Eleanor Of Aquitaine – Lindy Grant

The Eagle with the Spread Wings ichard the Poitevin was one of many writers who identified Eleanor as the ‘eagle of the broken covenant’ from the prophesies of Merlin after her revolt against Henry. He also described her as the Aquila bispertita – the bipartite eagle – the eagle who spread her wings over two realms, France and England, and over her own land of Aquitaine and the lands of her husband, Henry II.

Richard the Poitevin called Henry the Rex aquilonis – the king of the north. The king of the north had captured the eagle, after she and her sons revolted against him, and now he held her prisoner in his northern lands, where the people were uncultivated and unknown to her, where she, who had been surrounded by maidens singing sweet music in her own warm lands, was now silenced.1 Richard the Poitevin was a well-travelled and well-connected member of the Cluniac order, but he retired to and wrote from a small priory on the tiny windswept island of Aix just off the coast south of La Rochelle.

Perhaps he felt Eleanor’s isolation only too keenly; his writings suggest he had lost touch with reality. None of his contemporaries wrote about Eleanor as a creature of the south imprisoned by the king of the chill north. But Richard’s hallucinatory vision has influenced many historians.

Eleanor is often seen as a daughter of the south, faced, both as queen of France and as queen of England, with cultures, indeed with versions of the French language, which were alien to the granddaughter of the troubadour Duke William IX of Aquitaine. In fact, she was largely brought up in the north of Aquitaine, in Poitou, surrounded by her mother’s family, who came from the northern borders of Poitou.

She must have spoken the sort of French current in the western Loire area. There would have been no great culture shock when she married the count of adjacent Anjou, or when she married the king of France. But Eleanor was bispertita: she was countess of Poitou and duchess of Aquitaine. She and her family did look, politically and culturally, both north and south. And many cultural historians have speculated on the role that Eleanor might have played in transmitting southern culture to northern courts, for princesses often did act as agents of cultural transmission, as they married from one culture to another.

Once the counts of Poitou became dukes of Aquitaine in the late tenth century, they were bound to concern themselves with southern regions of the kingdom of France. Aquitaine retained the prestige of having been a separate kingdom under the Merovingians and Carolingians, stretching far to the east to include the Auvergne. But it was an elastic spatial concept. The power base of the dukes of Aquitaine was their original county of Poitou, including the Saintonge.

Covering one of the most fascinating yet misunderstood periods in history, the MEDIEVAL LIVES series presents medieval people, concepts and events, drawing on political and social history, philosophy, material culture (art, architecture and archaeology) and the history of science. These books are global and wide-ranging in scope, encompassing both Western and non-Western subjects, and span the fifth to the fifteenth centuries, tracing significant developments from the collapse of the Roman Empire onwards. SERIES EDITOR: Deirdre Jackson Albertus Magnus and the World of Nature Irven M. Resnick and Kenneth F.

Kitchell Jr Alle Thyng Hath Tyme: Time and Medieval Life Gillian Adler and Paul Strohm Andrey Rublev: The Artist and His World Robin Milner-Gulland The Art of Anatomy in Medieval Europe Taylor McCall The Art of Medieval Falconry Yannis Hadjinicolaou Bede and the Theory of Everything Michelle P. Brown Christine de Pizan: Life, Work, Legacy Charlotte Cooper-Davis Eleanor of Aquitaine: Woman, Queen and Legend Lindy Grant Francis of Assisi: His Life, Vision and Companions Michael F.

Cusato Frederick Barbarossa G. A. Loud Geoffrey Chaucer: Unveiling the Merry Bard Mary Flannery Johannes Gutenberg: A Biography in Books Eric Marshall White Marco Polo and His World Sharon Kinoshita Margery Kempe: A Mixed Life Anthony Bale The Medieval Horse Anastasija Ropa Richard the Lionheart: In Life and in Legend Heather Blurton The Teutonic Knights: Rise and Fall of a Religious Corporation Aleksander Pluskowski Thomas Becket and His World Michael Staunton The Troubadours Linda M. Paterson OceanofPDF.com ELEANOR OF AQUITAINE Woman, Queen and Legend LINDY GRANT REAKTION BOOKS OceanofPDF.com For my brother, and in memory of his wife Published by Reaktion Books Ltd 2–4 Sebastian Street London EC1V 0HE, UK www.reaktionbooks.co.uk First published 2025 Copyright © Lindy Grant 2025 All rights reserved EU GPSR Authorised Representative Logos Europe, 9 rue Nicolas Poussin, 17000, La Rochelle, France email: [email protected] No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

No part of this publication may be used or reproduced in any manner for the purpose of training artificial intelligence technologies or systems. Page references in the Photo Acknowledgements and Index match the printed edition of this book Printed and bound in India by Replika Press Pvt. Ltd A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library eISBN 978 1 83639 134 0 OceanofPDF.com 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 CONTENTS Prologue: Meeting Eleanor Queen of France Queen of England Queen Dowager Family and Dynasty Marriage, Sex and Scandal The Eagle with the Spread Wings Riches Prayer Power Epilogue: Finding Eleanor MAPS AND FAMILY TREES REFERENCES SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS PHOTO ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS INDEX OceanofPDF.com Detail of Eleanor from the tomb effigy at Fontevraud Abbey.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: 0f18f7808ea08b4e
• File Extension: .pdf
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• Title: –
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• ISBN: 9781836391340
• Pages: 188
• Language: English (en)

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