Eleanor of Aquitaine

Eleanor of Aquitaine (Occitan Aleonòr d'Aquitània, French Aliénor or Éléonore d'Aquitaine; also Éléonore de Guyenne; * c. 1122 in Poitiers in Poitou; † 1. April 1204 in the monastery of Fontevrault in France) from the House of Poitiers was Duchess of Aquitaine, by marriage first Queen of France (1137-1152), then Queen of England (1154-1189), and one of the most influential women of the Middle Ages.

Eleanor was descended from the dynasty of the Dukes of Aquitaine, successors of Carolingian kings of Aquitaine and rulers of the largest duchy on French soil. Eleonore's marriage to the French heir to the throne, Louis, enabled the French crown to reattach territorial lordships that had become increasingly independent and autonomous since the Carolingian period. The dissolution of the marriage to Louis VII is considered one of the most momentous separations in history, as it set in motion a development that led to a conflict between the English and French kingdoms that lasted more than 300 years. Shortly after the annulment of her marriage to the French king, Eleanor married the young Henry Plantagenet, Duke of Anjou and Normandy, who was also a contender for the English crown. Two years later Henry and Eleanor were crowned as English monarchs. Henry's policy aimed to consolidate the territories held by the family into a dominion now known as the Angevin Empire. Once again, the territorial dominions that Eleanor brought into the marriage played a key role in this. However, her biographer Ralph V. Turner points out that Eleonore's actions demonstrate that, as heir to the throne of Aquitaine, she felt called and entitled to rule her own duchy and was determined to prevent it from being stripped of its own identity and incorporated into her husband's realm.

The marriage between Eleonore and Henry was conflictual, not least because of Eleonore's claim to independent exercise of power. After Eleanor joined the rebellion of three of her sons against their father in 1173/1174, Henry placed her under house arrest for 15 years. After the death of her husband in 1189, during the reigns of her two surviving sons, Richard the Lionheart and John Ohneland, she again assumed a significant political role.

Around the person of Eleonore began to form myths and legends during her lifetime. Thus, she was accused of adultery with her uncle. For many centuries she was regarded as an example of a power-hungry, scheming ruler. This image has changed considerably in recent decades. Not least after she entered popular culture through the film The Lion in Winter, she became the protagonist of numerous works of fiction, which stylized her as a patron of poets and minstrels, for which, however, the historical sources provide no evidence to this extent. The overall paucity of sources, however, makes it difficult to do justice to Eleanor as a historical figure. Historians such as Ralph V. Turner see as the leitmotif of her life her will to fulfil her role as queen and her determination to preserve the integrity of her duchy of Aquitaine.

Name

According to Gottfried of Vigeois, Eleanor of Aquitaine was christened Alienor. According to this chronicler, this baptismal name is derived from alia-Aenòr ("the other Aenòr") to distinguish her from her mother. However, historian Daniela Laube points out, in view of the different spellings of the name in charters and contemporary chronicles, that the exact form of the name was not fixed during Eleonore's lifetime and the name was used in different ways. Thus Abbot Suger calls her Aanor, the chronicle of Morigni Aenordis; later she is called Alienor, occasionally also Helnienordis. Hereafter the form Eleonore, which is common in the German-speaking area, is used.

Marriage with Henry II.

1152–1166

Louis initially refused to recognize Henry's claims to Aquitaine. However, there were no formal provisions in feudal law that Henry's marriage to Eleanor so clearly violated that he could have been punished for it by the confiscation of his territorial possessions. Nevertheless, it took some military and diplomatic interplay before Louis, by now remarried, officially renounced the title of Duke of Aquitaine in August 1154. By this time, William, the first son of Eleanor's marriage to Henry, had already been born and the English King Stephen had recognized Henry as his rightful heir to the throne in the Treaty of Wallingford.

Queen of England

In October 1154 Stephen of England died and on 19 December 1154 Henry and Eleanor were crowned by Archbishop Theobald of Canterbury at Westminster in London. The support Henry originally had with the English barons was based in no small part on their hope that they would retain the liberties and rights they had usurped over the years under a predominantly nominal rule by Henry. Henry, however, succeeded in largely asserting his authority in England by the end of 1155. It is clear from the Pipe Rolls that Eleanor held a great position of trust in the early years of the marriage. She was able, for example, to arrange payments from the treasury independently and, in her husband's absence, exercised the regency of England for years, where she lived most of the time. Her writs, which she issued in close collaboration with royal officials who enjoyed Henry's confidence, had the same legal force as instructions from the king. Ralph Turner emphasizes in particular that Henry evidently had enough confidence in Eleanor to leave her there alone in the critical early years of his reign in England, when his rule over that kingdom had not yet been consolidated. He also bequeathed to her, shortly after the beginning of his English reign, some of the traditional widow estates of Anglo-Norman queens. Thus she owned 26 benefices scattered over 13 English counties. Her income amounted to a sum equal to that of the richest earls or barons of the kingdom.

Married Life

Henry was alone for most of the year travelling through his territories and met with Eleonore mostly on the occasion of the Christmas Court. Eleanor usually travelled to the European continent accompanied by some of her children. Evidence shows that the couple saw each other at Bordeaux at Christmas 1156, at Woodstock and Oxford in 1157, at Cherbourg in 1158, at Falaise in 1159, at Le Mans in 1161, at Bayeux in 1162, and at Cherbourg in 1163.

The first-born son William died already in 1156, but until 1158 four more children were born: Henry (1155), Mathilde (1156), Richard (1157) and Gottfried (1158). In 1158, however, Louis was still without male descendants. At a meeting between Louis and Henry towards the end of 1158, the two monarchs concluded a marriage treaty providing for a marriage between Henry, heir to the English throne, and Margaret of France, born in 1158. If Louis failed to produce any more male descendants, the Plantagenets could claim a legitimate claim to the French crown. Margaret, not yet a year old, was given to her future father-in-law to raise - as was customary for young female nobles at the time. Louis merely made it a condition that his daughter should not grow up in his ex-wife's household. As Margaret's dowry, the two kings had agreed on the Norman Vexin, whose castles were of great importance for the control of the traffic routes between Paris and Rouen. Louis certainly did not expect this dowry to be due soon, given the age of the two betrothed children. However, Henry managed to obtain a dispensation from Pope Alexander III to marry off the two children, even though they were far too young to do so under canon law. In November 1160, the children, who were just two and five years old respectively, were married to each other.

The initially good relationship between the two monarchs suffered further damage when Henry tried in vain to assert Eleonore's claim to the county of Toulouse in 1159. The course of the eastern border of the Duchy of Aquitaine was also disputed and not only Henry and Eleanor, but also the Counts of Toulouse and the Capetians laid claim to the County of Auvergne. Until 1166, however, there were no major military conflicts between Louis and Henry. In view of the overwhelming superiority of his vassal, Louis concentrated on the expansion of the crown domain and an alliance policy from which his son Philip August, born in 1165, was to profit considerably.

In 1165 and 1166 Eleonore and Henry celebrated Christmas separately, which some historians see as the beginning of the estrangement between the two spouses. Furthermore, the heir to the throne, Henry, no longer lived in his mother's care, but was given his own household and increasingly represented at his father's side. After two daughters, who were born in 1162 and 1165, Eleonore gave birth to Johann in December 1167 as the last common child from her marriage to Heinrich.

Rebellion of the sons

Return of Eleonore to Aquitaine

In 1167 Henry was busy putting down various rebellions by his vassals. Eleanor seems at this time to have taken joint control of Aquitaine with Patrick, Earl of Salisbury. There is evidence of an attack on the Earl of Salisbury and Eleanor on 27 March 1168, probably on the road between Poitiers and Niort, in which the Earl was killed. Guy de Lusignan intended this raid to take Eleanor hostage in order to strengthen his bargaining position with Henry. Eleonore narrowly escaped during this raid.

In the view of historian Alison Weir, it made political sense for Eleanor, with Henry's approval and under his suzerainty, to begin exercising rule in her inherited territories, which had been under foreign rule for three decades. During her travels through her dominions, she accepted, among other things, the feudal silks of Aquitanian nobles in Niort, Limoges, and Bayonne, refounded ancient markets, encouraged exiled barons to return, and confirmed the ancestral rights of towns and abbeys. According to Richard of Devizes, Eleonore's decision to continue to live apart from Henry and remain forever in her inherited territories was also made during these years. As further evidence of this, there is a letter from the Archbishop of Rouen, Rotrou of Warwick, after it was likewise Eleanor who decided to no longer live with her husband. Some historians argue that Henry's affair with Rosamund Clifford was the reason for this separation. This is contradicted by the fact that Eleonore had ignored Henry's numerous affairs, which had produced several children, until then. There is also much to suggest that this affair did not begin until after Eleonore had returned to France, and that it was not publicly noticed until Eleonore was already a prisoner of her husband. Weir thinks it more likely that the age difference between the two partners became increasingly apparent and that their strong-willed characters made them too incompatible with each other. Turner, on the other hand, points out that there were long periods of separation earlier in Eleanor and Henry's marriage. He argues that another explanation for Eleanor's return to Aquitaine may have been her desire to exercise her inherited claim to rule Aquitaine herself, and also to arrange the succession to that duchy in her own terms. Her return also coincided with a period in which her role as regent in England had become increasingly unimportant, after Henry had established a functioning administrative apparatus there. Moreover, as heiress to a dynasty older and more notable than Henry's Angevin and Norman lines, Eleanor was reluctant to allow Aquitaine to be permanently absorbed into the Plantagenet empire. This is also supported by the fact that in 1171 Eleanor used wording in her decrees and instructions that emphasized that she ruled Poitou and Aquitaine in her own authority and not only as Henry's representative.

The Treaty of Montmirail

The Treaty of Montmirail, concluded at the beginning of 1169, was the first to regulate how his inheritance was to be divided up after Henry's death. The eldest son of the royal couple, Henry, was to take over the rule of England, and Normandy and Anjou were also to fall to him. He was crowned English king in 1170 - the coronation of the heir to the throne while his father was still alive was a common step to ensure succession. Richard was to receive Aquitaine, and his chief liege would accordingly be the French king. Gottfried was to receive Brittany and thus become the vassal of his eldest brother. The youngest son, John, was initially disregarded. How much Eleonore was involved in her husband's plans for the succession has not been handed down. The fact that the dukedom she had brought into the marriage was to go undivided to Richard may well have been in Eleonore's mind. The procedure was also not unusual: primogeniture had not yet fully established itself and there were conventions according to which the landed property that the wife had brought into the marriage with a prince went to the second-born son in the event of succession.

1172 followed the investiture of Eleonore's son Richard as Duke of Aquitaine. According to the chronicler Gottfried of Vigeois, this was done at the request of his mother. The real power, however, remained with Henry II, to whom, for example, Richard had to turn when he needed more money for troops. Eleanor, however, allowed her son Richard a share in political responsibility. The situation of his elder brother Henry, on the other hand, was more difficult. His father refrained from giving his eldest son even a share of governmental responsibility. Henry, despite having been crowned, had no land of his own and thus no income of his own. The murder of Thomas Beckett by four knights from Henry II's court had discredited the king in the eyes of his son, who had spent part of his youth at Beckett's court. When Henry II then also began to fork out a territorial inheritance at the expense of the three elder sons for his youngest son John, who had initially been left out of consideration, this led to a rebellion by the elder sons against Henry, which grew into a broad insurrectionary movement. Early in 1173 Raymond of Toulouse informed Henry of a conspiracy between his wife and his eldest sons. The rebellion became obvious to all when young Henry fled to the court of the French king, who was his father-in-law, in March 1173. Richard and Gottfried joined their brother a little later. Eleanor was captured by Henry's faithful in November 1173 on her way to Chartres.

Contemporary chroniclers such as Ralph of Diceto, William of Newburgh and Gervase of Canterbury believe that the sons' rebellion was initiated by Eleanor. Only a few, such as the author of the anonymous Gesta Henrici Secundi, see Louis as the main driver behind the conspiracy, the aim of which was to depose Henry II. A number of historians, such as Elizabeth Brown and Ralph Tuner, point out that there were valid political reasons for Eleanor to support the rebellion: in 1173, her husband managed to reach a settlement with Raymond of Toulouse, who abandoned his formal vassalage to Castile and paid homage to Henry II and his son Henry at Limoges.

Eleonora's Captivity

Henry II only succeeded in putting down the rebellion of his sons, supported by Louis, against his suzerainty in 1174. However, there were no actual military campaigns, the military conflicts were limited to the siege of castles and the burning of towns and villages of the respective opponent.

Initially held prisoner at Chinon Castle, Eleanor was transferred to England in the summer of 1174. Thereafter, Eleanor is mentioned only a few times in contemporary chronicles until Henry's death in 1189. The mentions do not indicate that Eleonore was actually imprisoned; in Ralph Turner's view, her situation is best described as house arrest. What is relatively certain is that her household was initially very small. In 1177/1178 the Pipe Rolls show expenditure on cloaks and upholstery for the Queen's household, the same occurs in 1179 and in that year a gilt saddle is also recorded for the Queen. Other references record a meeting with her daughter Matilda, married to Henry the Lion, at Winchester, a stay of the Queen and Henry the Lion at Forcester and Portsmouth, and a passage of the two on one of Henry's ships to France. Daniela Laube interprets the increased references during her daughter Mathilda's stay in England, which lasted several years, as meaning that Eleonore was granted more freedom of movement during these years. After the ducal couple returned to Germany in 1185, on the other hand, there are no indications that Eleonore showed herself in public.

In Ralph Turner's view, the relatively good treatment Eleonore received during the nearly 16 years she spent in confinement was a rational act on the part of her husband. Ruthless treatment would have further strained his strained relationship with his three eldest sons and made the exercise of power in Eleonore's duchy much more difficult. Even higher would have been the political price paid by Henry - already blamed for Beckett's murder - in the event of Eleonore's suspicious death. Henry II did, however, attempt to obtain an annulment of his marriage in 1175/1176. It is not certain whether this ultimately failed due to the resistance of the Roman Curia or whether Henry became aware of the political consequences of such an annulment.

Several contemporary chroniclers suggest that Henry began an affair with Alice of France after the death of his long-time mistress Rosamund de Clifford. The union was scandalous in every respect. Alice was Louis' daughter from his second marriage and had been betrothed to Henry's son Richard since 1169. Since the betrothal she had lived in Henry's care. It is possible that at the beginning of this relationship Henry was still convinced to enforce the annulment of his marriage to Eleanor and marry Alice instead of her. Both Louis and later his son repeatedly tried to enforce that the marriage between Alice and Richard be consummated. The matter caused disagreement between the two royal houses even after Henry's death and ultimately remained unresolved.

Disputes between Henry and his sons

Richard was again given the rule of the Duchy of Aquitaine by Henry after the suppression of the revolt in 1174, and until the death of his eldest brother in 1183, the cooperation between father and son seems to have been problem-free. The death of the young Henry on 11 June 1183 changed this again. Under the Treaty of Montmirail, Richard would now be granted England, Normandy, Anjou, Poitou and Aquitaine. Gottfried - who would die in 1186, either through illness or accident - was heir to Brittany, while John would inherit only Ireland and some estates in England and on the Continent. Henry wanted to change this succession in favour of his youngest son, and to do this Richard was to cede Aquitaine and Poitou to John, a plan which Richard was initially able to resist. In 1185, however, Henry was able to force a cession of the duchy to Eleanor, who had travelled from England for this purpose. To what extent this restitution was made with Eleonore's consent is not known. Richard lived at Henry's court for some time thereafter, and it is certain that this was also the case for Eleanor at times. For example, she held court with Henry in Normandy in the spring of 1186 and travelled with him to Southampton in April. When Henry also refused to give Richard official recognition as heir in November 1188, the latter fled to the court of the French king for help. The alliance between Richard and Philip August immediately drew warfare, in which Henry was no match for the combined forces of Philip August and Richard. Henry was finally forced into a peace settlement on July 4, in which he had to acknowledge Richard as his principal heir. A few days later Henry died near Chinon.

Henry II, 13th century depiction, British Library, MS Royal 14 C VII f.9