically to take the
veil become a nun, and in which case he would
wouldn't have to surrender her lands under the which he
(21:40):
ran much want to marriage, um, and it would be
an easier deal than an annulment, which brings up a
lot of messy facts about there. Right, and you had
to get a lot of people involved for an annulment,
but she doesn't want to give up her crown and
her position of power, even if she doesn't have much
at the time, and also said she didn't have a
(22:01):
calling to be a nun, so she appealed to the
archbishop and said, you know, you can't let my husband
force me into being something that I'm not into being
a nun which is something she respected and believed you
needed a vocation for Rosamond, however, does end up in
a nunnery around the same time because she's sick and
(22:22):
basically that was the place to go. The king made
her a very nice tomb, and there was a myth
that's been going on in history for a very long
time that Eleanor murdered her, but she didn't, not true.
Eleanor was imprisoned, and as we said earlier, she had
very little contact with anybody because the king was so
concerned about her influence, so she didn't have a lot
(22:44):
of time or space and murdering mistresses, and the bishop
made Rosman's tomb be removed because she was a mistress.
In the following years, there's more familial strife going on
in the years. They never did have a very peaceful
family life, and the young King dies of Dysenterry and
Henry the second was scared to go and visit him
(23:07):
while he was dying because he was afraid there would
be some sort of traps set, which, knowing his sons,
would make sensely, but he sent a ring as a
token of his love, and on his deathbed, the young
King pleads for mercy for his mother, and Eleanor actually,
when she's brought news of the death of her son,
she actually says that she had a dream about it
(23:29):
and even dreamt of the ring, which she wouldn't have
known about. Kind of a strange supernatural tale. After the
Young King dies, Richard starts getting a little risky again
in regards to rebellion, and John, the youngest son, backs Richard.
And as we said earlier, John is Henry's favorite legitimate
(23:54):
son um who's always been most invested in him, and
when Henry finds out that John is supporting his brother,
he just sort of loses his will to live. He's
already sick, but he dies shortly. They're often betrayed by
his entire family one by one at this point, except
(24:14):
for his legitimate son Jeffrey, who was allowed to stay
at court. So Henry the Second dies in nine and
Richard the First becomes king and his first thing is
to release his mother, And actually he comes back to
England and finds out that his mother has already been
released because his handlers know this is her favorite son,
(24:36):
and they go ahead and take care of business before
they'ven here from him. And then she spends time kind
of acting as a cheerleader for her son. Almost He's
been living in Aquitaine almost his whole life. He's not
well known there and just sort of bolstering his reputation
are from Eleanor. But Richard the First leeds England dry
(25:01):
with crusades and war. He's not a good governor like
Henry was, and they're still family problems. Um is nipping
it Richard now and Um Richard when he goes away
on a crusade, he actually ends up kidnapped in Austria.
And this is just to show how low John kind
(25:25):
of goes here. Um John raises money for the ransom
from his tenants and then he ends up using it
himself for rebellious purposes. But Eleanor, through like Eleanor's diligent,
she raises the King's ransom and brings Richard and John
and Richard eventually do make up in Normandy because Eleanor's
(25:46):
mediating between them and making it happen, and John kind
of keeps a low profile over the next few years.
He's he's done for the tough for a time with
all the strife, and Richard ends up dying though, so
it's kind of a lost cause dies with no airs.
Um he's shot by an arrow by Bertram Digger Dunn,
(26:08):
who had a family grudge against him for killing his
brothers and father, and Richard is on his deathbed with
this horrible infected arrow wound. Is so impressed by this
man's story that he actually pardons him the guy who
shot him Um lets him go. Uh, he doesn't. After
(26:28):
his death, the pardon is dropped, but but he tried
her stuff does. During this time, Eleanor had withdrawn to
the abbey at Fontravaux, and she wasn't a nun there,
she was a guest. She sort of turned it into
in a place for aristocratic first retirement, but she was
still involved in politics. She was very much behind the
(26:49):
scenes moving pieces around. But after Richard dies she has
to fully invest herself in public life again. Um to
help John actually claim the crown because he's not the
automatic shoe in. But it seems like he would be
the Jeffrey who was illegitimate. No, a little fuzzy here,
(27:14):
so if if y'all know why this is, please send
us an email why this other guy was the illegitimate
Sonner would be the king? Um. And at one point, Arthur,
Jeffrey's son, tries to kidnap Eleanor, who is after all
his grandmother and welcomed his father, the illegitimate son, into court,
(27:36):
so that was quite a moment of ingratitude. John still
having trouble with Philip of France, though, um, but they
eventually work it out. Philip was initially supporting Arthur, but
on the provision that Philip's heir, Louis, be married to
one of John's Castilian nieces, one of his sister's daughters. Um.
(27:57):
There they can work out a piece. So Eleanor, who
is eighty years old at this point, goes to fetch
her granddaughter and their two to choose from. And this
is kind of a great story. But if they're too
you know, equally beautiful and dignified daughters and one would
assume she'd pick the elder, but she doesn't because her
(28:21):
name is Uraca, and she doesn't think that the French
are going to stand for having a queen named Rocca,
so she goes for a Blanch, who it proved to
be a good choice. Blanch ends up to be a
very formidable queen, has many children and you know, who knows.
Maybe the problem wasn't the name so much as Eleanor
seeing some promise in her younger granddaughter. And I think
(28:45):
we learned a lesson about baby names there. Yeah, if
you want your daughter to be queen, good for a
standard name, I guess. But Eleanor at this point is
very tired, being eighty two and having been on the
scene and political entrigue for so long, and she retires
to Fontravall once again, and the nun say of her
(29:05):
after her death that she was beautiful and just imposing
and modest, humble and elegant, and they also said she
was a queen who surpassed almost all the queens of
the world. She died in twelve o four. So if
you'd like to learn more about the Middle Ages and
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(29:26):
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Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Katie Lambert and joining me today is Sarah Dowdy.
How are you, Sarah. I'm doing well, Katie, har are
you good. We had a reader request for today's topic
(00:22):
from Alexandria and Vanessa. And her name is Eleanor of
Aquitaine and she was a very busy lady in her
eighty two years of life, extremely busy, and we should
say she was living in the twelfth century. So eighty
two is an impressive feat of its own. Well, it's
also hard because there's not a lot of source material
to go from now, a lot of primary sources from
(00:43):
the time, or at least not concerning women, because no
one cared to record what the women were doing. So
what we're doing is is piecing together a little that
we have ferried accounts exactly. So, Eleanor of Aquitaine was
the most powerful woman in twelfth century Europe according to
lots of accounts. She was also beautiful and rich and
(01:05):
has been described as vital, lively, headstrong, energetic, and intelligent.
And she was the sole heir of the Duke of Aquitaine.
His son died very young, so she was in a
very powerful position from childhood um and this made her
a pretty desirable match for the bachelors of Europe right
(01:29):
and her full title was Countess of Plateau and Duchess
of Aquitaine and Gascony, but that's a bit of a mouthful,
so she's usually known as a lot of land. It
is a lot of land. Her father, William, the tenth
Duke of Aquitaine, possessed the largest domains in northwest Europe.
He owned more land than the King of France, so
(01:50):
that's pretty impressive. She also had a sister whose name
I very much enjoyed, Petronila, under brother William McGray, the
one who died uard young, as Sarah had said. And
an interesting history about her family. In the year eleven thirty,
Bernard of Clairvaux told her father, William the Tents that
God disapproved of him because he was supporting the antipope
Anaclitus against Pope Innocent the Second, and so the Pope
(02:14):
x communicated him, and one day when Bernard was preaching
against William and a church, William burst in and he
was armed and prepared to take Bernard out, and Bernard
held up the bread and wine. William had some sort
of a fit and foamed at the mouth and fell
down on the ground and decided that was God telling
him to change his mind, and so he did. Yeah. Well.
(02:39):
In addition to in addition to having that's William was
also pretty interested in educating his daughters. He had them
instructed in Latin, and they grew up in a very
sophisticated core. We tend to think of any countesses or
dukes or what not being sophisticated, but in full century Europe,
(03:02):
that's definitely not. Some of these people are slightly separated
from being pretty crude, but in their court they had
troubadours and extended patronage to poets. Eleanor herself loved silky
gowns embroidered in gold thread and lots of jewelry. She
definitely had a taste for lecturing. And when her mother
(03:25):
and her brother died in That's where, that's when Eleanor
became the heiress of all of this land. And so
her father had vassals swear fealty to Eleanor on her
fourteenth birthday, and he made her the ward of Louis
the sixth, who was the king of France at the time,
and not long after that, her father goes on a
(03:46):
pilgrimage to Spain and drink contaminated water and ends up dying.
He actually made a will earlier in the day kind
of looking out for his daughter, asking that she would
be brought to Louie quickly before his death was announced,
because in this time it was pretty common for an
(04:06):
heiress to just be kidnapped or her land, So if
people knew about his death, his daughter was going to
be in great danger, right, So he specified that he
was going to make Louisa sixth her guardian, and also
that he wanted his daughter to marry Louisa sixth son.
And he also specified, which is the interesting part, that
(04:27):
Eleanor's lands were to be her own and they would
be inherited by her errors. So her land wasn't going
to be swallowed up as part of the Kingdom of France.
She was going to keep properties like Aquitaine. Yeah, so
she marries Louie the seventh at age fifteen and eleven
thirty seven, and she were read and liked that detail. Yes,
(04:49):
she had a thousand guests and shortly thereafter, which reminds
me of Mariantoinette. Louisa sixth died of dysenterry. This is
less than a month after their wedding ends. The new
couple became the King and Queen of France. So at fifteen,
she's queen shoved right into the spotlight, and life at
the French court was a little bit different. They didn't
have a literary tradition, they didn't have a lot of entertainment.
(05:12):
She brought in some troubadours and tried to improve court manners,
but was generally very bored and in the French court
the queen has no power. And also also Louis was
kind of a different husband. He had been a younger son,
so he wasn't destined to be king. He'd actually been
trained as a monk, so he was very pious and
(05:32):
he was besotted by his wife, but you know, kind
of naive would be a good word for him. And
also devoted to God and not so much to secular life.
And one problem in their marriage was that Louis didn't
sleep with her very often because he was, you know,
(05:53):
a monk, or was trained as a monk. He abided
by rules that said, you weren't supposed to have sexual
really with your wife on Sundays, Holy days, feast days,
during lent, during pregnancy, or during that time of months.
So this is a problem when you're trying to produce
an heir to the French throne. Especially. Yeah, he needed
(06:13):
a male heir, and but wasn't visiting her bed all
that often, so this will come up later as an issue.
Once again, sounds kind of Marie Antoina exactly. And his
adviser tried to curb Eleanor's power, so the only time
she ever got to sway his opinion was in private,
and that changed the French court because before that queens
(06:34):
at least had a little more power, but after this
that became more of a tradition to let the queen
have her say in private, but in public she just
had the role of that was decorative. Her mother in
law thought Eleanor spent too much money and shouldn't use
makeup and wasn't very pious, and fashions at the court
at the time were a little nuts, lots of fine
(06:56):
wool and silicon and fine linen and piles of jewelry,
and he was about to prove her piety, though with
a crusade plan. She decided to go along when Louie went,
and she and her ladies dressed as Amazon's it said,
and wore red boots. And we were reading one book
by Alison We're about Eleanor of Aquitaine that said it
(07:17):
was actually a credible account. Historians have been arguing with Amazon.
She says she thinks the Amazon thing could have happened,
and there were at least three hundred women along with Eleanor,
so they must have made quite a spectacle. Well, during
that time her marriage to Louis, it was already kind
of on the rocks, but things started to take a
(07:38):
turn for the worse. Um there was there were some
rumors that she might have cheated on her husband with
her uncle Raymond at Antioch, and she and her husband
were no longer sleeping together now. And also she sided
with Raymond against Louis. Raymond had said that they should
(07:58):
try to capture it Assa, and Louis said they should
try to capture Jerusalem, and siding with him really upset Louis,
and when he got upset with her, this is when
she brought up the fact that they were related and
they've known this for a long time, but consanguinity within
certain degrees wasn't allowed. They're not really closely related, but
(08:22):
enough for it to give grounds for an annulment, which
is what she wanted, which upset Louie quite a bit,
and he actually took her out of the city at
midnight and wouldn't let her say goodbye to Raymond, and
they went home, but the Pope, Pope be Genius, wouldn't
give them annulment, so they stayed together. They had two daughters,
(08:43):
but they had no heir in the years to come,
so then they thought that perhaps God really did disapprove
of their marriage, because not having a son and a
male heir was seen as celestial disapproval. So they did
get their marriage annulled in two and in accord with
her father's will. In the terms of their marriage, she
(09:03):
gets her land back exactly so she could go back
to Aquitaine if she wanted to. But of course, as
the great heiress, she was now pray and people seriously
tried to abduct her on her way home, so she
needed someone to protect her in a marriage and protect
her land and her interests, but she also wanted someone
she was more compatible with than she was with Louis,
because I didn't have a lot in common. So enter Henry,
(09:26):
Count of all Jou and Duke of Normandy. Eleanor essentially
proposes to Henry, yeah, sends him a note h They
had met before while she was married, and there were
rumors that she had actually had a sexual relationship with
Henry's father, Jeoffrey of Ajoux, before she met his son.
(09:49):
My favorite rumor about their family is that Henry supposedly
had a diabolical ancestress, Melusine, who was said to be
the devil's daughter. So people thought in their family she
like some flames strang around. People thought their family had
a bit of double try to it. He had red hair,
he was into diets and fasting. He was unpretentious, literate, forceful,
(10:14):
and complex. He also had quite the temper and quite
the sex drive. He was a womanizer and had lots
of illegitimate children. And so they get married in eleven two,
same year as the annulment, just a couple of months later. Uh.
And the odd thing here is they're just as related
(10:34):
as Eleanor and Louie were, in the same degrees in relation.
And also they were supposed to as Louise vassals. He
was a king of France, asked him if they could
get married, but they knew he wouldn't give permission, so
they just went ahead and did it, which was an
extremely provocative act. He could have started a war with
them if he wanted. And Henry was also louise archrival.
(10:56):
He had about the same amount of power and land,
and shortly after their marriage, Henry's crowned King of England
at Westminster uh In. This starts the rule of the Plantagenets,
who go on for the next three thirty years in
parts of the continent. They die out in England with
Richard the Third actually the Tutors take over. Henry was
(11:20):
a good governor. He was a good King of England.
He finally brought peace to the land. Although he may
not have been the best husband, he was good at
being king. He had a very messy family life, as
we will as soon as we will see. And during
this time, Eleanor didn't have much of a role. He
didn't give her much of one, so she did what
(11:41):
she could within the parameters of her powers. She gave
a lot of money to the Abbey of Fontravoo, and
she was the patronist to poets and true the doors,
and she had her own little court. His court was
really chaotic and messy and disgusting, like you'd mentioned they
could be. So she had her private terrifying in court
exactly when she kept very luxurious, and her only rule
(12:05):
was that men had to have tempt hair before her
that came before her unkempt fair enough Eleanor. Eleanor and
Henry were married for about forty years, and they had
lots of children, several of whom go on to be kings.
They had a tumultuous relationship and very rebellious children, quite
(12:25):
literally rebellious, as in these staged actual rebellions against their
father and their other siblings. Henry was not even remotely
faithful to Eleanor through any of these years, and he
started his affair with Rosamond and Clifford in even sixty five,
and her name would appear in stories in verse for centuries.
(12:46):
People were really interested in the idea of Rosamond, and
she'll come up later as well. But in eleven sixty
eight the marriage had started to go to pot and
Eleanor initiated a separation, and no one knows why. People
have said it was because he was unfaithful, but reading
Weird's books, she was saying she didn't think that was
a credible explanation, So it may just have been that
(13:07):
she was tired and the marriage hadn't gone very well
and things were starting to go downhill, and she moved
back to Aquitaine and set up a court at Potier.
At this point, though, things are still fairly amicable between them.
In eleven sixty eight, Henry sets up the Treaty of
mont Murial, I think uh, and kind of splits up
(13:29):
his domain between all his different sons, which is an
odd thing to do. He had every right to leave
all of his extensive lands to his eldest son, Um,
but he might have not thought they were capable of
managing it all. Regardless, he leaves Aquitaine to his son Richard,
who is Eleanor's favorite, so things are still, you know,
(13:52):
workable between them. Then in eleven seventy, Eleanor was in
Normandy at the time with her eldest son, also called Henry,
and her husband Henry. Henry the second decides it's time
for his son to become king, and that sounds odd
to us now we're used to children's seating their parents
(14:12):
after they've died, after they've died, but it was actually
a French customed to crown the air while the father
was still alive. But the Pope isn't okay with this
because it's the Archbishop of Canterbury's role to crown the king.
And this is Thomas Beckett and he's on the outs
(14:32):
with Henry and they used they used to be best
friends and had a falling out over which the things
were never the same after that, definitely not. But Henry
goes ahead crowns his son, who now goes by the
Young King. And the Young King is really popular. He's
extremely good looking. He was supposed to have taken after
(14:52):
his mother strongly. Um, but he's really contemptuous of his father.
He's real stubborn. He's kind of jealous of his younger
brothers who have their own duchies. Uh. He doesn't have
any of his own political power. He's destined to be
King of England. He kind of is. He's the junior
king now, but he doesn't have any of his own
(15:16):
right for the time being, he's got a political power.
He was kind of spoiled wasn't he, You were mentioning
they were very indulged, She was very spoiled. Both parents
really doated on the children, but in kind of an
unfortunate spin on it, they pit the children against the
other parents, because that always works out well. Yeah, um,
(15:39):
and Eleanor especially is considered to have worked on turning
her kids against their father and you know, inspiring their
ambitions to take over their political control a little early
in life. Speaking of political maneuvers, around this time, Beckett
(15:59):
is murdered at Canterbury, and it's very violent, and we're
kind of put forth a hypothesis that this might be
around the time when Eleanor really can't stand her husband.
She started to hate him at some point and there
was a switch, something happened, and no one quite knows
what it is, but I think that's a pretty It
goes from an amicable separation to she can't stand as good,
(16:24):
inciting her children to rebel against their mother. So was
he involved with the murder? He claimed he wasn't, and
he was extremely remorseful about about the whole thing. But
what level of intrigue he said, his lord's misunderstood words
(16:46):
against Beckett. So but in eleven seventy two, Eleanor starts
her her own maneuvers and has Richard invested as the
Duke of Aquitaine, and she calls him the great One.
He is her beloved, the favorite son, and she will
do anything she can to help him. And around the
same time, uh King Louis of France, his daughter is
(17:10):
married to the Young King, starts to talk to Young Henry,
also stirring up trouble, saying, you know, you maybe go
for some political power. It's not enough to just be
the young king exactly. Um So, by eleven seventy three,
Eleanor is backing up her son's and everybody's ready for
(17:31):
a rebellion. But Henry the Second hasn't even suspected his
wife is involved. It's pretty inconceivable that a wife would
incite her children to to do this, so it's not
even on his radar. But he's starting to keep a
pretty close eye on the young King and actually keeps
him close by his side and until he escapes to Paris.
(17:54):
And at that point Henry knows that King Louis is
in league with the young Kings, so his wife's ex
husband doesn't leave with his son, so that's really nice
for Henry the Second. Finally, Henry the Second starts to
suspect Eleanor has a role in this everybody is just
a little too well arranged for her to not be involved,
(18:17):
and he commands the Archbishop of Ruined to remind her
of her wifely duties. He sent through this long letter
and there's no evidence she ever replied, but she gets
a little concerned and decides that the decides that the
safest place for her to be is in Louise Court,
her old husband's, so she dresses in men's clothing rides
(18:41):
horse astride to Paris, but on the way she's apprehended
by Henry's men and sent to the king, and this
marks a period in her life that's not so great
for Eleanor. Henry didn't make any sort of public announcement
about it, but he put her in a fortress and
(19:01):
had her guarded for the rest of his life. So
she was a prisoner for the rest of her husband's life. Yeah,
and the rebellion doesn't even end up going very well.
There's little open warfare, even though a lot of towns
are plundered, and Henry's son seemed very intent on destroying
their father's land. As the tide begins to turn and
(19:24):
Henry the Second looks like he's gonna win come out
on top and this rebellion his enemies start to sue
for peace, but he's still convinced that he's not going
to have total victory and peace until he atones for
Beckett's murder and makes proper pennants. Uh. This isn't to
say he was, you know, admitting involvement in it, but
(19:47):
just to atone for he and Beckett's estrangement. So he
actually goes to Canterbury and uh does extreme pennants, starves himself,
gets flogged by monks, and literally the next day things
look up and there ends up being peace in England,
and he's really generous about the fact generous sons were
(20:11):
treason us. Um he gives them land still no power,
so it's likely they're not going to be satisfied. The
only person who he won't give amnesty to is Eleanor,
but he doesn't quite feel the same about his son's
After that, his old favorites are no longer his favorites.
The littlest Boy is his favorite one, and also his
(20:33):
illegitimate son just good by him, right, Um, So Eleanor
is going to stay in prison, that looks like, and
she's not allowed to talk to the kids because she
might incite them through rebel again. But prison isn't as
quite as bad as it sounds. She's staying in nice
households and has a small retinue, very small. But Henry
(20:58):
begins living openly with his mistress the aforementioned Rosamond to Clifford,
which had to be a bit of a slap in
the face to Eleanor. Yeah, and by eleven seventy five
he's starting to think about having the marriage annuld. But
there's a problem with that, um. Eleanor is not interested.
(21:20):
She's already had one an element. I think she's done
with a whole annulment thing. It's it's a good deal
for him. He considers forcing her basically to take the
veil become a nun, and in which case he would
wouldn't have to surrender her lands under the which he
(21:40):
ran much want to marriage, um, and it would be
an easier deal than an annulment, which brings up a
lot of messy facts about there. Right, and you had
to get a lot of people involved for an annulment,
but she doesn't want to give up her crown and
her position of power, even if she doesn't have much
at the time, and also said she didn't have a
(22:01):
calling to be a nun, so she appealed to the
archbishop and said, you know, you can't let my husband
force me into being something that I'm not into being
a nun which is something she respected and believed you
needed a vocation for Rosamond, however, does end up in
a nunnery around the same time because she's sick and
(22:22):
basically that was the place to go. The king made
her a very nice tomb, and there was a myth
that's been going on in history for a very long
time that Eleanor murdered her, but she didn't, not true.
Eleanor was imprisoned, and as we said earlier, she had
very little contact with anybody because the king was so
concerned about her influence, so she didn't have a lot
(22:44):
of time or space and murdering mistresses, and the bishop
made Rosman's tomb be removed because she was a mistress.
In the following years, there's more familial strife going on
in the years. They never did have a very peaceful
family life, and the young King dies of Dysenterry and
Henry the second was scared to go and visit him
(23:07):
while he was dying because he was afraid there would
be some sort of traps set, which, knowing his sons,
would make sensely, but he sent a ring as a
token of his love, and on his deathbed, the young
King pleads for mercy for his mother, and Eleanor actually,
when she's brought news of the death of her son,
she actually says that she had a dream about it
(23:29):
and even dreamt of the ring, which she wouldn't have
known about. Kind of a strange supernatural tale. After the
Young King dies, Richard starts getting a little risky again
in regards to rebellion, and John, the youngest son, backs Richard.
And as we said earlier, John is Henry's favorite legitimate
(23:54):
son um who's always been most invested in him, and
when Henry finds out that John is supporting his brother,
he just sort of loses his will to live. He's
already sick, but he dies shortly. They're often betrayed by
his entire family one by one at this point, except
(24:14):
for his legitimate son Jeffrey, who was allowed to stay
at court. So Henry the Second dies in nine and
Richard the First becomes king and his first thing is
to release his mother, And actually he comes back to
England and finds out that his mother has already been
released because his handlers know this is her favorite son,
(24:36):
and they go ahead and take care of business before
they'ven here from him. And then she spends time kind
of acting as a cheerleader for her son. Almost He's
been living in Aquitaine almost his whole life. He's not
well known there and just sort of bolstering his reputation
are from Eleanor. But Richard the First leeds England dry
(25:01):
with crusades and war. He's not a good governor like
Henry was, and they're still family problems. Um is nipping
it Richard now and Um Richard when he goes away
on a crusade, he actually ends up kidnapped in Austria.
And this is just to show how low John kind
(25:25):
of goes here. Um John raises money for the ransom
from his tenants and then he ends up using it
himself for rebellious purposes. But Eleanor, through like Eleanor's diligent,
she raises the King's ransom and brings Richard and John
and Richard eventually do make up in Normandy because Eleanor's
(25:46):
mediating between them and making it happen, and John kind
of keeps a low profile over the next few years.
He's he's done for the tough for a time with
all the strife, and Richard ends up dying though, so
it's kind of a lost cause dies with no airs.
Um he's shot by an arrow by Bertram Digger Dunn,
(26:08):
who had a family grudge against him for killing his
brothers and father, and Richard is on his deathbed with
this horrible infected arrow wound. Is so impressed by this
man's story that he actually pardons him the guy who
shot him Um lets him go. Uh, he doesn't. After
(26:28):
his death, the pardon is dropped, but but he tried
her stuff does. During this time, Eleanor had withdrawn to
the abbey at Fontravaux, and she wasn't a nun there,
she was a guest. She sort of turned it into
in a place for aristocratic first retirement, but she was
still involved in politics. She was very much behind the
(26:49):
scenes moving pieces around. But after Richard dies she has
to fully invest herself in public life again. Um to
help John actually claim the crown because he's not the
automatic shoe in. But it seems like he would be
the Jeffrey who was illegitimate. No, a little fuzzy here,
(27:14):
so if if y'all know why this is, please send
us an email why this other guy was the illegitimate
Sonner would be the king? Um. And at one point, Arthur,
Jeffrey's son, tries to kidnap Eleanor, who is after all
his grandmother and welcomed his father, the illegitimate son, into court,
(27:36):
so that was quite a moment of ingratitude. John still
having trouble with Philip of France, though, um, but they
eventually work it out. Philip was initially supporting Arthur, but
on the provision that Philip's heir, Louis, be married to
one of John's Castilian nieces, one of his sister's daughters. Um.
(27:57):
There they can work out a piece. So Eleanor, who
is eighty years old at this point, goes to fetch
her granddaughter and their two to choose from. And this
is kind of a great story. But if they're too
you know, equally beautiful and dignified daughters and one would
assume she'd pick the elder, but she doesn't because her
(28:21):
name is Uraca, and she doesn't think that the French
are going to stand for having a queen named Rocca,
so she goes for a Blanch, who it proved to
be a good choice. Blanch ends up to be a
very formidable queen, has many children and you know, who knows.
Maybe the problem wasn't the name so much as Eleanor
seeing some promise in her younger granddaughter. And I think
(28:45):
we learned a lesson about baby names there. Yeah, if
you want your daughter to be queen, good for a
standard name, I guess. But Eleanor at this point is
very tired, being eighty two and having been on the
scene and political entrigue for so long, and she retires
to Fontravall once again, and the nun say of her
(29:05):
after her death that she was beautiful and just imposing
and modest, humble and elegant, and they also said she
was a queen who surpassed almost all the queens of
the world. She died in twelve o four. So if
you'd like to learn more about the Middle Ages and
the Crusades, please check out the stuff you missed in
History Class blog and try our web page at www
(29:26):
dot how stuff works dot com. For more on this
and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com.
Let us know what you think. Send an email to
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