Eleanor of Aquitaine: By the Wrath of God, Queen of England
£4.37
Eleanor - the Invisible Woman - Some years ago I read Alison s Weir s biography of Elizabeth I of England and found it well written and interesting. As a Scotsman and a Catholic, I was less impressed by her account of how she treated Mary, Queen of Scotland, whom she murdered as she did so many of Catholic English subjects who were treated as traitors merely because of their religion. However, let us not let this subjective view detract from the fact that the book was good and Elizabeth was certainly an impressive monarch and represented the true face of English nationalism - insular, insecure and ruthless, with an iron fist beneath the proffered cup of tea and cucumber sandwich. In comparison, Weir s biography of Eleanor of Aquitaine is pretty thin and hard going. The main reason is simply that very little is actually known about Eleanor apart from some historical bits and bobs and dry financial information. She must have been a remarkable woman and she had an interesting life split between her realms in France and England and even went on a Crusade to the Holy Land. However, the fact is that there is just so little information about her that Weir devotes more space to her royal husbands and her son, Richard the Lionheart, and pads out the story with dull accounts of the contemporary life, e.g. a description so the castles she visited. Thankfully, unlike so many modern writers, she does not pretend to have discovered new facts or shocking information. The style is good but there is simply not enough there. This book is not really worth the effort.
A highly readbale account of a Beautiful, wilful, strong, intelligent and passionate woman - Eleanor of Aquitaine was the queen of Louis VII of France and later Henry II of England. she was the mother of two English kings, Richard the Lionheart and John. France and England fought for many years over her vast French estates. Eleanor was one of the most fable women of the Middle Ages and also one of the more controversial. Beautiful, wilful, strong, intelligent, passionate and a famed lover. Much scandal was attached to her name, much of it with more than a little substance. She seems to have had more than a few paramours while married to both kings, including Geoffrey of Anjou, father to her second husband, Henry II of England, while she was still married to Louis VI of France. She was a great patron of troubadour poetry, inspiring some great and passionately expressed ballads. she lived to be 82 but it was only towards the end of her life that she overcame the adversities and tragedies of her earlier years and became the de facto ruler of England. The nuns of Fontrevault recorded in their necrology a glowing but conventional tribute to their late patroness, who had been a paragon among women and illuminated the world with the brilliance of her royal progeny, She graced the nobility of her birth with the honesty of her life, enriched it with her royal excellence, and adorned it with the flowers of her virtues, and her renown fr unmatched goodness she surpassed almost all the queens of the world . Sadly it was often the scandals associated with her youth, and not the wisdom of her stewardship of England during the reign of her sons that is remembered. Yet many ballads and stories have been attached to her name in the 800 years following her passing. this was written in all sincerity because they knew her in her venerable old age. We learn much of the role of women in Medieval nobility. In Eleanor s day, women were supposed to be chaste both inside and outside marriage, virginity and chastity being highly prized states. When it came to fornication women were usually apportioned the blame because they were descendants of Eve who had tempted Adam in the Garden of Eden. Promiscuity and brought great shame upon a women, including fines, social ostracism, and even in the case of royal and aristocratic women, execution. Women who engaged in sexual activity prior to marriage devalued themselves on the marriage market as no one wanted to buy what they regarded as soiled goods . Such archaic and narrow minded views of women have for the most part withered away in Western society today but remain the order in Islamic societies. Incarcerated and restricted during the reign of her husband Henry II, she played a powerful role under Richard and John, exhorting the Pope to see that Richard was freed while being held prisoner by the Duke of Austria and opposing the destructive power of Bishop William Longchamp of Ely. during Richard s reign, while Prince John acted as regent, while Richard was away on the crusades. We learn oft he crusades, one of which Eleanor herself went on with Henry II, not long after their marriage, causing much scandal along the way, and engaging in conflict with her king, due to the scandals around her activities, while witnessing the great events of the crusade across Europe and the battles fought between the Crusaders and Muslims in the Holy Land. I don t think that this book was at all dull or text booky . On the contrary it teaches the reader a great deal about the life and times of Eleanor of Aquitaine, and her husbands and children, while reading smoothly and interestedly like a novel. It marvelously brings the life of Eleanor to vividity, and the times she lived in to life, exploring a wide range of emotions, feelings, colours an sounds, while always making clear what is fact and what is unknown, legend or myth. The author does not hesitate from strongly expressing her own opinions but on the other hand is honest about the grey areas where there is indeed no clear answer. A difficult thing to do for a non fiction history, but one that clearly marks one It is filled with many interesting facts and legends, which the author is clear to distinguish. For example the author refutes the myth that Eleanor had Henry II s mistress Rosamund Clifford, and also does not give credence to Eleanor having presided over the fabled Courts of Love. She also refutes the rumours that Richard I was a homosexual. This narrative is highly readable, an account of a fascinating and strong-willed women and queen.
By the Wrath of God, Queen of England - Some of the most fascinating characters in history hail from the murkier depths of times lacking much documentary sources. Perhaps their interest comes from this patchwork of conflicting sources, or perhaps the temporal distance lends enchantment. It also presents a problem for the biographer, in that the lack of sources makes it difficult to write authoritatively on the subject. If the subject is a mystery then the book can t be much more than conjectures joined up with speculation.Eleanor of Aquitaine occupies an odd place in such a time. As a ruler and heiress in her own right, and as queen of France and later England, her life is much more richly documented than most of her contemporaries. Her movements, lodgings, nutrition and clothing can be conjured from the surviving accounts. Richer detail comes from monastic accounts, surviving letters and a good deal of conjecture based on related sources. Weir has chosen a fascinating subject. She was a woman ruler at a time when women s right to rule was far from established, and in many areas banned by Salic Law. She was forthright, independent and had unorthodox views that capture the essence of the troubadour culture that flourished in her Aquitanian provinces. Eleanor was wife of Louis VII of France, and then Henry II of England. She was mother to Richard the Lion Heart, and of King John. She herself went on crusade, appearing as the Amazonian queen Penthesilea to rally the troops. She lived as everything from Queen to prisoner, and did so over a remarkable 82 years. As a writer of engaging `popular history, Weir has been criticised for dumbing down the subject. In my opinion this is ridiculous. The idea that a book need be impenetrable and complex to be worthy of the appellation `academic strikes me as simply the fulmination of the historical profession seeking to ensure the plebs don t scale the ivory towers. Whilst Weir s book may not push too many boundaries, it does present its subject well, contextualises admirably and is properly referenced with what source material survives. The dearth of source material is shown by Weir quoting in full the surviving letters from Eleanor to the pope at the time of Henry II s capture and imprisonment at the hands of the Holy Roman Emperor. As these are the most extensive extant sources it is not difficult to see why they have been quoted in full. But quotations of this length in a work of popular narrative history do somewhat stall the flow of the read. This is a minor point, and Weir compensates by ensuring most of the narrative is written in an engaging and pacey style. Some might sniff at such a tome, but if you have an interest in history you will be rewarded with a fascinating insight.
Conversations with Eleanor - This is one of very few books which gets my unreserved recommendation- it is brilliant! Weir fills out the few known facts about Eleanor with side-details from all aspects of twelfth life: political, cultural, social, religious, poetic, courtly, fiscal....and far from a dull list of events the facts bounce off each other to create an astonishingly dynamic and real image, with al the contradictions and idiosyncracies of a real person. Weirs book is more than a borrowing and accumulation of facts- the sum is more than the parts and given the parts are dramatic indeed the end result is an utter triumph of historical vision, clearly yet lyrically told.
A waste of paper - How anyone can make Eleanor of Acquitaine dull and present her as conventional (by the standard of Eleanor s contemporaries) is beyond my understanding but Alison Weir succeeds. Worse her history is bad, her analysis weak and her prose turgid. I know she is popular but on the strength of this book it is really difficult to see why, I struggled to read it to the end.