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- In 781, Charlemagne decided to proclaim his son Louis King of Aquitaine within the Carolingian Empire, ruling over a realm comprising the Duchy of Aquitaine and the Duchy of Vasconia.
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When did Aquitaine become a king?
When Louis VI died, and Eleanor's new husband became King Louis VII, the Duchy of Aquitaine officially came under the rule of the French Crown, and for fifteen years, Louis VII had territory that rivaled that of the English crown and the Counts of Toulouse.
Feb 4, 2021 · Eleanor of Aquitaine (ca. 1122-1204) became the Duchess of Aquitaine and wife of the King of France at 15. By 30, she was married to the future King of England. She commanded armies, went on crusades, was held prisoner for 16 years, and ruled England as regent into her 70s.
- Overview
- Early life and marriage to Louis VII
- Marriage to Henry II and administration of England
- Death and legacy
Eleanor of Aquitaine was perhaps the most powerful woman in 12th-century Europe, extremely active in politics as wife and mother of various kings. Eleanor was queen consort to Louis VII (1137–52) of France and Henry II of England (1152–1204). Her numerous children included Richard I and John, both of whom assumed the British throne.
What was Eleanor of Aquitaine’s childhood like?
Eleanor of Aquitaine was born about 1122, the daughter and heiress of William X, duke of Aquitaine and count of Poitiers. He possessed one of the largest domains in France, and upon his death in 1137 she inherited the duchy of Aquitaine. Later that year she married and soon became queen of France.
What was Eleanor of Aquitaine like?
In her youth, Eleanor was widely regarded as beautiful and was considered capricious and frivolous. As she matured, she became known for her tenacity and political wisdom. The nuns of the monastery where she lived her final years wrote in their necrology a queen “who surpassed almost all the queens of the world.”
Eleanor of Aquitaine (born c. 1122—died April 1, 1204, Fontevrault, Anjou, France) queen consort of both Louis VII of France (1137–52) and Henry II of England (1152–1204) and mother of Richard I (the Lionheart) and John of England. She was perhaps the most powerful woman in 12th-century Europe.
Eleanor was the daughter and heiress of William X, duke of Aquitaine and count of Poitiers, who possessed one of the largest domains in France—larger, in fact, than those held by the French king. Upon William’s death in 1137 she inherited the duchy of Aquitaine and in July 1137 married the heir to the French throne, who succeeded his father, Louis VI, the following month. Eleanor became queen of France, a title she held for the next 15 years. Beautiful, capricious, and adored by Louis, Eleanor exerted considerable influence over him, often goading him into undertaking perilous ventures.
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From 1147 to 1149 Eleanor accompanied Louis on the Second Crusade to protect the fragile Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, founded after the First Crusade only 50 years before, from Turkish assault. Eleanor’s conduct during this expedition, especially at the court of her uncle Raymond of Poitiers at Antioch, aroused Louis’s jealousy and marked the beginning of their estrangement. After their return to France and a short-lived reconciliation, their marriage was annulled in March 1152.
According to feudal customs, Eleanor then regained possession of Aquitaine, and two months later she married the grandson of Henry I of England, Henry Plantagenet, count of Anjou and duke of Normandy. In 1154 he became, as Henry II, king of England, with the result that England, Normandy, and the west of France were united under his rule. Eleanor had only two daughters by Louis VII, but to her new husband she bore five sons and three daughters. The sons were William, who died at the age of three; Henry; Richard, the Lionheart; Geoffrey, duke of Brittany; and John, surnamed Lackland until, having outlived all his brothers, he inherited, in 1199, the crown of England. The daughters were Matilda, who married Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony and Bavaria; Eleanor, who married Alfonso VIII, king of Castile; and Joan, who married successively William II, king of Sicily, and Raymond VI, count of Toulouse. Eleanor would well have deserved to be named the “grandmother of Europe.”
During her childbearing years, she participated actively in the administration of the realm and even more actively in the management of her own domains. She was instrumental in turning the court of Poitiers, then frequented by the most famous troubadours of the time, into a centre of poetry and a model of courtly life and manners. She was the great patron of the two dominant poetic movements of the time: the courtly love tradition, conveyed in the romantic songs of the troubadours, and the historical matière de Bretagne, or “legends of Brittany,” which originated in Celtic traditions and in the Historia regum Britanniae, written by the chronicler Geoffrey of Monmouth sometime between 1135 and 1138.
The revolt of her sons against her husband in 1173 put her cultural activities to a brutal end. Since Eleanor, 11 years her husband’s senior, had long resented his infidelities, the revolt may have been instigated by her; in any case, she gave her sons considerable military support. The revolt failed, and Eleanor was captured while seeking refuge in the kingdom of her first husband, Louis VII. Her semi-imprisonment in England ended only with the death of Henry II in 1189. On her release, Eleanor played a greater political role than ever before. She actively prepared for Richard’s coronation as king, was administrator of the realm during his Crusade to the Holy Land, and, after his capture by the duke of Austria on Richard’s return from the east, collected his ransom and went in person to escort him to England. During Richard’s absence, she succeeded in keeping his kingdom intact and in thwarting the intrigues of his brother John Lackland and Philip II Augustus, king of France, against him.
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In 1199 Richard died without leaving an heir to the throne, and John was crowned king. Eleanor, nearly 80 years old, fearing the disintegration of the Plantagenet domain, crossed the Pyrenees in 1200 in order to fetch her granddaughter Blanche from the court of Castile and marry her to the son of the French king. By this marriage she hoped to ensure peace between the Plantagenets of England and the Capetian kings of France. In the same year she helped to defend Anjou and Aquitaine against her grandson Arthur of Brittany, thus securing John’s French possessions. In 1202 John was again in her debt for holding Mirebeau against Arthur, until John, coming to her relief, was able to take him prisoner. John’s only victories on the Continent, therefore, were due to Eleanor.
She died in 1204 at the monastery at Fontevrault, Anjou, where she had retired after the campaign at Mirebeau. Her contribution to England extended beyond her own lifetime; after the loss of Normandy (1204), it was her own ancestral lands and not the old Norman territories that remained loyal to England. She has been misjudged by many French histor...
- Régine Pernoud
- The exact circumstances of her birth are unknown. The year and location of Eleanor’s birth are not known precisely. She is believed to have been born around 1122 or 1124 in either Poitiers or Nieul-sur-l’Autise, in today’s south-western France.
- She was the most eligible woman in Europe. William X died in 1137 while on a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, leaving his teenage daughter the title of Duchess of Aquitaine and with it a vast inheritance.
- She accompanied Louis VII to fight in the Second Crusade. When Louis VII answered the pope’s call to fight in the Second Crusade, Eleanor persuaded her husband to allow her to join him as feudal leader of Aquitaine’s regiment.
- Her first marriage was annulled. Relations between the couple were strained; the two were a mismatched pair from the very start. Louis was quiet and submissive.
Aquitaine passed to France in 1137 when the duchess Eleanor of Aquitaine married Louis VII of France, but their marriage was annulled in 1152. When Eleanor's new husband became King Henry II of England in 1154, the area became an English possession, and a cornerstone of the Angevin Empire.
Feb 8, 2019 · From 1185, Eleanor became more active in the ruling of Aquitaine. Henry II died in 1189 and Richard, thought to be Eleanor's favorite among her sons, became king. From 1189-1204 Eleanor of Aquitaine also was active as a ruler in Poitou and Gascony.
Eleanor of Aquitaine © Eleanor was one of the most powerful women of the Middle Ages. Duchess of Aquitaine in her own right, she would go onto become queen-consort of France and later queen of...
