Kurai Extravaganza

On Princess Skye's website, I read a fierce essay on Eleanor of Aquitane. The Princess considers her to be one of the powerful women from medival days. Though I have quite some respect for the princess? opinion, I must say that I completely disagree.

Eleanor was the Duchess and heiress (She had only a younger sister and no brothers) of the lands of Aquitane, a affluent and powerful part of France. After her father's death, her legal guardian, king Louis, quickly married her off to his son, the future king Louis VII, to make her lands fall under control of the French crown. Obviously, as soon as she would give birth to a son, this would become permanent.

Certainly, Eleanor was a beautiful woman but that alone means nothing. She had little power over the king. She may have accompagnied him in the Second Crusade, her role was more one of displaying her riches than that she had any actual meaning to the crusade. All she meant was a treath to the unity of the French Army.

When the army reached the city of Antioch, Eleanor was reunited with her uncle whom was prince of this city by marriage. To Eleanor, her uncle was much more handsome and interesting than her husband whom spent most of his time praying. As rumor has it, Raymond of Antioch has been the Queen's lover. And he was not the only one. The Queen of France did what costed the later Queen of England, Catherine Howard, her head; namely, having sexually relationships with men other than the king.

But aside from historical gossip, Eleanor turned against Louis when the time came that Louis decided to leave Antioch and move forth towards Jerusalem, denying him the 1000 men from her Duchy whom followed the Crusade. When Louis demanded her to follow him, she refused and demanded a divorce based upon the fact that Louis and she herself were connected by some family connections to an extend prohibited by the Catholic Church, and that their marriage thus was not alid in the eyes of God.

Louis made the Queen ride with him but the relationship between the King and Queen was ruined. When they finally returned from the Holy lands, Eleanor did give birth to a second child (another daughter) but she eventually persuaded the king to consent to a divorce.

As sooon as the King and Queen of France were legally seperated with consent of the Pope; the Queen, now again the Duchess of Aquitane, married her fromer husband's enemy, Henry II, king of England.

Eleanor had left her two young daughters Marie and Alix behind in care of her former royal husband, and as Queen of England, she gave her second husband eight children (in addition to the several bastard children which Henry already sort of fathered).

I have not quite explained my dislike of Eleanor. It is quite simpy: I do not care how beautiful she may have been, this Queen never truly reigned, never even joined the King in council. She remarried out of free will but more as a revenge on Louis than because she sought ally with England.

It has been reported that she was intelligent but she was Queen of France and England and grew up as the daughter of on of the more important French noblemen. It is nothing more than ordinary for a woman of her standard to be well-educated.

No matte how many lovely novels are written about her life (I suggest reading 'Le lit d'Alienor' by Mireille Calmel), she is just a name in history, mother of the king's heir to the English throne. That is what she is mostly remembered for.

Alienor... mother of Richard Lionheart