Eleanor of Aquitaine (French: Aliénor d'Aquitaine or Éléonore d'Aquitaine; Occitan: Alienòr d'Aquitània [aljeˈnɔɾ dakiˈtanjɔ]; Latin: Helienordis, Alienorde or Alianor; c. 1124 – 1 April 1204) was Duchess of Aquitaine from 1137 to 1204, Queen of France from 1137 to 1152 as the wife of King Louis VII, and queen of England from 1154 to 1189 as the wife of King Henry II. As the reigning duchess of Aquitaine, she ruled jointly with her husbands and two of her sons, Kings Richard I and John of England. As the heiress of the House of Poitiers, which controlled much of southwestern France, she was one of the wealthiest and most powerful people in Western Europe during the High Middle Ages.
The eldest child of Duke William X of Aquitaine and Aénor de Châtellerault, Eleanor became duchess upon her father's death in 1137. Later that year, she married Louis, son of King Louis VI of France. Shortly afterwards, Eleanor's father-in-law died and her husband became king, making her queen consort. Louis VII and Eleanor had two daughters, Marie and Alix. During the Second Crusade, Eleanor accompanied Louis to the Holy Land. Pope Eugene III rejected an initial request in 1149 for an annulment of the marriage on grounds of consanguinity. In 1152, after fifteen years of marriage, Eleanor had not borne a male heir, and the annulment was granted. Their daughters were declared legitimate, custody was awarded to Louis, and Eleanor's lands were restored to her.
In the same year, Eleanor married Henry, the Duke of Normandy. In 1154, Henry and Eleanor became king and queen of England. The couple had five sons and three daughters, but they eventually became estranged. Henry imprisoned Eleanor for supporting the 1173 revolt against him by their sons Young Henry, Richard and Geoffrey. She was not released until 1189, when Henry II died and Richard I ascended the throne. As queen dowager, Eleanor acted as regent during Richard's long absences from England and France. On Richard's death in 1199, she successfully campaigned for his younger brother John to succeed him. After continuing turmoil between the French and English kings and the successive loss of the lands she and Henry II had once ruled over, she died in 1204 and was buried in Fontevraud Abbey in France.
There is a scarcity of primary sources on Eleanor's life. There are no contemporary biographies, and modern biographies are largely drawn from annals and chronicles, generally written by clerics associated with the royal courts. There are very few surviving records from Aquitaine; she is barely mentioned in records of the French court and appears to have been actively erased from memory. Consequently, accounts of Eleanor appear largely as a peripheral figure in chronicles of the men around her. Important secular sources from England and Wales include Roger of Howden, Walter Map, Ralph de Diceto, Gerald of Wales and Ralph Niger. While some were relatively neutral, the writings of Map and Gerald were largely satirical polemics, while Niger's criticisms are mainly directed at Eleanor's second husband, Henry II of England, rather than Eleanor herself. Among the chroniclers are also clerical sources, including Gervase of Canterbury, Ralph of Coggeshall, Richard of Devizes, William of Newburgh and Ranulf Higden. The latter were mainly influenced by their revulsion at the murder of Thomas Becket in 1170. Although Richard of Devizes admired Eleanor's perseverance in supporting her son Richard, all of them expressed negative views about women in power and hinted at some darker attributes that eventually led to a "Black Legend" that became associated with her. Twentieth-century writers such as Amy Kelly and Marion Meade would create an opposite myth of a feminist heroine, referred to as the "Golden Myth", that pervaded many subsequent accounts, while similar treatment in French literature is seen in the work of Régine Pernoud. More recent scholarship has sought to correct both of these characterisations.
In the absence of reliable contemporary accounts, legend and speculation have frequently been resorted to; "rarely in the course of historical endeavor has so much been written, over so many centuries, about one woman of whom we know so little".
Childhood and adolescence (1124–1137)
Eleanor was descended on her father's side from a long line of dukes of Aquitaine dating back to the 10th century, who in turn succeeded the Carolingian monarchs of the Kingdom of Aquitaine. Twelfth-century Aquitaine was one of the wealthiest and most powerful vassal states within France at that time. The French kings ruled over a relatively small area around the Île-de-France to the north-west, and the rulers of the surrounding duchies (duchés) and counties (comtés) gave only nominal allegiance to the French crown.
While little is known of Eleanor's early life, many biographers have speculated on what it was like from accounts of aristocratic households of the era. Her year of birth is not known precisely; all that is known for certain is that the first mention of her is found in a document from July 1129. Tradition places her birth during one of her parents' visits to Bordeaux, likely at her father's nearby castle of Belin. Other authors suggest Poitiers, Ombrière Palace, Bordeaux, or Nieul-sur-l'Autise. While the date of her birth was once given as 1122 or 1124, the latter is now generally accepted. A late 13th-century genealogy of her family listing her as 13 years old at her father's death in the spring of 1137 provides the best evidence that Eleanor was born in 1124. However, some chronicles mention a fidelity oath of lords of Aquitaine on the occasion of Eleanor's fourteenth birthday in 1136. Her parents are unlikely to have married before 1121. Her age at her death is thus stated as 80 or 82.
Eleanor was the oldest of three children born to Duke William X of Aquitaine and his wife, Aénor de Châtellerault. Her father was the son of Duke William IX of Aquitaine and Countess Philippa of Toulouse. Her mother was the daughter of Viscount Aimery I of Châtellerault and Dangereuse de l'Isle Bouchard. Dangereuse was also William IX's longtime mistress, and she and William IX then arranged for their respective children to be married to each other. Eleanor had two younger siblings, Aélith and Aigret. Eleanor was named for her mother Aénor and baptised as Aliénor from the Latin alia Ænor, which means the other Aénor. It became Eléanor in the langues d'oïl of northern France and Eleanor in English, but the exact spelling was never fixed in her lifetime. In 1130, Eleanor's brother Aigret and their mother both died. With her brother's death, Eleanor became the heir presumptive to her father's domains.
Little, if anything, is known of Eleanor's education. The only contemporary record of her education comes from Bertran de Born, a troubadour, who states that she read the poetry of her native tongue. Although the language of Bordeaux and Poitiers was Poitevin, a northern French (langue d'oïl) dialect, Eleanor was soon exposed to Occitan (langue d'oc), the southern dialect and language of the poets and courtiers at the ducal court.
In 1137, William X left Poitiers for Bordeaux and took his daughters with him. Upon reaching Bordeaux, he left them at l'Ombrière Castle in the charge of his loyal vassal and the local archbishop, Geoffrey of Louroux. William then set out for the Shrine of Saint James of Compostela in the company of other pilgrims. However, he died on Good Friday of that year (9 April).
Eleanor, aged 13, then became the duchess of Aquitaine, and thus one of the richest and most eligible heiresses in Europe. Since kidnapping an heiress was seen as a viable option for obtaining a title and lands, when William X knew that he was dying, he named King Louis VI of France as Eleanor's guardian. William requested that Louis take care of both Eleanor and the lands and find her a suitable husband. However, until a husband was found, the king had the legal right to her lands. William also insisted to his companions that his death be kept a secret until Louis was informed; the men were to journey as quickly as possible from Saint James of Compostela across the Pyrenees to notify Archbishop Geoffrey, then to Paris to inform the king.