Gone Medieval - Joanna: Eleanor of Aquitaine's Fierce Daughter

Episode Date: March 28, 2025

The courageous life of Joanna Plantagenet extends far beyond her mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and her 'brave and heroic' brother Richard the Lionheart. She conquers the throne, escapes from a prison, is shipwrecked, goes on crusade, survives bullying brothers and husbands and essentially waits for no man. As Dr. Catherine Hanley puts it; "you don't become Queen and sit about eating chocolates, there's a job to do".Matt Lewis is joined by Cath to celebrate the adventurous and tumultuous life of Joanna Plantagenet, who's resilience and resourcefulness is astonishing as she navigates political intrigue, personal tragedy, and battles for survival in a male-dominated world. She is a testament to the ways medieval women asserted power and agency in a time of limited control.Gone Medieval is presented by Matt Lewis. It was edited by Amy Haddow, the producer is Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.All music courtesy of Epidemic Sounds.Gone Medieval is a History Hit podcast.Hear Dr. Cath Hanley on Gone Medieval's Matilda: Empress, Queen, Warrior:https://open.spotify.com/episode/3URgqZAWK25RBFbZrE8F40?si=oXtPW4FOQ8eNvQ72vQhmTgFor more on Joanna Plantagenet's family:Eleanor of Aquitaine:https://open.spotify.com/episode/67XsxIAKd8AwctFgFAlkXLRichard the Lionheart:https://open.spotify.com/episode/0vJVuLhSWVzisKBbbNVUqaSign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries

with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world, to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, I'm Matt Lewis. Welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We've got the most intriguing mysteries, the gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research from the Vikings to the printing press, from kings to popes to the crusades. We cross centuries and continents to delve into rebellions, plots and murders to find the stories big and small that tell us how we got here.

Find out who we really were with Gone Medieval. Welcome to this episode of Gone Medieval. I'm Matt Lewis. One king has for a long time been given a prominent position in the annals of medieval history. He's one of the few kings of England after the conquest to have an epithet. More recently, Richard the Lionheart has been the subject of much debate and reassessment. In a manner, my guest may approve of, he's a side character in this episode, which will focus on the life and career of one of his sisters, Joanna. Catherine Hanley's latest book, Lioness Heart, The Life and Times of Joanna Plantagenet, is a lively and thoughtful exploration of Joanna's life. I thoroughly enjoyed it, as I do with

all of Kath's work, so I'm delighted to invite her back to Gone Medieval to introduce us to someone we may not know all that well. Welcome back to Gone Medieval, Kath. Thank you so much for coming back to see us. Thank you. It's great to have you on today. And we're going to talk a bit about your book, which is fantastically titled Lioness Hart.

Who is Lioness Heart? Well, her name is Joanna. Or at least I call her Joanna. Some people call her Joan. It's from the French Jeanne, which can be translated either way. But I've gone for Joanna. She is the youngest daughter of Henry II.

of England and his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine. Now, I think it's fair to say that the sons of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine have tended to hog the limelight in much historical writing about that family. Just a little bit. Yeah, but the sisters led incredibly exciting lives as well, and particularly Joanna, and that's why I decided there needed to be a book on the subject. And quite right, you are too. She has an incredible story to tell us we're hopefully going to get through today.

What do we know about when and where Joanna is born? Rather unusually for a royal daughter, we do know both the month and the year. Chronicles didn't tend to note the birth of daughters as much as they did sons, but one chronicler who was in the middle of narrating a passage about something else just suddenly sort of broke off and went, in October of this year, which was 1165, Queen Eleanor gave birth to a daughter who was called Joanna and then he just stopped and goes back to what he was saying before. So we can place that quite directly, which is nice.

And she spent her very early years in the household of Eleanor of Aquitaine, travelling with her as Eleanor went from France to England and back again. Around about 1170 when she was about five, she and her only younger sibling, who was called John, were left at Fontaro Abbey for their education. So this doesn't mean in any way that they were intended for a life in holy orders. It was just that royal children needed somewhere stable to have a residence and an upbringing and an education while the rest of their family were travelling around. So she spent four years there very peacefully.

And obviously that means she was getting a good education alongside her brother John. Would there have been much difference between the education she received from the one John got? At their very young age, no. They would be learning to read and to pray, to know prayers, literacy. Interestingly, although they learnt to read, they might not have learnt to write because writing was considered to be a manual occupation. So, you know, royal people didn't write their own letters in the same way that they didn't call. their own dinners or saddle their own horses. It was it. They were considered to be different. So they were having this sort of fairly basic education at that age. And when they got to be around, well, for boys, when they got to be around seven or eight, that would be when their paths started taking a different direction.

And boys would go off and have a very sort of martial education where they would learn, you know, horse riding and sword fighting and all that sort of thing, which girls didn't do. And one of the points that you make in the book is, to our mind, the life of particularly a noble, royal, young girl might seem harsh and difficult, the lack of control that they often have. But you also make the point that this is very much what Joanna would have been expecting from her life. Yes, she wouldn't have expected to have any say in how or where or why she was brought up or even in whom she was to marry. You know, you couldn't, your husband, as a royal girl, your husband was just part of the lot you'd drawn in life in the same way that you couldn't choose who your parents were or who your siblings were. You didn't choose who your husband was either. But your job was to make the most of that situation after you'd been putting it. Yeah, and I guess that lack of choice is driven home when you've got a brother like John as well. Nobody's choosing John as a brother.

Actually, one of John's very, very few redeeming features was that he had a bit of a soft spot for Joanna. And I think it's because they were too, they were quite a lot younger. There was only a year between the two of them, but they were quite a lot younger than all the others. So maybe their shared upbringing had something to do with it. I mean, I'm not a fan of John, as you know, Matt, having heard me bang on about the subject quite a few times.

But in this one respect, he does appear to have been very fond of Joanna. So I'll give him that. Oh, interesting. So how is this piece at Fonterville Abbey broken for Joanna? Well, the family ended up at war with itself. And I do mean that literally, rather than metaphorically. We won't go into too much of the background here because this is Joanna's story, not the story of all her brothers.

But following a rebellion by the three older boys in the family, Henry Richard and Jeffrey, supported by Eleanor of Aquitaine, Henry II came out on top and he captured Eleanor Vakritaine and he sent her to England to be imprisoned. And while that was happening, he decided to remove Joanna and John from Fontevro to take them to England as well. So they were then separated. John was sent off to begin his, you know, male type education because he was seven or eight at the time. And Joanna, in some ways, fortunately, actually stayed with Eleanor of Aquitaine for about eight. 18 months. So, I mean, it was imprisonment. It was a comfortable imprisonment. But from Joanna's

point of view, she's basically got her mother all to herself for 18 months, which is no bad thing for a young royal child. Yeah, I mean, there are worse things than to learn the necessary arts of your trade from someone like Eleanor of Aquitaine, I guess. Well, yes, if you want to learn about, you know, how to be a queen and how to have authority as a woman in a male dominated society. You could certainly have worse role models, couldn't you? Yeah, absolutely. And much like her mother, you know, I often talk about Ellen Ravakritaine living kind of three spectacular medieval lives. And Joan kind of goes on the same sort of journey throughout her life in different capacities. And the first of those will see her end up as Queen of Sicily.

How does she end up in the Mediterranean on this island in Sicily? Okay, so the marriage arrangements obviously were nothing to do with her. They were made between her father, Henry II, and her prospective husband, King William II of Sicily. Now, an alliance between those two families suited both of them. Sicily was quite a small realm. So it's not just the island that we call Sicily now. It was also the southern half of mainland Italy, but it's still relatively small. It was in a very pivotal position, particularly if you were from Western Europe and you wanted to go to the Holy Land because it was, you know, there in the Mediterranean.

Now, what William got out of it was an alliance with one of the most powerful kings in Western Europe, which is great. What Henry got out of it was an alliance with the king of a kingdom where he's going to want to stop over and is going to be strategically important during the Crusade he's planning. So it suits both of them brilliantly. So it only remained for Henry to, you know, tell Joanna about it, which he did in the spring of 1176, which if you do your maths, you'll work out. She was 10 at the time. And we don't know what she felt about this because nobody bothered to write it down. But she had, you know, no choice.

She had no choice in the say of her husband, but she also had no power of refusal. She couldn't say no. I think in the book I actually wrote the sentence, one did not argue with Henry the second in such circumstances. And I thought, wow, if there's a sentence you could ever use over and over again. So she was told that that was who she was going to marry. And in the autumn of that year, she was shipped off to Sicily at an age where if she lived in England now, she would still be in primary school.

Yeah, it is mind-blowing to think of it in those terms often, isn't it? And what do we know about her relationship then with William? Presumably he's an older man. How does he treat her when she arrives? How is she integrated into Sicilian royal life? Okay, well, fortunately for her, the evidence that we can gather on that subject is quite favourable. So to start with, he was 12 years older than her. On the day they got married, she was 11 and he was 23, which isn't ideal, but it was better than it could have been.

Now he was very keen to have her there because of this alliance with Henry II. So from a political point of view, he was always going to treat her with respect. Because if he disrespects Joanna, he's disrespecting Henry II. That's not a great idea. So politically, she was always going to be secure. But we do also have some evidence that they did form, you know, personal bonds. They might be going a bit far to actually say love. But there was certainly respect.

there was certainly affection. When she was still very young, he looked after her. He ensured that she had an education. He engaged tutors for her. He got his own mother, who lived with him, to help look after her. There was no question, incidentally, of any kind of, you know, sexual relationship at this age. Brides were sent away at that age. But in the late 12th century, they did have a much more sort of humane idea of what was a suitable age to begin marriage.

relations. So they probably didn't begin cohabiting until she was about 16, which is, of course, still very young now, but in the terms of a medieval royal marriage, it's quite reasonable. So yeah, he looked after her. And one of the other pieces of evidence we have is that their marriage survived and their relationship remained strong, despite the fact that they never had any children. Now, not having children is obviously a disaster for a royal marriage. And particularly so in William's case, he'd never been married before. He had no other children. He's also got no surviving brothers by this stage.

He's got no surviving uncles and he's got no cousins. So there's only one other member of the royal family still living, which is his aunt, Constance. So the fact that their marriage survived and that he didn't start trying to make excuses to get rid of Joanna when they failed to produce a child in 10, 11 years of marriage, I think is good evidence for the fact that, yes, that the political situation was still the same. He didn't want to offend Henry II. But also, I do think that's evidence that their personal relationship must have been quite a good one. Yeah, it is striking because you think, again,

go back to Eleanor of Aquitaine, that's precisely why Louis the 7th of France had set her aside because he needed a son and one of the critical roles of the royal marriage is to provide a son and if you're not doing it, it's often a reason to try and annul the marriage. So it's striking that they stay together.

Do we see much sign of Joanna being involved in the government of Sicily? Is she politically active? Not as much as she could have been because she doesn't appear in many sort of official documents. But the role of a queen, you know, it could be quite ambiguous.

You could wield quite a lot of authority and power in an informal way without necessarily being on those formal documents. You know, one of the great duties of the Queen was intercession. So if a king was displeased with one of his vassals, that vassal might go to the Queen and say, oh, please, you know, could you plead on my behalf? And obviously the Queen is the person who has the most personal access to the king. So it's possible that she was involved in, you know, private conversations about things and having some influence.

But there's no particular sign that she did that in a very, very official way. Yeah. And so then after 10 years or so of what seems like a successful marriage, albeit with the absence of a son, William passes away. What happens to Joanna when her husband is gone? Well, this was a, it was a disaster for her, both personally and politically. First, she's lost the man that she's been married to for more than half of her life. So Joanna's still only 24 at this stage, because William was only in his 30s when he died. And it also leaves her in a very, very precarious position.

Now, being the widow of a king can put you in a very different situation. If the next king is your son, you're kind of okay most of the time, especially if he's young and you might be his regent or you might be involved in his upbringing. You've still got a place at court. You are the dowager queen. You might be the queen mother. That's fine. But to be the widow of a king when the next monarch is not your child leaves you at a bit of a loose end. And this was not helped by the fact that there were two claimants.

to the throne of Sicily. So obviously William had no son, no brothers. William had named as his heir his aunt, Constance. Now, I say aunt. She was his aunt, but she's actually younger than him, because it's a long story. And Joanna declared her support for Constance because that was what William had wanted. Now, the nobles of Sicily did actually, they didn't have a problem per se with the concept of a female ruler. That was not what they were complaining. about. Their problem was that Constance was married to a chat called Henry of Hoendstalfen, who was the heir to what we were now called the Holy Roman Empire. He was Frederick Barbarossa's son. And the Sicilian nobles were worried that if Henry became king in right of his wife, as he would,

that basically Sicily would sort of get swallowed up into this massive empire. So they looked around them and another candidate put himself forward who was called Tancred. Now, Tancred was descended from the kings of Sicily, but he was himself illegitimate. He and William II were cousins because their fathers had been brothers to each other, but Tancred was illegitimate. So technically he had no claim to the throne. However, he was an experienced military leader, and he had the advantage of being on the spot in Sicily, while Constance and Henry were at this point in Germany. So he sort of swept through

in a campaign that was quite ruthless. You know, one or two nobleman that stood up to him were captured and summarily executed. And he swept into the capital Palermo and he actually had himself crowned King of Sicily within about eight weeks of William's death. And one of the thinks that he did was not merely to chuck Joanna out of her positions, but to confiscate all of her dower lands and incomes, and he actually threw her in prison. Wow, so that's a bit of a turnaround. And I was struck when I was reading the book about whether this is a moment in which Joanna has a degree of agency. She is confidently proclaiming her support for Constance, but is she also being naive and making a mistake because she throws her lot in with the side that

ultimately loses the side that isn't on the spot against Tancred. So is she showing some agency and trying to fulfil William's wishes? Is she being a little bit politically naive or is it maybe both? It's a little bit of both. You know, there was always this dilemma between do I stand up for what I think is right or do I stand up for the person who I think is going to be on the winning side, regardless of whether I think they're right or not. And yeah, it's difficult to say whether she genuinely thought that Constance and Henry were going to win this, or whether she was sticking up for Constance just because she felt it was right, even though she knew it was going to end badly for herself.

She probably didn't think it was going to end as badly as it did. I mean, realistically, if Tancred had come in and taken the throne, you might have expected him to just sort of say, go and retire quietly to your Dower lands and live quietly and don't get in my way, which might have been a sort of acceptable compromise. She could have remained in the Kingdom of Sicily because the Dower that William II had allocated to was very generous. She could have lived in quite a decent style.

But he didn't. He threw her in prison. Now this is where if she'd been a member of pretty much any other family in Western Europe, This would have been a really, really short book because it would have said, and she was in prison for the rest of her life, the end. But the payoff for her being this kind of pawn in her family's plans, right? She's been sent to Sicily. She's had no choice about it, but she's made a good life and she's done very well. The payoff for her having done that duty is that her family, her birth family,

still has a duty towards her. And so by this stage, Henry II has died and the King of England is Joanna's brother Richard, who I'm sure as we all know, quite a bellicose chap, wasn't going to stand for any of this nonsense about having his family disrespected, also happened to be planning to go on crusade and head in that direction anyway.

And so he's now got a dual motive to turn up in Sicily. And frankly, if you're going to be, you are a medieval widowed queen locked in a tower and being perilously close to being a damsel in distress, he is kind of the sort of person you want to see hoving over the horizon coming to the rescue. Yeah, it kind of felt like at this point, this is where maybe Tancred has made the mistake and the misjudgment in going so far as imprisoning Joanna. I mean, I'd actually written my question, mainly just said that I could say this to you and watch you get annoyed.

But I'd written, how does the heroic and noble Richard the first rescue, his sister. Yes. Yes, you knew that would irritate me. I'm not for anyone listening who's never heard to me talk before. I'm actually not a huge fan of Richard the Lionheart. So in this instance, my excuse is he actually, he did turn up in Sicily. And he did rescue him, but that was not his main purpose in going there.

Partly he was on his way to a crusade anyway. And partly he needed to save face. It was a stain on his own honour that somebody else could be holding his sister captive because it made him look powerless. And yeah, Tancred was a bully and Richard Linerd was an even bigger bully. He turned up in Sicily in September 1190, by which time, so Joanna's been in prison seven or eight months by this stage. And he turns up on Sicily and says, right, let my sister go.

and Tancred, recognising the reality of the situation, let Joanna go. And she was with Richard within a week of him landing. But, of course, it wasn't just the question of the person of his sister. There was the question of all her money. Tankard probably thought if he let Joanna go, everything would be fine and they would all sail away. But it didn't happen. Richard would just keep going, heading off to the Holy Land and pass three, and that'll be the end of that. Yeah, yeah, big mistake, big, huge.

So Richard said, okay, well, what about all my sister's lands, incomes, money, all that kind of thing, we want those back as well. And Tancred tried to stall on this question, which also turned out to be a mistake because Richard then allowed his troops to sack the city of Messina and a lot of innocent civilians suffered. So Tancred finally realised what he was up against and agreed to compromise. but what he did was instead of saying, well, okay, Joanna can have these lands that she was supposed to have,

because he knew that if he said Joanna could have those lands, they would effectively be in Richard's hands, and he doesn't want Richard having a long-term presence in his kingdom. So he said, well, shall we swap this for cash instead? So Richard, with no reference to Joanna, said, yes, that's fine, we'll have it all in cash instead of the lands and the incomes. Tankran handed over the cash, and then Richard pocketed the lot. and Joanna never saw a penny of it. So tell me again, Matt, how Richard is noble and heroic. He's rescued his sister, that was all I asked.

But she's just gone out of the frying pan and into the fire, hasn't she? She's gone from being tankard's prisoner to Richards. And I was going to say, again, it drives home when we think about her agency. She has this kind of power in her wider family connections that Richard is obliged to come and rescue her, but also she has no say in what happens again after that rescuing. he takes all of her money, puts her in his baggage train like a suitcase, and carries on his journey. That's exactly what he does.

And she's got absolutely no choice because, again, you know, being a widowed queen who's very rich is different from being a widowed queen who's completely penniless. What else is she going to do? She's got nothing else to live on. So, yeah, she has to go with him as he heads to the east. And then her next adventure starts. Yeah. And it doesn't take very long to get there either, does it? So how then does Joanna end up stranded now off the shores of Cyprus?

So she said she's very much going frying pan to the fire. Yes. So Richard and Joanna set off with the crusading fleet, which is about 200 ships. But they are on different ships. And this is an important point. So they'd only been out of Sicily about two days when a huge storm arose in the Mediterranean. and it went on for days and it scattered the whole fleet

to different corners of the Mediterranean. And Joanna's ship, when the winds finally died down and they realised that they were still alive, found itself off in sight of land, which turned out to be the island of Cyprus. There were only her ship and three others there at the time. There was no sight of any of the others.

So at this point she's got absolutely no idea where the rich is even still alive. And on her ship with her is Princess Berengaria of Navarre, who is at this stage betrothed to Richard, but not married to him. So she's with Joanna, because Joanna is acting as a kind of chaperone, as a widowed queen. And they have a few sort of lower-ranking officials on their ship, but there's no royal power, Richard's not there,

his second in command, you know, isn't there. So although Joanna is obviously not in charge of sailing the ship, she is in charge of the sort of politics of what's going on. And the first thing that happens is that the other three ships that are also off Cyprus were wrecked, possibly accidentally, possibly even deliberately. And those ships were then looted and everything in them stolen and the survivors of the crews and the troops were taken off to imprisonment. So this is a very dangerous point for Joanna to be in. She doesn't know what to do. Are they going to get attacked as well? Is Richard alive or dead?

Is he going to come to the rescue? She can't bank on that. She's got to do something herself. And so the ruler of the island of Cyprus is a chat called Isaac Comnenos. And he sent messengers to the ship. And to start with, he was very nicie, nicie. Oh, dear, dear queens, you know, because he knew who was on board. Do come ashore onto my island and I'll lodge you in my palace and look after you.

And it all sounds a bit spider and fly to me. And Joanna wasn't fooled. And she entered into negotiations. And what's really interesting is we do have a contemporary account of what's going on here from somebody who's actually on the ship. And he's clear that it was Joanna that was doing all this negotiating, not any of the men on the ship. So she used her, you know, her decades' worth of experience of being a queen and intercessor. And it's a very fine line to walk on the one hand. She doesn't want to agree to land.

But on the other hand, she doesn't want to antagonise Isaac to the extent that they're going to attack the ship because they're one ship. And this felt like all of a sudden where even though, as you said, she's still in her mid-20s, she's able to draw on a decade or more of experience of being a. Queen of working alongside William and maybe also some of that experience at the hands of Tancred in the aftermath of William's death to balance her position really, really finely. So we see her actually, it feels like she's acting quite skillfully here. Yeah, yeah. I mean, being a queen was a real skill. You don't just get married to a king and then sit around eating chocolates, you know, there's a job to do. And, you know, diplomacy is a very big part of a queen.

She's job description. And she actually managed to hold Isaac off for an entire fortnight, which I think is quite impressive under the circumstances. A long time sitting on a ship as well. It is. It is because we also don't know, you know, and we do know that he'd given orders that their ship was not to be supplied with fresh water, which is obviously quite important. So, you know, it was just a very courageous thing to do. And then at the end of a fortnight, ships come into view over the horizon. Is it the heroic and noble Richard coming to save his sister again? Well, it's the heroic and noble Richard wondering what the heck's happened to the rest of his crusading fleet, certainly.

So he arrives. He's not best pleased that his ships have been wrecked. He leads a party ashore to very violently attempt to get his men back. that have been captured and imprisoned. And then just as a sort of addendum, he decides he's going to conquer the whole island of Cyprus while he's there. Why not? Why not? Nothing else to do on a Friday. To take all its money and riches for his crusade.

And just to say, you know, this is quite unconscionable. Cyprus is a Christian island. So this isn't part of his crusade. He just, you know, so Joanna can't do anything at all about this. She is once Richard's there and he's, you know, he's taken over and all rest of it, they do actually get off the ship, which they must have been quite relieved to do. And, yeah, then she and Berengaria are lodged while Richard goes on a wholesale conquest of the island. And in, in just as we're talking about him being heroic and noble, the way in which

he finally persuades Isaac to surrender is that he captures Isaac's 10-year-old daughter and threatens her. It's got no compunction about doing that. And Isaac, as soon as he knows that his little girl is in Richard's hands, just surrenders unconditionally. It's the one moment in which Isaac seems like a reasonable, almost nice guy in that, you know, he's willing to surrender to protect his daughter. And then you get at that moment where Richard, Isaac begs not to be thrown in irons. So Richard agrees to that and then throws him in silver chains instead. Yeah, yeah, very noble, very heroic.

But, yeah, it's, I mean, Isaac Comenos is another one of these. It's not an entirely pleasant character, but he does appear to have loved his daughter. And the contemporary accounts all, you know, say how upset he was. And they were allowed just one moment together after this before they were separated forever. There's an account of it that just says, you know, he was crying and he kissed her 100 times because she was the most precious thing in his life. And then they were separated and he was thrown into his silver chains. and she was put into Joanna and Berengaria's care.

Incidentally, we don't know her name. This little girl went on, she's either just called the daughter of Isaac Komnenos, or she's sometimes called the damsel of Cyprus, which is what I've chosen to call her in my book. She had an amazing life. You know, she's taken hostage, she travels, she goes to the Holy Land,

she goes back to Europe, she gets married a couple of times. Later on, she goes back to the east to try and claim her rights. And in all that time, not one single chronicler thought to mention what her name was. Just such a minor detail. Yeah. Yeah. Who cares? Who cares? The whole point, her major point is that she is the daughter of Isaac. That's her role. It doesn't effectively to them, doesn't matter what her name is or what she thinks about anything. Yeah. And so then when Richard has finished on Cyprus, Joanna is sort of dragged along, as he said, like his baggage, train, but her Berengaria and the damsel of Cyprus are now dragged along for the next stage of their journey, which is going to take them to the Holy Land. Yes, it certainly is, and many adventures awaited Joanna there as well. So with Joanna's arrival in the Holy Land,

one of the things I'm quite interested in is, is how much physical danger is she in? Where is she in the Holy Land? How close is she getting to physical peril being dragged around by her brother, who's clearly, you know, fighting lots of battles everywhere? Okay. So, They arrive in the Holy Land at the port city of Acre, which is the scene already of a siege. This siege has already been going on for about 18 months. So the city of Acre is being held by the Muslims. It's being besieged by the Crusaders. But the Crusaders are themselves threatened by the rest of Saladin's army, which is in the hills behind them.

So it is quite a perilous place to be. So when they arrive, Joanna, along with everybody else, is taken along to the Crusader's siege camp. Now, when I say siege camp, please don't imagine a few scattered tents, right? We're talking about something the size of a large town, or a medium-sized town at least, with thousands of people in it. And it's got its own fortifications, actually. It's got its own walls and its own gate and its own gatehouse. So it's almost like being shut in a little fortification themselves.

And from Joanna's point of view, she will basically have to stay in there until the city of Acre either falls or the crusaders give up and go away because it's not safe to leave that compound. So there is danger, but there is also, to be honest, boredom looking at her. Yeah, it's an interesting start to her experiences in the Holy Land, isn't it? She's penned in there in quite a dangerous location. You know, they could be attacked by the rest of Saladin's army at any moment, but they're also just there in this grind of a siege that just goes on and on. You can't go anywhere. You can't do anything.

You have no control over when this is going to end or anything at all. She's just left there twiddling her thumbs, I guess. Yes, yeah, or perhaps not quite twiddling her thumbs. I mean, obviously she hasn't got the duties of the queen, you know, that she had in Sicily. she has got companions. We do know that she's got Beringaria with her and the Damsle of Cyprus, and we do know that they had some female attendants. And there were also a fair number of other women in the siege camp because a crusade's not just a military endeavour. It's a pilgrimage as well. And so some women from Western Europe had come out as well. But yeah, I mean, they are limited.

They can talk to each other. You know, a bit of literature. There's maybe some churchmen to talk to. they were probably involved in tending to any wounded or suitably high ranking wounded people, that kind of thing. But yeah, very, very confined. Quite, you know, they didn't talk about mental health

in inverted commas in the 12th century, but it's, you know, it wasn't a situation that could have been much good for your mental health, I'm sure. Yeah. And one of the most striking episodes while she's in the Holy Land, and it's striking in itself,

but her reaction to it is interesting too, as you pick apart a little bit in the book, is the idea that she gets promised by Richard or offered by Richard in marriage to Saladin's brother as a way of forming peace. It doesn't go down too well, does it? No, I mean, this is absolutely extraordinary episode. It sounds like it's made up,

but we're fairly certain it wasn't because we have accounts written by both Christian and Muslim chronicers who are actually in the negotiating party, negotiating this supposed alliance. So it clearly something happened. So the Crusaders succeeded in taking Acre, the port city, and also Jaffa, which is a bit further south, but also on the coast. But it wasn't all that long before Richard realized that he wasn't going to be able to make any inroads on Jerusalem,

which was the main point. But the thing is, he knows he's realistic enough to know that he's not going to take Jerusalem, but equally he doesn't just want to sail away without making any attempt because it will look like his crusade has failed. So he comes up with this idea because Saladin's getting a bit fed up with the war by now as well, that they could negotiate. Now, contrary to many historical novels,

Saladin and Richard never actually met each other. But Saladin sent his brother and Abel Lieutenant to meet with Richard. So this is a chat called, he's called Allardiel. He's also sometimes known in Western Texas, Safodin. And, yeah, Richard just makes him this extraordinary offer, well, you know, well, how about you marrying my sister? With the idea being that Richard will give to the couple all of the bits of the Holy Land, the sort of strip down the coast that he's in charge of, Saladin will hand over the bits

that he's in control of, and this couple will live in Jerusalem and, you know, everything will be sunshine and roses. There were a few problems with this. Firstly, Saladin probably rightly thought that the offer was a bit of a hoax. Secondly, Aladil was already married. He may have had three or four wives actually because he had at least 20 children by this stage. And the other main point is that Richard didn't really think to ask Joanna about this before it happened. Why would you?

I mean, who needs her input in this? matter, because presumably she's going to be required to convert to Islam to follow her husband's religion. Well, this is why the situation is just so, you know, unbelievable in it would just never have worked, because basically each side would have expected the other to convert, which was not going to happen. But yes, the danger was more to Joanna, because of course, Christianity, Islam, both at the time fairly patriarchal religions. So although each would expect the other to convert. The danger was much greater that Joanna as the woman would be expected to convert to marry Al-A-Dil. And this is just a hideous thing for Richard to threaten his sister with,

even if, you know, even if he wasn't serious. Okay, so stepping back a minute, you know, these days to reject marriage to somebody simply because of the religion that they belong to is, you know, it would be considered a very different thing. But we have to look at this in the context of the 12th century. Joanna has been brought up in the Christian church and basically been told all her life that other religions are evil and that if she leaves the Christian religion, she'll become an apostate, she'll be excommunicated, she'll go to hell. You know, this is a scary thing. And it's a very, even if Richard wasn't serious, it's a dreadful thing for him to do to his sister. Now, I know we've been bantering back and forwards a bit about Richard being heroic and noble and all the rest of it. Now, he was a brilliant warrior and military commander.

I am not in any way trying to dispute that. I mean, what I think I am trying to say is that it's perfectly possible to be a brilliant military commander while still being a complete get to the women in your family. And I think we do need to look at both of those facets of Richard's character, especially when we're looking at the story from Joanna's point of view. I mean, fortunately, from the evidence that we've got, we can see that she wasn't so much terrified as furious.

I was going to ask about her reaction because quite often, we've talked earlier about as a child she has no say in who she's going to marry. She will do what at that time her father expected her to do. But here we see a slightly different reaction from her. Yeah, she's absolutely furious that he could be treating her in this way and says that under no circumstances is she going to go through with this marriage and he can't make her. and she's picked her battle quite well here.

I mean, standing up to Rich the Lionheart and telling him no to his face was probably quite an intimidating thing to do. But of course, she's picked her battle well because she'll have the church on her side. She can say no to him because she knows that if she goes to the bishops and archbishops who are in the host

and, you know, even to the Pope, if necessary, and says my brother is trying to make me leave my religion and marry a Muslim and I don't want to, that in that circumstance they would back her, not him. She's recognised when an argument is going to work and when it's not going to work. And in this case, it does because the whole question gets dropped. And there's the whole question, I guess, of whether Richard expected her to react that way. And as you said, Saladin may be suspected this was a little bit of a hoax. He knew no one was ever going to go for it, perhaps least of all, Joanna, who would probably be required to convert to Islam and be left behind in the Holy Land so that he could almost say, well, you know, I've offered, I've tried, but nobody will take me up on it.

Yes, yes, it may have been that this was all just, you know, a ruse and nobody was serious about it. But as I say, still, well, the thing is, how does Joanna know? I mean, her brother's quite erratic. He's already at this stage taken two thousand, six. 700 prisoners out of Aker and had them all massacred on a plane outside Aker. And she might not have thought he was serious about that until he actually did it. So, you know, even if she suspected he wasn't serious, there must have been at the back of her mind a sort of little question going, really? Is he really going to try and make me do this? So her resistance to it was, to me, genuine. Because there was to her, there must have been a

genuine prospect that this was going to happen. And it was quite. brave of her to stand up to him. And it's an interesting insight into her understanding of her power and her agency in that moment, isn't it, that she felt able to say to her brother the king, absolutely not. Yeah, she's not a little girl anymore. She's a widowed, dowered, your queen, and in her mind she has right, religious right, on her side, and she's confident in being able to express that opinion. Yeah. How long then does Joanna spend in the Holy Land and and when does she end up leaving there? Yeah, she was in the Holy Land for about 16 months.

So she was there from June 1191 to September 1192. So by the end of towards the end of 1192, you know, it was becoming quite clear that this war was not going to be fought to an end. So a truce was declared without the marriage. because Richard really needed to get back to England by this stage because he'd been receiving some quite alarming reports about what his brother John was getting up to while he was away. So they all sailed off.

And again, Richard and the Queen's, Joanna Berengaria, the dams all still together, went in separate ships. And Joanna's ship landed as expected in Apulia, which is the sort of heel bit of mainland Italy. and they waited for Richard Schip to appear and it didn't. And it continued to... Yes, they waited and they waited and it continued not appear. And then Joanna realised she had to do something about this,

Apulia was in the... Although on mainland Italy, it was actually part of the Kingdom of Sicily, ruled by her friend, Tancred. And she decided she didn't want to stay there very long. So it does seem to be fairly clear that it was she who took the initiative in the party and decided that they would make their way to Rome and they would wait there for news of Richard. So this is a very sensible idea.

Partly when they're in Rome, they'll be under the personal protection of the Pope because they're returning crusaders, so that's pretty safe. And secondly, of course, Rome is this big, big hub of communications and travellers. So if any news about what's happened to Richard is going to appear anywhere, it's going to appear in Rome.

So she and her party went to Rome and they were there when they found out that Richard's ship had been blown off course and that he'd, after various adventures, he'd been captured and was currently imprisoned by the Holy Roman Emperor. And then it's mainly kind of her mom that springs into action, isn't it? It's Eleanor of Aquitaine who begins raising the ransom to get Richard set free and goes to sort of recover him. But it's also roundabout this time that Joanna maybe first comes. into contact with Raymond the 6th, the Count of Toulouse, who she will end up marrying. What do we know about how they met and how they came to be married?

Okay, so when they found out that Richard was in captivity, Joanna realised there wasn't much point hanging around in Rome, because as far as they knew at the time, this captivity was going to be very long term or even permanent. So the best thing for her to do was to get her party back to safety. And safety in this instance is either England or Aquitaine, where a mother is. Never mess with Eleanor of Aquitaine, by the way, would be my advice to anyone traveling to the 12th century. Don't kidnap her son.

Sound advice. Don't offend her. Now, one of the things we also know about Joanna, unusually, a very personal thing, is that she got really, really seasick. We actually know this because when she was little and she was on her way to Sicily, she was so seasick, poor little thing, all the way, that they actually had to stop travelling. by ship and travel overland. And it was actually noted, you know, she was so ill that the chroniclers even took notice of this small girl and said, oh, she was so seasick, this had to happen.

So on her way home from Rome back to Aquitaine, they didn't even attempt to get on a ship. They went overland. And they were accompanied by a cardinal, who the Pope sent with them, and then accompanied by different sort of people as they crossed each, you know, lands under the rule of different rulers. So when they got to the border between the Empire and France and crossed into Toulouse, they were accompanied all the way across Toulouse by Raymond. He was later Raymond the 6th. At this stage, he's the heir because his father, Raymond V.

Don't get me started on French naming patterns. His father was still alive, but his father was quite elderly. He was sort of in his 60s. So Raymond the 6th, quite a personable man by all accounts, about 10 years older than Joanna, known as a very cultured man. You know, his court was a scene of, you know, there were poets and writers and artists and things like that. And he accompanied them all the way across Toulouse and to the border with Aquitaine. So they were in his close company for two, three weeks.

And later, just to sort of cut a story short, because this is Joanna's story, not Richards. Richard was released. He came back to Europe. He sorted out things in England. and then he could turn his mind back to Joanna and Aquitaine. The Counts of Toulouse and the Dukes of Aquitaine had been in dispute for about 100 years. Okay, and I'm not going to go into all the details,

but to cut a very long story short, 100 years ago, there had been two rival claimants to the county of Toulouse. Raymond, who is by now Raymond the 6th, was descending from one claimant, and Eleanor of Aquitaine and Richard and Joanna were descended from the county. the other claimant. Richard, by this stage, got quite a lot on his plate. He's the King of England and the Duke of Normandy and the Count of Anjou and everything.

Hasn't got any time to pursue the Toulousean question, but equally to say, face doesn't want to give it up. So everybody thinks it would be a really good idea if Joanna married Raymond and then the two lines would meet and their children would be descended from both lines and it would all be lovely. and this is a really interesting episode because the way the chroniclers all portray it is similar to previous things

where Richard decided, Richard did this, Richard decided he would offer his sister Joanna and he told her about it. But actually, I think there might have been a little bit more to it than that. I mean, certainly Joanna was much more enthusiastic about this proposal than she was about the ones to marry Al Aal A deal. that's not in question.

But it may even be that she kind of, the idea in Richard's head in the first place, you know, Raymond, you know, she might have quite liked him.

And she's also at this stage probably a bit sick of travelling and to be married to a new husband who is in southern France and only just near Aquitaine and her mother and all the rest of it

might also have been quite attractive. So it is just possible that this was actually her initiative. Just to him. of a holiday romance in the south of France that she fancy going back to. Yeah, yeah. But for all of that, it seems like the marriage didn't end up working out.

What happens between Joanna and Raymond in the end? First off, Raymond didn't have a particularly good reputation for treating the women in his life brilliantly. He'd already been married twice. And his second wife is actually still alive. She was in a convent. She'd had, you know, so fed up with him. that she decided to take holy orders. So, yeah, to start with, the marriage was great.

You know, they got married and Joanna gave birth to a son and heir precisely nine months after the wedding. So this was really good for her. It was good for Raymond because he didn't have a son from either of his two previous marriages. And it was also really, really good for Joanna because she'd had to endure these sort of accusations of barrenness in her first marriage.

So, you know, to get pregnant straight away and to give birth to a son straight away was really good for sort of her reputation and her well-being. And then she did it again. She had a daughter only 12 months afterwards. But there was a lot of other stuff going on. Firstly, there was Raymond's personal infidelity in the same year that his and Joanna's daughter was born, a mistress of his gave birth to an illegitimate son, which is kind of proof, you know, that he wasn't being faithful. faithful to Joanna. And there was also an awful lot going on in terms of catharism. Now, again, this is a huge subject that we won't get into too much. But it was a heresy. So a heresy means that the people who were cathars were still Christians and still claiming to be Christians. It's just that they believed in things that were different from what the Orthodox Christian

Church believed. And again, Joanna, as we know, was a sort of faithful daughter of the established church, and she didn't like this. Raymond, on the other hand, was a bit more sympathetic. Nobody ever accused him of actually being a Cathar, but he was accused of being far too sympathetic to them. Cathar adjacent. Yes, Cathar adjacent.

I like that. I must get that in something. And so this was another way in which they probably disagreed. And we do have some very, very concrete evidence of marital problems, which is that Raymond officially cut off all financial support to Joanna, which means she couldn't pay her servants or, you know, or anything. It was quite a serious thing to do. And then she discovered that she was pregnant again for a third time.

within only two and a bit years of marriage. And she took what was in the context of the time, a really, really momentous decision, which was that she would leave him. Wow. I mean, not something you do lightly in the 12th century, just walk out on your husband, especially when he's a count.

Yeah, bad marriages abounded, but in most cases the wife was just expected to get up with it. And it was, of course, only that she had these resources to fall back on, you know, her mother and her brother. Otherwise, it would have been a lot more difficult, but it was still quite a momentous thing to do, not least because it meant she wouldn't ever see her children again because there was no question of her being able to take them with her.

They belonged in law to Raymond. But yep, she took her opportunity in March of 1199. So at this point, Raymond was off in Provence, which was on the eastern side of Toulouse. And Joanna heard of a rebellion at a castle, one of Raymond's castles, which was towards the western side of Toulouse. So she wrote to put down this rebellion. And incidentally, that's an entirely acceptable thing to do.

You know, we often think women didn't take a lot of part in warfare, but if the counter Toulouse isn't able to ride with troops to put down a rebellion against his authority because he's away, that job falls to the countess. There was a perfectly acceptable thing to do. So she rode there. This rebellion was also to do with catharism. The people in the castle were cathars.

Unfortunately, when she got there, she found out that some of the troops that she brought with her were slightly more cathar adjacent than she had thought they were. And it all went a bit wrong. You know, she nearly got trapped and she nearly got burnt.

there was a fire and, you know, her own troops are rebelling against her. And at that point, she just decided that, you know, this is the last straw. So instead of heading back to the capital of Toulouse, she went the other way and fled over the border into Aquitaine. To go and find Mom. Yeah.

And, yes, she went northwards towards Poutou, and she arrived there to find that Richard was dead, very recently dead. Yeah. which I guess puts a whole other problem at her door. She's just left her husband partly to rely on her brother to protect her to find out that her brother is dead and she's walking into a bit of political chaos, I guess. How does that play out for Joanna?

Well, she still thankfully got her mother who is in charge of Aquitaine. Because of course, Eleanor is the Duchess of Aquitaine in her own right. So although Richard was ruling it, his death doesn't sort of cause chaos. there because it just passes back to Ellenor and nobody is going to question her authority. And interestingly, Joanna now finds an ally in Little Brother John. Now, we mentioned earlier that they were together at Fontervo Abbey in their early childhood. And one of John's very few redeeming features is that he seems to have had a bit of a soft spot for Joanna.

So he, to start with, is in dispute with Arthur of Brittany over who's going to be King of England and Duke of Normandy and all the rest of it, which we won't get into here. But he is supported by Eleanor. He's declared and crowned the King of England. So he's basically won. And one of the things that he does is he financially looks after Joanna. And the way that they arrange this is that you'll remember earlier

that back on Sicily, Tancred offered. the equivalent of Joanna's dower in cash, which Richard took and never gave back. And so John agrees, and we have charters in which he says this, that he will give his most beloved sister, Joanna, a large cash sum in lieu of the dollar money that Richard took off her 10 years before. Which is quite an interesting thing, isn't it? Because we think of Richard being the great guy and John being the absolute nightmare, Richard is the one who's stolen the money from his sister

and John is giving back the money that his brother Richard pinched. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm not in any way trying to make John out as a hero generally, but in this particular instance, he did see, and, you know, he liked his sister. Perhaps there was pressure being brought bare by his mother as well. We don't know. You know, we've only got the charters and we know what they say.

We don't know what the discussions were behind them. But, I mean, yeah, that's pretty solid evidence that he was willing to say, okay, a wrong has been done. done to my sister and I write it. The problem is it was all a bit late for Joanna by then because she was quite seriously ill. So all this time she's been putting down rebellions and nearly being attacked by her own men and having to take the arduous journey into Aquitaine. Of course, she's been pregnant. And travelling, you know, was no light undertaking at the time.

The only way she can travel these hundreds of miles, she's either got to ride on a horse or she's got to sit in a wagon jolting over the roads or a horse litter and added to, you know, the stress that she must have been feeling. She was really quite ill. And we know that everybody recognised this because in the text of the charter in which John gives her this money, it's quite sad. It says, I'm giving this money to my sister

so that she can use it to bequeath to whoever she likes. So it's quite clear that actually what she's going to do with this money is make a will. Because she's not all that long until she's going to go into labour. And she must have been so weak or so ill that they recognise she was very, very unlikely to survive it. So it's kind but also sad. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, she doesn't survive that labour, does she? That's how Joanna ends up passing away.

No, no. she had one last go at asserting her independence from Raymond, even very, very late in her life, which was that even though she was married and pregnant, she requested to take holy orders as a nun at Fontreau. You know, I think she knew she was ill and she just wanted to go to a place that she recognised as home, somewhere she'd been looked after when she was little.

And that's, you know, a decision like that was sort of slightly above the, pay grade of the abbess of Fontravo. But fortunately, the Archbishop of Canterbury was in Rouen at the time, and he agreed. And so she actually took holy orders as a nun, but she never made it back to Fontevaux. She was far too ill and too late in her pregnancy to travel, so she went into labour in Rouen, and yes, she died. There was some thought that the baby might survive or survive even just long enough to be baptised. So they actually performed a post-mortem cesarean. on her. And the baby, which was another boy, did live long enough to be baptized, but then died as well. Her last wishes were carried out in that she was eventually transported back to

Fonte Vaux for her burial, where she wanted to rest. And she left a very detailed will, which didn't mention Raymond of Toulouse once, incidentally, but did leave money for masses to be said for the souls of herself and the King of Sicily. sick burn. It doesn't say much for Raymond that two out of his three wives would rather be nuns, either, does it? No. It's a very sad end to an extraordinary life. But I think the book does such a great job of picking her story apart and introducing us to ways in which Joanna's royal status often meant that she had more agency than other women might have had. But at the same time, there are moments when her standing and her power and a royal birth meant that she had less agency

and was at the mercy of the people in a way that some of the people might not have been. But I wondered, in the mix of all of that and this extraordinary story of a medieval woman's life, what would you say is Joanna's legacy? I think she's a really brilliant example of the ways in which women, royal women, could and could not wield power and authority. So in some ways, they were much more powerful than we might have thought. She was obviously a very powerful figure in the background when she was in Sicily, and she formed a very strong relationship with her husband,

which meant that he could rule effectively. And she also showed power in standing up for herself in other ways, particularly in her refusal to marry Aladeal and her saying no to her brother, the king of England, the head of her family. But in other respects, she shows us that it wasn't all about, being a girl boss. You know, there were occasions where we just have to accept

that medieval women did not have power. And the life of a medieval royal woman in the 12th century was all about picking her battles. It was about knowing when she could influence the course of the events of her own life and when she could not, and just saving her energy for the times when she could make a difference.

And I think that is something that Joanna did very, very well. Yeah, it seems like she sort of nailed that understanding of her position and as you say, when she had power and when she didn't, when she could act and make a difference and when she needed to just accept what was happening to her. She had accepted and identified all of that and come to terms with it in a way that we might find slightly alien, I guess,

but that was her reality. She could only play with the cards that she'd been dealt. and I think she played that game as effectively as she possibly could and I can't say fairer than that really. Yeah, no, that's a perfect place to end. She played a darn good poker hand. Thank you so much for joining us, Kath. It's been a real pleasure to get to know Joanna a little bit better

and people can go and grab the book if they'd like to get even closer to the lioness heart. Thank you. You can hear Kath's previous visits to Gone Medieval from a very early cracking episode on Empress Matilda to a thumping tour around her book. focused on the year 1217. They're all in our back catalogue now, along with an episode about the Cathars, if you'd like to explore that a little bit further. There are new installments

of Gone Medieval every Tuesday and Friday, so please come back and join Eleanor and I for more from the greatest millennium in human history. Don't forget to also subscribe or follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts and tell all of your friends and family that you've gone medieval. You can sign up to History Hit now to access hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a new release every week and all of history hits podcasts ad free head to history hit.com forward slash subscribe go on you know you want to anyway i'd better let you go i've been matt lewis and we've just gone medieval with history hits