Woven with great skill and cunning detective work into a vivid and haunting portrait." ( Ms London) At present I am just completing the research for my new book, Henry VIII: King and Court, which is scheduled for publication in June 2001. In this book I mean to present a detailed and comprehensive study of Henry VIII set within the context of what was undoubtedly the most magnificent court in English history. The book will focus on the personal life of the King and the lives of his courtiers, and will encompass every aspect of Tudor court life, from state banquets to sanitary arrangements, and from Renaissance influences to amorous intrigues. There will also be a few surprises concerning Henry's private life! Eleanor was imprisoned for the next 16 years, much of the time in various locations in England. During her imprisonment, Eleanor became more and more distant from her sons, especially from Richard, who had always been her favourite. [29] She did not have the opportunity to see her sons very often during her imprisonment, though she was released for special occasions such as Christmas. About four miles from Shrewsbury and close by Haughmond Abbey is "Queen Eleanor's Bower", the remains of a possible triangular timber castle which is believed to have been one of her prisons. This is the story of Eleanor’s earlier years of her reign of Aquitaine before her marriage to Louis VII. We don’t often get novels set before Eleanor becomes the more well-known version of herself. This is one, and it’s great. Eleanor of Aquitaine: Lord and Lady

Kelly, Amy (January 1937). "Eleanor of Aquitaine and Her Courts of Love". Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies. University of Chicago Press. 12 (1): 3–19. doi: 10.2307/2848658. JSTOR 2848658. S2CID 162194965. Louis was a retiring young man best suited, most thought, for the monastery. Eleanor wasted no time -- remember she was still an adolescent -- corrupting (in the mind of her mother-in-law) Louis to the more secular ways of the south. Their marriage was a catastrophe. He was ineffectual, indecisive, inadequate, generally most ofthe "in's" one can apply. Louis' Second Crusade was a disaster. The presence of Eleanor and her ladies with their enormous baggage train made travel difficult. The Pope's personal intervention, virtually dragging them to bed to force reconsumation of their marriage was the catalyst for the final dissolution, because the product of this pathetic reunion was a girl, and Louis' Capetians desperately needed a male to continue the line.Meade, Marion (1977). Eleanor of Aquitaine: A Biography. Hawthorn. ISBN 978-0-8015-2231-4. ; Eleanor of Aquitaine: A Biography; (1991 edition) at Google Books She has also been introduced in The Royal Diaries series in the book Crown Jewel of Aquitaine by Kristiana Gregory. A fascinating account of one of the most alluring figures of the Middle Ages by one of Britain's most respected historians. An alluringly candid portrait of this most public yet elusive woman… A truly epic landscape of twelfth-century Europe in all its blood and glory." ( The Boston Globe) Although the Church didn’t allow divorce, there was a loophole for the rich and powerful. This was consanguinity: a degree of kinship, not necessarily close, that rendered a marriage quasi-incestuous and thus displeasing to God. Disgruntled spouses might discover – even after having a daughter together – that they were third cousins. They could then try to persuade the pope to annul the marriage, which he might or might not do. Eugene III did agree to divorce Eleanor and Louis, but only after long resistance. He first required the couple to try to conceive again, resulting in the birth of a second daughter. (A son could have rendered the marriage permanent.) Just eight weeks after the annulment, Eleanor married Henry II of England, a fourth cousin.

This really is a very good book. Marion Meade must be an incredible scholar to pull so much information about her life from such a long time ago. Through it one gets a sense of what life must have been like--at least for the powerful--in the 11th and 12th centuries in western Europe. It is interesting to see how much we know of a woman in that period, and what competence, energy, and ambition she had. A remarkable life, during a period of the world I don't think any of us would want to go live in if we had a choice. Official blame for the disaster was placed on Geoffrey de Rancon, who had made the decision to continue, and it was suggested that he be hanged, a suggestion which the king ignored. Since Geoffrey was Eleanor's vassal, many believed that it was she who had been ultimately responsible for the change in plan, and thus the massacre. This suspicion of responsibility did nothing for her popularity in Christendom. She was also blamed for the size of the baggage train and the fact that her Aquitanian soldiers had marched at the front and thus were not involved in the fight. Continuing on, the army became split, with the commoners marching towards Antioch and the royalty travelling by sea. When most of the land army arrived, the king and queen had a dispute. Some, such as John of Salisbury and William of Tyre, say Eleanor's reputation was sullied by rumours of an affair with her uncle Raymond. Eleanor is the subject of A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver, a children's novel by E. L. Konigsburg.

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Weir is so much the master of the period, so intuitive and unsentimental an interpreter of royal minds, and so upfront in her assumptions that I trusted her completely." ( The Boston Globe) Davis, Henry William Carless (1911). "Eleanor of Aquitaine". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol.18 (11thed.). p.168. This is a chapter in a wider book. It’s a really good chapter as it happens. It’s much more down to earth, rather brutal in refusing to go anywhere that’s not verifiable – and therefore gives Eleanor much less agency. Disappointing though this is, it is a very useful counterpoise to the full biographies. This is the one to go for if you want to know more, but don’t want to to wade through a full biography. It also has he advantage of putting Eleanor in context of the role of Queens that came before and after her in England.

Jones, Dan (2013). The Plantagenets: The Kings who made England. London: William Collins. p.45. ISBN 978-0-00-721394-8. Duby, George (1997). Women of the Twelfth Century, Volume 1: Eleanor of Aquitaine and Six Others. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-16780-0. Henry II died in July 1189 and their son Richard succeeded him; one of his first acts was to free his mother from prison and restore her to full freedom. Eleanor ruled as regent in Richard’s name while he took over for his father in leading the Third Crusade, which had barely begun when Henry II died. In Sharon Kay Penman's Plantagenet novels, she figures prominently in When Christ and His Saints Slept, Time and Chance, and Devil's Brood, and also appears in Lionheart and A King's Ransom, both of which focus on the reign of her son, Richard, as king of England. Eleanor also appears briefly in the first novel of Penman's Welsh trilogy, Here Be Dragons. In Penman's historical mysteries, Eleanor, as Richard's regent, sends squire Justin de Quincy on various missions, often an investigation of a situation involving Prince John. The four published mysteries are the Queen's Man, Cruel as the Grave, Dragon's Lair, and Prince of Darkness. Although some facts about the court remain in dispute amidst centuries of accumulated legend and myth, it seems that Eleanor, possibly accompanied by her daughter Marie, established a court that was largely focused on courtly love and symbolic ritual that was eagerly taken up by the troubadours and writers of the day and promulgated through poetry and song.This court was reported to have attracted artists and poets, and to have contributed to a flowering of culture and the arts. But to whatever extent such a court existed, it appears not to have survived Eleanor’s later capture and imprisonment, which effectively removed her from any position of power and influence for the next 16 years. Eleanor of Aquitaine: Imprisonment

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Eleanor is said to have been named for her mother Aenor and called Aliénor from the Latin Alia Aenor, which means the other Aenor. It became Eléanor in the langues d'oïl of northern France and Eleanor in English. [4] There was, however, another prominent Eleanor before her— Eleanor of Normandy, an aunt of William the Conqueror, who lived a century earlier than Eleanor of Aquitaine. In Paris as the queen of France, she was called Helienordis, her honorific name as written in the Latin epistles. The king of France, known as Louis the Fat, was also gravely ill at that time, suffering from a bout of dysentery from which he appeared unlikely to recover. Yet despite his impending death, Louis's mind remained clear. His eldest surviving son, Louis, had originally been destined for monastic life, but had become the heir apparent when the firstborn, Philip, died in a riding accident in 1131. [13] married 1) Isabella, countess of Gloucester 2) Isabella, countess of Angoulême; had issue, including Henry III, King of England, Richard, king of the Romans, Joan, queen of Scotland, Isabella, Holy Roman Empress While in the eastern Mediterranean, Eleanor learned about maritime conventions developing there, which were the beginnings of what would become admiralty law. She introduced those conventions in her own lands on the island of Oléron in 1160 (with the " Rolls of Oléron") and later in England as well. She was also instrumental in developing trade agreements with Constantinople and ports of trade in the Holy Lands.