Eleanor of Aquitaine: Rebel Queen of the Middle Ages

The following is a speech I gave at Kensington Palace in May 2022, during an evening hosted by Château d’Issan celebrating 870th anniversary of the wedding, held in Poitiers Cathedral in 1152, between Eleonor of Aquitaine and Henry, Duke of Normandy at the time of their marriage, soon after crowned King Henry II of England. It has long been believed that Château d’Issan (or wine from the Seigneuries de Cantenac, Lamothe-Cantenac, as it was then known) was served at the wedding. A recent discovery by Emmanuel Cruse of a 1242 wine sale from these lands to the English crown adds credence to the story.

This was the marriage that joined Bordeaux and England for 300 years. Following this strategic alliance, Eleanor’s lands from Poitiers and the Charente down to the Spanish border became joined to the English crown. Kings of England, such as Richard I, spent more time in Aquitaine than in London. It’s equally likely that the closeness of Issan to the English crown remained, as it is believed English troops boarded boats from its ports to be transported home after losing the Battle of Castillon in 1453 – a key moment that saw Aquitaine returned to France, over 300 years since Elenor and Henry’s marriage.

Good evening everyone, incredible to be here. My role is to just briefly take you through the action-packed life of Eleonor of Aquaitaine, best known by those of us in wine for her marriage to the man who became Henry II, great grandson of William the Conqueror and first Plantagenet King of England.

It was a marriage that started off happy, ended in the imprisonment of Eleanor for treason, but was definitely productive. Together they had five sons and three daughters, and created a dynasty that lasted from 1152 until 1453, forming ties that have linked England and Bordeaux for what will be 870 years as of tomorrow, May 18, 2022.

The last evening that Château d’Issan threw in honour of this marriage was at Westminster Palace, today’s Houses of Parliament, a building where Eleonor and Henry lived at one point. They didn’t live in Kensington Palace, which was built only in 1605, but Queen Elizabeth II is a distant relative of Eleonor, as a direct descendent of the marriage of her grand-daughter, also Eleonor, with the King of Castile. This is just one of the reasons that Eleonor is known as the ‘grandmother of Europe’, because her children made so many strategic marriages – and in this particular case, Eleonor herself travelled 800km, on horseback, across the Pyrenees mountains, when she was 80 years old, to collect her granddaughter and ensure the marriage took place to secure her family legacy. So I think we can say Eleonor would have been thrilled to see us here tonight.

This shows I hope that there is much more to Eleonor than a marriage that began when she was 28 years old, and ended with Henry’s death in 1189, 15 years before her own in 1204. I thought it might be interesting to share with you just a few details of her life both before her marriage to Henry, and after his death – the parts that perhaps you don’t know so much about.

Eleonor has been called ‘the rebel queen of the Middle Ages’, the ‘Scarlett O Hara of the 12^th century’, and had already been Queen for over 10 years by the time she married Henry, but Queen of France not England (she remains I think the only woman to have been queen of both countries, correct me if I’m wrong), and I thought you might enjoy learning why.

For a start she was known to be extremely beautiful, with expensive tastes. She became an orphan at the age of 15, inheriting Aquitaine, which was then the richest and most powerful dukedom in France, with more land and wealth than Paris. She met her first husband Louis on their wedding day, when she as 15 and he was 16, and a prince rather than King.

They married in the Saint André Cathedral in Bordeaux, with Alienor wearing a red silk dress, and we have plenty of detailed records about her arriving at the court in Paris a few years later, when Dauphin Louis became King Louis VII, and scandalising the locals with her flowing silk robes that were often lined with fur and pulled in at the waist with a belt that emphasised her figure – and her custom of leaving her long hair flowing down her back.

She also managed to scandalise the church by accompanying Louis on a Crusade to Constantinople and Jerusalem, unheard of at the time for women, and then capping it all off by only producing two daughters in a decade of marriage, and finally managing to secure a divorce from him – something that she had to petition the Pope for twice.

She then secretly married one of his biggest rivals, Henry Fitzempress, who became King Henry II of England two years later. London at time was the biggest city in northern Europe, and she recreated the court she had in Paris, spending hundreds of pounds per year on luxury goods – not only silks, furs and perfumes, but also the spices that she had first encountered while on the Crusades – so introducing cinnamon, cumin, saffran, ginger and sugar to England, as well as aubergines and spinach. When Louis imprisoned her for treason, one of the things he ordered was that she would receive no wines, spices or perfumes – three of the things that she loved most.

It was clear throughout that Eleonor was intelligent, stubborn and brave. But she was also a woman in the Middle Ages, no matter how much personal wealth she had, and it was only after Henry’s death, that she stepped into power in her own name – as queen mother and queen regent, ruling on behalf first of her son Richard the Lionheart, and later his brother John.

She was in her late 60s at the beginning of this period, 82 when she died, and yet there was never the hint of an idea of a gentle retirement. She had been in the shadow of Louis, then in the shadow of Henry, and it seemed like she was determined to make up for all the lost time.

Besides the 800km trip to pick up her granddaughter, she personally too charge of negotiations with the Emperor of Germany to free Richard after he was kidnapped, collecting and delivering a ransom that was the equivalent of the cost of staging the Olympic Games today, and crossed the Alps in the dead of winter – again on horseback through deep snow –  to deliver a suitable bride to Richard to shore up his power.

And throughout all this she continued to support the wine of Bordeaux and other Aquitaine craftsmen such as the porcelain of Limoges. She never seems to have delegated any tasks, and her contribution to England extended beyond her own lifetime. After the loss of Normandy in 1204, it was her own ancestral lands and not the old Norman territories that remained loyal to England.

She has been misjudged by many historians who have focused only her youthful frivolity, ignoring the political wisdom, and energy of later years. In total, Eleonor was queen for 66 years and 358 days (and remains the only woman to have been queen of both England and France alongside two separate Kings). Despite later rewritings of her history, her brilliance was largely recognised at the time of her death. She was buried at the Fontrevault Abbey near Chinon, where the nuns wrote, “She was beautiful and just, imposing and modest, humble and elegant”; and a queen “who surpassed almost all the queens of the world.”

 

Listen to Stéphane Bern’s podcast on Eleonor, or trace Eleonor’s footsteps through Bordeaux here.