great-grandmother Hildegard, wife of William VIII of Aquitaine, was the illegitimate
daughter of Duke Robert of Burgundy, King Robert’s son. However, the royal couple
paid little attention to this relationship until, after ten years of marriage, it became clear
that Eleanor was not going to produce a son. Their only child so far had been a daughter,
Marie.
By 1147, when Eleanor accompanied her husband on the Second Crusade—and was
rumored to have flirted with her uncle, Raymond of Antioch—Louis began to express
doubts about the legitimacy of their marriage. Although when they stopped in Rome on
the way home, the pope urged them not to be concerned about the degree of their
relationship (and indeed, promised them a son), Louis continued to worry. Finally, in
1152, after the birth of Alix, their second daughter, he divorced Eleanor on the grounds of
consanguinity and shortly thereafter married Constance of Castile.
Louis apparently had not anticipated that Eleanor would herself remarry, but she did
so at once, to Henry, the young count of Anjou and duke of Normandy, who became
Henry II of England (r. 1154–89) just two years later. She took Aquitaine with her to her
new husband, and the duchy remained in English hands until the Hundred Years’ War.
Eleanor and Henry had a son, William, within a year—indicating that Louis’s failure
to have a male heir had not been her fault. Although this son quickly died, Eleanor and
Henry had four more: Henry, Richard (king of England, 1189–99), Geoffroi, and John
(king, 1199–1216). Eleanor retained her title of duchess of Aquitaine even while she was
also queen of England, and when her son John succeeded to the English throne she
personally did homage for Aquitaine to the French king so that John would not have to do
so.
Eleanor seems to have used her position, both as queen of France and as queen of
England, to act as a patron of the arts. Louis and Eleanor contributed to the rebuilding of
Suger’s abbey church of Saint-Denis, often credited with being the first Gothic church,
and Eleanor gave the abbey, by her husband’s hand, a crystal vase of ancient origin. In
England, a whole series of manuscript illuminations, begun after Eleanor married Henry,
are believed to have been influenced by artistic styles from the southwest of France.
Because her grandfather Guilhem IX wrote troubadour lyrics, some scholars have also
thought that Eleanor’s court may have influenced the rise of romances and courtly poetry
in northern France in the mid-twelfth century.
Eleanor was a formidable woman—Henry II found it necessary to keep her
imprisoned for part of their married life—who, as wife of two kings and mother of two
more, strongly influenced the politics of both France and England in the 12th century.
When she died in 1204, she was buried at the Poitevin foundation of Fontevrault, where
Henry and Richard were already buried.
Constance B.Bouchard
[See also: ANJOU (genealogical table); AQUITAINE (genealogical table);
CAPETIAN DYNASTY (genealogical table); FONTEVRAULT; HENRY II; LOUIS
VII; SAINT-DENIS; SUGER]
Suger. Vie de Louis de Gros par Suger suivie de l’Histoire du roi Louis VII, ed. Auguste Molinier.
Paris: Picard, 1887.
Duby, Georges. The Knight, the Lady and the Priest: The Making of Modern Marriage in Medieval
France, trans. Barbara Bray. New York: Pantheon, 1983.
Kibler, William W., ed. Eleanor of Aquitaine: Patron and Politician. Austin: University of Texas
Press, 1976.
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