Gone Medieval - The Real Eleanor of Aquitaine

Episode Date: September 16, 2025

Eleanor of Aquitaine was a queen who defied expectations, a duchess who outmanoeuvred kings, and a mother whose dynasty shaped the future of Europe. She is often remembered through myth, gossip, and legend—but the truth is far more fascinating. Dr. Eleanor Janega is joined by Professor Lindy Grant, to uncover the real story of Eleanor. From her early vulnerability as Queen of France, to her pivotal role as Queen of England and Queen Dowager, Eleanor’s political journey is one of survival, reinvention, and brilliance.Gone Medieval is presented by Dr. Eleanor Janega. Audio editor is Amy Haddow, the producer is Rob Weinberg. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.All music used is courtesy of Epidemic Sounds.Gone Medieval is a History Hit podcast.Sign 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 Dr. Eleanorianica and welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We uncover the greatest mysteries, the gobsmacking details, and the latest groundbreaking research from the Vikings to the Normans, from kings to popes, to the Crusades.

We delve into the rebellions, plots, and murders that tell us who we really were. And how we got here. Picture this. A 12th century heiress, barely a teenager, inherits a kingdom larger than France itself. By 30, she's divorced one king and married another, igniting a dynasty that would reshape Europe. By 70, she's crossing the Pyrenees on horseback to negotiate a marriage. lines that would alter the course of history. This is my girlie, Eleanor of Aquitaine. Medieval Europe's most dazzling political operator,

a woman whose life reads like a thriller penned by Machia Valley. Born into the cutthroat world of feudal power games, Eleanor didn't just play the game. She rewrote the rules. Duchess of Aquitaine in her own right, Queen of France, then Queen of England, she wielded diplomacy like a sword and patronage like a shield. While Chronicleers whispered about her devil's blood

and spun tales of scandal, incest, rebellion, and courtly orgies, Eleanor was outmaneuvering popes, crushing rebellions, and raising kings. Her enemies called her a seductress. Her allies knew her as the matriarch, who held an empire together with sheer force of will. Think you know, Eleanor? Forget the gossip. Forget the myth of the Court of Love. This is a woman who, at 80, personally commanded the defense of Mirabeau Castle against her own grandson.

The queen who, even during 15 years of imprisonment, orchestrated her son's rise to power through coded letters and clandestine alliances. The diplomat who brokered peace between warring kingdoms, not with treaties, but with strategic marriages that turned her grandchildren. into royalty across Europe. Yet for all her brilliance, or possibly because of it, Eleanor's legacy was nearly buried under centuries of slander. Male chroniclers threatened her autonomy, painted her as a nymphomaniac, a schemer, and a she-wolf. But the truth?

Her power wasn't rooted in bed sheets. It was forged in bloodlines. When Henry II tried to strip her of Ocotain, she rallied her maternal kinfolk from the Loire Valley, uncles, cousins, knights who'd sworn fealty to her family for generations, and turned the tide of war. When her son Richard the Lionheart was captured, she drained her treasury, crossed the Alps in winter,

and personally delivered his ransom. So why does history remember the lies instead of the ledger books? Because Eleanor threatened the patriarchy's oldest fear. A woman who refused to be quiet, or to be passive, to be anything less than extraordinary. In this episode, we're tearing up the playbook of queenship to expose the smear campaign that tried and failed to erase her from history. We have, of course, discussed Eleanor of Aquitaine before here on Gone Medieval.

I'd particularly point you to Matt's brilliant explainer episode for a full overview of her life and legacy. But today, I want to cut through centuries of mythology, romantic exaggeration, and slander. to tell the story of the grandmother of Europe, the queen who turns scandal into strategy and the woman who proved that even in the darkest times, brilliance couldn't be imprisoned.

Joining me to discover the real Eleanor of Aquitaine is Professor Lindy Grant. She's the Professor Emerada of medieval history at the University of Reading. In her new book, Eleanor of Aquitaine, woman, queen, and legend, published by Reaction books, she is focused on primary sources, including charge, financial records, letters, and contemporary chronicles. To reveal Eleanor as a politically astute woman whose power was fundamentally shaped by family connections rooted in northern Poitou, rather than the Ociton South.

Professor Grant, welcome to Gone Medieval. Thank you. I'm so excited to have you here today because I really, really enjoyed this book and think it's such an important addition to our literature about Eleanor. And I think one of the major things that comes up when you talk about Eleanor other than, of course, worldly power and these sorts of things, is her association with Trubodore poetry and the courts of Southern Ossetan. But what you present in the book, which I think is incredibly intriguing, is that it's probably her mother's network and heritage that had a bigger role in that. Can you tell us a little bit about what you found? Yes, Eleanor is always sort of as being, I'm sometimes called the Queen of the Trubedores.

I think most historians now feel a bit queasy about that, but it's certainly often the view of her in sort of general literature. And of course she was heiress, Duchess of Akitin. And famously her grandfather, William the 9th of Akitin, was one of the first of the Troopadors. and he writes this amazing poetry, which is about war and sex in the Oshutan language. And there clearly were poets who wrote in Oceitan, these troubadours, were at the court of Eleanor's father, William Ithatine. But there's no evidence that they really follow Eleanor north, either when she goes to the French court, because in 1137 she, as heirs to Akitin, her father dies in Spain, and he leaves her and the duchy to the King of France, who marries her off to his heir.

So she becomes Queen of France, and she's that for some time. But there's no evidence of any of these troubadours who've been at her father's court following her. In fact, two famous ones, Sir Camon and Markapru, who have been at her father's court, actually go possibly to Spain or to southern France. And both of them seem to write poems which actually is sort of rather critical of Eleanor. So, you know, she's not attracting them there. Then people have sort of thought that when she then marries Henry the second of, England, he's Count of Anjou, Duke of Normandy, so, you know, so that results in this huge

set of kingdoms, you know, that they're ruling between them, which run all the way from, you know, the borders of Scotland down to the borders of Spain. She must be an agent who helps the troubadours from the south come to the northern courts. And in particular, people have thought that Perhaps she plays a role in this idea of courtly love, which the troubadours from the south, to some extent, play with, arriving in the northern courts. People in the northern courts write this kind of poetry. We call them the Truvair, which is just a sort of, you know,

a northern French version of troubadour. All the early Truvair are associated with the courts of the Counts of Flanders and the counts of champagne. And what people have picked up on is that Elna's daughter with the King of France, whom she has to leave behind when she's divorced from the King of France, Mary becomes Marie becomes Countess of Champagne. And she clearly is a patron of Trouvaire, the most famous of them, Cretien de Tro. And so people have sort of assumed that it's the link between Eleanor and her daughter.

but in fact the link seems to be not Eleanor herself, but probably the next generation, it's her children. Richard, the Lionheart, Henry the Young King, and Geoffrey, the one we sort of forget, you know, the one who looks rather boring. But I gather that he's the one the troubadours are interested in and the Truvera interested as well. And both Geoffrey and Richard write poetry,

in northern French, they're Truvair rather than troubadours themselves. And they are quite close to Mary of Champagne. So they go to the French court quite often, particularly when they're all trying to put together a rebellion against Henry II. And they meet Mary of Champagne there. So actually it's that generation who perhaps

are the mode of transmission. and there's absolutely no evidence. There's a wonderful article by Ruth Harvey, which is about Eleanor Racketton on the troubadours, and she just, you know, completely takes apart this sort of idea that Eleanor is somebody who encourages troubadours. So there are no poems by them about her, and it may be that they don't come to the French court,

the English court where you might expect them, it's a much sort of richer, more culturally exciting court. And, you know, as I say, they get there with her children. But by that time, she spends a lot of time in England when she's first Queen of Henry II, fairly continually pregnant. And then in 1168, Henry sets her up in Poutou, as regent for his son Richard, whom he sees as being the new Duke of Aucatine,

who's going to take over as Duke of Aucatine. And so she's there between 1168 and 11773. And people have assumed that that must be, you know, a court with loads and loads of troubadours around. But by that time, she's possibly getting a bit elderly for them. Mm-hmm. You know, I mean, and certainly there's one poem by Bertrand december. Bourne that talks about her as the Queen of Normandy, but I mean, that's it. And there's no evidence that she's really commissioning things from, there must, I mean, there must have been troubadours there.

I mean, if I was a sort of southern troubadour and the Duchess of Akitaine was in, I don't know, England or Normandy or Poitou, I'd have made an effort because, you know, to go and I'd have. for the best, but there's no evidence that they're really making a lot of effort there, whereas they are with her children. So it's the next generation where that sort of transmission happens. And actually, Eleanor seems almost to be more interested in the sort of literature. So Eleanor is more interested and works by people associated with the court of Henry II are dedicated to her. I mean, how far she's a very active patron is not very clear, but, you know, they are dedicated to her. And perhaps she was more interested in those sort

of poems, things like the Roman Dubrude and, than these Trubedor poems, the sort of things that her grandfather produced. And the other thing about her is that although she's the daughter of the Duke of Akhetan. And the Duke of Akitin, of course, has interests right from the Loire all the way down to the Pyrenees, very interested in the southern areas under his control, with lots of relationships with the rulers in Iberia, particularly Aragon. Nevertheless, Eleanor's mother and her grandmother are actually from this, they're quite sort of small, well, not princely family. They're vicarants of Chatello, which is right on the absolute northern border of Puauteu. It's as far north as you can go in Pua, and they're important for the Dukes because they protect one of the roads into Pua T'O,

but because they're right on the border, they're... intermarried with aristocracy from Turin and from Enjou. So in a way, they themselves, Eleanor's mother is not a southerner. She's a northerner. She's somebody who really comes from the Loire. And her grandmother, who was William VIII's mistress, comes from this family as well. And actually the people that Eleanor surrounds her son. with, when she's in Pua 2, first of all, particularly when she's there between 1168 and 73, and then when she's in her widowhood, when she spends quite a lot of time in Poutou, but she spends it in the north. By and large, she's Poitiers, but mainly Fontefro, and the people she

surrounds herself with are her mother's family, these people who come from, you know, they're hardly even Poitavans, you know, they're partly, And so she isn't a daughter of the South in the way that so many people have thought of her. And she's almost certainly, when she's brought up, she's in Poitier and around Poitier. And so she doesn't, she won't be speaking Ocitan. She'll be speaking something that's a type of northern French quite like the kind of French that Henry the 2nd would have spoken. and not very different from the kind of French

that they would have spoken at the French court. I was really interested in this particular part of the book because I think that oftentimes Eleanor's roots are completely glossed over and we just get to, oh yes, wasn't Ockytown very important, yes, of course. And wow, that's crazy, then she becomes her father's heir and all she goes to Paris. And a lot of assumptions are made. I think that your point about Eeynor of Chateau is a really important one and the fact that this is this smaller family. Can we talk a little bit about why Duke William the 10th would have married Eeynors?

Yes, okay, this is an important piece of land because you need to protect this road. But Akita is so big. You know, you could go get yourself a real wife if you wanted to. Is there a particular reason why we're choosing to marry into the smaller family? It's slightly peculiar and I was just really struck when I thought about the Dukes of Aketon

usually marry daughters of counts or daughters of dukes so William the 9th of Ackitaine is married to Philippa, the heiress to Toulouse. She herself is partly northern

I mean her mother is a niece of William the conqueror you know, so there's northern kind of link there. And William the Ninth mother was linked with the capitian. She's a niece of the King of France. And so that's what you'd expect from a Duchess of Akitaine. William the 9th, the one who writes the poetry, is sort of famous for his, I don't know, what's the word?

Dalliances. In dalliance, inappropriate sexual behaviour or whatever for a duke. Anyway, so he's married to Philippa of Toulouse, and she is Eleanor's grandmother. But William the Knight sort of rather dumps Philippa of Toulouse, and he goes off with this woman called Dangerers, wonderful name. One of the best names in history. It really is. Yeah, wonderful. So Dangerers, she's sometimes called Moberg, but I think D'Obeuse is so much more fun.

And he is the wife of the Viscount of She. Chatello. And Chatelloe, you know, they're Viscounts. I mean, there's somebody, but they're not princes. You know, they're aristocrats, but they're not princes. And anyway, poor old Philippa is sort of dumped, and William VIII, installs Dangerers, in Poitier, as his mistress. And William of Marensbury says that, you know, he says they has her painted on his image, painted on his sheep. so that he can be beneath her in battle just as she is beneath him in bed. You know, he has quite a reputation, does William the Ninth. Anyway, William the Ninth then his son, William the 10th, is Eleanor's father. William the 9th arranges the marriage between William the 10th and D'on, his daughter,

Eno of Chatellejo. So, I think that at a certain stage, William the 9th is very concerned about his northern border because he marries one of his daughters to another one of these northern Viscounts, the Viscount of Tuar. And then when the Viscount of Tuar, I can't remember whether that marriage is dissolved

or the Viscount dies, he then marries his daughter, Ella's aunt, to the ruler, the king of Aragon. That's a much more, you know, princely marriage. So there's this really peculiar, you know, at a certain point it clearly matters that they're worried about this northern border and so William the 10th is married to somebody who, you know, is not the standard Duchess of Akitaine. And then when you think about Eleanor as Queen of France, because her father is dead, her uncle, Raymond, has gone to Antioch, so he's not around. So there's no one from her father's family around. Her mother's family are just these vicomts. And whereas, you know, queens of France, other queens of France, she's the next Queen of France is the daughter of the King of Cass

steel, and then the next one is the daughter of the Count of Champagne. Other queens of France are likely to be, you know, related to the Counts of Flanders. I mean, her mother-in-law's Queen of France is the niece of a Pope and the niece of the Count of Flanders and the daughter of the Count of Morienne, you know. So, Eleanor, Ellen in a way, doesn't have a very strong maternal family. And I think that the implications of that are quite considerable. And it's very odd the way she clings to members of her mother's family, particularly an uncle who is called Ralph Faye, who nobody has a good word for him. Nobody. And yet Eleanor is very close to him. She's very close to his sons. You know, her household at the end of her life is full of members.

of this Fay family. I mean, they're almost nobody, they're younger sons of the Viscounts of Chatello. And, I mean, I went to Faye, you know, it's a sort of piddling little one-horse town in, you know, between Chateauro and Chinon. It's very odd. Whereas somebody like one of her successors as Queen of France, Adler of Champagne, She has her brothers, the Count of Champagne and the Count of Brouard, absolutely at court. Her other brother is the most important churchman, if you like, in France. He's the archbishop of Ravrein, the man who crowns the kings of France. That's what a Queen of France might expect to have, and Eleanor doesn't have that sort of support. And I think that when she goes on crusade, you know, the disastrous crusade with Louis the 7th, they get to Antioch, where her uncle Raymond of Akitin is, Prince of Antioch.

And it's for the first time that she's had a really major relation of her own who's there who can, you know, support her in some way and take her side, of course, you know, he does so rather too much. You know, we have no idea. I mean, personally, I think that probably she was thrilled to see him. He was thrilled to see her. He was absolutely charming to her. She just wanted to talk to him. And the marriage with Louis is already not going frightfully well.

and he's consumed with jealousy. I mean, you know, the accusations that what she has is an affair with Raymond, I mean, I just can't see that either she or Raymond would have thought that was in any way a sensible thing to do or a useful thing. But suddenly she's got somebody who perhaps can understand her in a certain way, someone who's powerful and who's a close member of her family. And that must have been wonderful for her because she hasn't had that all the time she's Queen of France. And I think really for someone as young as she was at that time, that must have felt like really something. Because to go from being at the French court where things were going badly, you know, Louis in his earlier years is constantly at odds with the papacy.

she's having to step in and get in arguments with St. Bernard. It's ridiculous the things that she ends up having to go through. And I think the relief she must have felt to finally have someone who was on her side could take her part. And the way that that immediately gets twisted into their having an affair is, you know, it's an easy accusation to make. And it's one that it's, I don't feel it makes a great deal of sense. in terms of what people say about women. But I don't think it makes a great deal of sense

in terms of the politics at play here. No, no. What I think is that because if you read John Salsbury, who's probably the best account of it, and the most complete account, and he knew all the players, and he says that Raymond is extremely charming to her, and, you know, it involves her in sort of conversation,

and Henry and, Louis becomes very jealous. And then John says that then Eleanor says, I think I want to get out of this marriage because we are too closely related. And you know, the church was, you weren't supposed to be too closely related. And I think that what happens is that she gets there for the first time she finds herself with a sympathetic but powerful men. of her own family. And I think he says to her, you need to get out of this marriage. It's going nowhere. You've got one daughter. That's it. There's no air you've been together for some times, not going anywhere. You need to get out of it. And what I suspect is that Uncle Raymond says to her,

look, you have this get-out clause. You are too closely related to this man. I, Also suspect that Uncle Raymond might either say, now, I can fix you up with somebody, a suitable husband here in the Holy Land, or possibly you might look at that young man, Henry, who is the Count of Orchou? Because Uncle Raymond was not brought up in Akitin. He was brought up at the English court,

because his mother, Philippa, had these connections with the English court. He's brought up, he's knighted at the English court, the court of Henry I. When Henry dies, Raymond suddenly finds himself in a difficult position, and it's Count Fulke of Aju, father-in-law of the Empress Matilda, who says to Raymond, never might, because Fulke has now become King of King of Jerusalem. He says, never mind, I can fix you up with the heiress to Antioch. So I think that that's what's happening with this incident in Antioch because Eleanor is heiress to Akitin. If she marries somebody else and produces a son, Louis will lose Akitin. He is Duke of Akitin in right of

his wife. They have one daughter. There's another one by the time the divorce happens, but that's all. And actually, after the divorce, Louis claims to be Duke of Akitin as regent for the daughters. But the minute Eleanor and Henry II have a son, that's it. He can't claim that anymore. it's then Henry, Duke of Akitin in right of his wife, and if you like, the person who will look after Akitin for the son who will inherit. So the one thing that the French try to do is to blacken Eleanor's reputation.

So all that stuff about how she's actually had an affair with Henry's father, Geoff Lévinanjou, You know, that's all to try and say that the marriage with Henry is not valid, and therefore, Louis is still rightfully Duke of Ackyten. But it's all a bit, you know, it doesn't wash. But you can see why all of this attempt to blacken Eleanor's name as a result of this, whatever happened in Antioch goes on. And although I doubt they had an affair because I just think it would be, would have been rather silly on both sides. But clearly it was too much flirtation. You know, it makes one think of the Robert Browning poem about the last Duchess. You know, she smiled once, two months, much I gave orders, she never smiled again or whatever.

You know, clearly they get on terribly well. And Louis is, he's not happy. He realizes he's just not up to producing children very easily. And it's probably being discussed at the French court while they're on Crusade. His brother goes back and his younger brother, who has offspring and who certainly makes a bit of a bid for the French crown. So I think that perhaps people at the French court by this time I begin to think maybe it's not just not just. It's not necessarily Eleanor, who's not up to producing the offspring. Maybe it is Louis.

I mean, you have to go on a bit of an offensive at that point if you're Louis. You know, you're seeing yourself marginalized. And I can completely understand from Eleanor's position why she would lean so much on Raymond in this situation. And what would make Henry such an attractive prospect? You know, if you can't really rely on your own relations in Pua, you know, if it's just, you know, some kind of, you know, perfectly fancy people. I'm not saying that they aren't. But, you know, no one is going to be coming out from Chatelloa to really pressier claims. There's no way that they have anything in opposition to the King of France. So you're going to have to go with somebody. And if Louis isn't necessarily romantically jealous of us, Eleanor. I think he's certainly jealous of the possibilities of power that he loses if he loses her. Well, that is true. I mean, I think he was romantically jealous as well. I mean, again, it's John of Salisbury who says that he loves her violently, but with this rather childish love. And that's sort of very interesting. And actually, Louis's response to this is to drag her away with. him and she doesn't want to go. She wants to stay with Raymond and, you know, get rid of the,

start the process of annulling the marriage. And Louis drags her with him. And then she is pregnant on the way back from the crusade. At one point, I thought, oh, so does she have an affair with Raymond? But the incident at Antioch, March 1148, she gets back. She gets back. and it's 1150, spring 1150, that she gives birth to her daughter. So actually what's happened is that Louis has sort of dragged her protesting with him. And, you know, he's enforced his marital rights, possibly, you know, actually not being very happy about this. And so he's, you know, his reaction to this is sort of childish violence. and it's almost what

John of Salisbury suggests. I was really struck by one facet of your discussion in the book, which is, I suppose, tracing a thread of Eleanor's political agency and how that grows.

And you argue that when we look at the evidence, we can kind of see these three very specific parts of it. Can you tell us a little bit about these three stages and how she was able to evolve as an effective political player over time? I don't think she has much agency as Queen of France. Partly she's young. She's about 13 when she first gets there and then she doesn't do. The one thing that a Queen is supposed to do provide the air.

And I think that that just means that, you know, she won't have influence. I mean, as Queen of England, in fact, she has produced a male child before Henry becomes King of England at stage when he is Duke of Normandy and Count of Anjou. So from the moment she's Queen of England, she is the mother of a son and actually she quickly becomes the mother of several sons. And so people will be aware that the queen is somebody through whom you might influence the king. And she is going to be in the future through whom. I mean, they're very aware at the English court of the amount of influence that Henry's mother, the Empress Matilda, has on him. And so you can imagine that, you know, they must all have thought, well,

when one of the sons succeeds, then Eleanor will also have also have. this influence. So people will want to seek out her influence on the king. And that's seen as a perfectly proper role of the queen. But it's something that, you know, if it works, it's quite discreet and it doesn't necessarily show up in the record. But I think that probably in her marriage to Henry to start off with, she probably had quite a lot of influence. I mean, it's quite interesting. you know, that very recent thing of Trump saying that it was Melania, you know, when he said to her, oh, well, Putin was very nice on the phone today, and he said, and Melania says, you know, oh, well, he's still dropping bombs on Ukraine. And it's very fascinating that Melania, who I think

people have not thought of as a very political person, is the one person who seemed to get that through to Trump. And it's what everybody, all the sort of, you know, the big political players have been saying, I mean, just, you know, very interesting in terms of the influence, the importance of that sort of influence of the queen, a wife or as mother. Henry uses Eleanor as regent in England quite a lot, particularly at the start of their reign, he's having to spend a lot of time sorting out, keeping some sort of control on his continental lands. And so he sets her up as she's in England for quite a lot of the first part of maybe the first 10 years of their marriage. And she sits in judgment. She issues documents. She works very closely with his, he has a very

good set of administrators and she works very well with them. And that's not at all surprising. The Kings of England, because they have often run two policies, they've been Kings of England and Duke's Normandy and things, they've been very used to their wife runs one bit while they deal with the other. So it's very expected that the Queen of England will have this kind of role. I don't think Kings of France, who actually ruled a very piddling area of France, had to do that.

So Eleanor there is fitting in with a very established tradition of queens of England who really are very efficient rulers of England while their husbands are somewhere else and very trusted. He then, at one point, he sets her up as regent in Aju, and that doesn't work so well. That's quite brief. I don't think she has the sort of support there, perhaps, of the kind of excellent administrators that they've got in England. But anyway, and then in 1168, he sets her up as if you like regent for their son Richard Blanhart, who he sees he's setting up as the future Duke of Akitin

and Richard is young at this stage and so Eleanor will rule Akitin with Richard until Richard is old enough to take over. And so there, I mean, Eleanor has real, if you like, direct executive power as Duchess of Akitaine. And she's quite active. I think I say in the book that I don't think she perhaps makes huge efforts with the Aketanian church or the Akitanian aristocracy to sort of particularly get them on side any more than, you know, in a sense her approach to them is quite as repressive, if you like,

as Henry and Richard will later be. I mean, I think she could perhaps have done something more creative there. I don't know. I think that's a missed opportunity. Then, of course, Eleanor makes the great mistake of her career. I think she rebels against Henry in 1173. And she supports or encourages its unclear. A rebellion led by her oldest son, Henry the Young King, who forms an alliance with Eleanor's ex-husband, Louis the 7th, France. And Henry the Young King is married to one of Louis's daughters. Eleanor sends her two younger sons, Richard and Jeffrey, to join Henry the Young King in Paris. She herself, rather stupidly, just stays behind in Poutou, and actually then she's captured

by Henry, you know, it is a huge coalition, and I started by thinking, oh, well, they're all looking to the future, and Henry has had this sort of terrible issue with Thomas Beckett, you know, Beckett's been murdered, and it's all dreadful, and I started by thinking, you know, Henry's on the back foot, but he's not. He's, the more I looked at it, he's doing pretty well. He's written through the Thomas Beckett issue, Henry is at the height of his powers, and Eleanor backs her ex-husband and the eldest son, Henry the Young King, who is a pretty hopeless, feckless, is the word? Very charming. Everybody loves him. He spends money like nothing on earth. And, you know, he's frightfully good at tournaments.

But politically, I mean, in fact, a few years later, you know, he dies when he's trying to attack Richard over bits of Akitin. I mean, what do they think they're doing, you know? Silly. Anyway, they put together this huge coalition, but there are quite a lot of people. And the people who join us particularly perhaps there's some of the big Anglo-Norman aristotle. who also have lands in France because some of them are sort of, you know, they've married into French aristocracy. For them, if, you know, the French take Normandy, that might be quite useful. But actually, Henry manages to defeat them all.

And Eleanor is captured and Henry forgives the sons. But he prisons her. I mean, I sort of found myself thinking that actually Henry treats her rather better than Louis does, really, in a way. I mean, you know, she has conspired against him and conspired with his sons. I mean, it's not surprising she doesn't just say, well, never mind about that. So he tries to persuade her to retire as a nun to Fontefer and she says no. So he then sort of, it's very comfortable. house arrest. Very comfortable. Oh, quite so. Adold serum. He sends her a very nice saddle for her to go to

hunting and things, you know. I mean she has no power. You know, she's away from the court. She can't influence anyone, but she's not really suffering. You know, she's got a nice set of ladies with her. He sent her nice food. He has works done to the castle while she's there, presumably so that it's more appropriate and comfortable. So he isn't really vengeful, but it does mean that particularly then he brings her back into the family in the 1180s and where I think she begins to have quite a lot of influence within the family, you know, what you're going to do about family marriages, particularly when one of their daughter's, Henry's favorite daughter, Matilda, Duchess of Saxony and her husband,

they arrive in exile because they've got problems back in Germany and spend time at the English court. And Eleanor is very close to them, very close. And that, you know, means she's right back at the centre of the family again. But, you know, she doesn't, of course, have the political agency that she had before 1173. Then Henry dies in 1189. And then it's, you know, this long widowhood. It's, you know, quarter of a century, basically, where as she's often the case with women, you know, her power is at its apogee. Her sons, her surviving sons, clearly trust her say Richard. Trust her she's in England. He's in France. He sort of sorts things there and he depends on her to go round England and to sort of really ensure that the

succession will work effortlessly in England, which she does. And then Richard then, of course, decides he's going to go off on Crusade. So he's planning to go on Crusade. He uses Eleanor for a couple of really important diplomatic issues. So he sent her off to sort out. his marriage with Berengaria of Navarre and collect Berengaria and bring her all the way to Richard and they finally meet up in Sicily. But on the way he wants Eleanor to do various negotiations with the Pope, with the German emperor, and she's obviously good at that.

So he's using her diplomatic skills. And then it's interesting when he goes off on crusade, she doesn't set her up as regent. In fact, she's in Normandy, perhaps keeping an eye on things there. He sets up a mixture of churchmen and aristocrats, whom he thinks are going to be able to run England while he's away. They turn out to quarrel among themselves and not be very good at it. And the other thing is that the person who takes advantage of this is John, the younger son.

And Eleanor really has to turn up. And the French king, now a really formidable, clever young man, Louis's son, his only son, takes him many years to get, many years and three wives to get a son. But he does finally, this is Philip the second, Philip Augustus. And Philip is, you know, definitely sort of conspiring with John. Eleanor realizes this is going on and comes over and manages to bang heads together. and she takes control of the situation. And then things get infinitely worse because news comes through that Richard has been captured.

He's the prisoner of the emperor. An enormous ransom is demanded. And it's Eleanor who absolutely just holds her nerve, bangs heads together, gives orders for fortifying the coast, and controls John. She pushes John into a corner and in the end he gives over the castles he's got to her. And she manages to raise this huge ransom.

And the ransom is raised under her seal. The monies are kept at Staple's under her seal. You know, Richard is very prescriptive about that scent to Germany under her seal. And Richard writes to her to say that, you know, it's only by your. or a foresight your understanding and your work that my kingdom is going to be there when I get back. And chroniclers, even those who, you know, who are all very aware that, you know, they all remember what happened in Antioch. Ha ha.

They also, you know, have been quite critical of her revolt against Henry. I'm sort of seriously critical of that. But they still really appreciate that this is somebody who knows how to handle it. this situation where nobody else can. But then, you know, Richard comes back and although she's titular Duchess of Akitaine, it's Richard who rules Akitin. You know, she sort of retires a bit. And then Richard sets up one of her grandsons, Otto of Saxony, as Duke of Akitin. So she's not really the ruling Duchess even in those, you know, in the 1190s. But then when Richard dies another sort of crisis, who is going to inherit this whole kind of caboodle.

Is it going to be John, her younger son, or is it going to be the surviving son of the older son, Geoffrey, Arthur of Brittany? And actually for the French lands, particularly enjou and probably Akitaine, Arthur is probably the proper inheritor, the proper air. But for England and Normandy, it's sort of the inheritance more likely to go to the uncle than the son of the son, if you see what I mean. She obviously decides she's going to support John. And between them, they decide what they're going to do and she's absolutely brilliant at executing it. You know, she rushes, she's very old by this stage.

She rushes up and down. She's sort of pushing 80 up and down through Akitin. And, you know, she makes gifts to towns and gifts to various aristocrats and tries to get them on side for John. And she does homage for Akitin to King Philip. And then she and John have this thing where she resigns Akitin to him and then he hands it back to her for her lifetime. And then for the last five years of her life,

she is the ruler of Akitin, though I have to say even then, you know, John sort of, I think he was one of those people who micromanaged anything, you know, everything. He sort of sends various things from a distance. But anyway, the types of power that she has are very, very uneven at some stage almost nothing. And then tremendous... active power. So very, very uneven. The other thing that really struck me when I thought about

out was not just the unevenness of the power that she has at her disposal, but the unevenness of the way she handles it. I mean, she is totally brilliant when Richard is away on crusade and then imprisoned. She just gets everything right. But then this is the woman who encourages this revolt of her feckless oldest son and this man that, you know, she's left some time ago and she's supposed to have said it was like being married to a monk, you know, against probably the most impressive ruler in Europe, you know.

I mean, what was she doing? And I couldn't see what she could really gain by it. People have sort of said, oh, well, she's been sidelined by Henry and sort of sent off to Akitin, to some extent, perhaps. But that's probably what you'd expect. And actually, she's very close to Richard. I mean, what she has in front of her is she still has 1173, she still has. she still had influence with Henry, and she's clearly involved in the marriage potential for their sons.

So she still has influence, and what she would look forward to is some influence with her oldest son when he becomes full king, and a lot of influence with the younger sons, particularly Richard. So historians had sort of said, you know, does she feel herself to be, you know, Duchess of Akitern and, you know, a feeling with the Akitanian aristocracy against Henry, who sort of, you know, imposed himself on,

but actually, as I've said, she imposes herself just as much. You know, it's not as if she has a different approach there. So I can't see that that's really the case. So what she thought she was doing, I don't know. And she seems to be influenced by her uncle, Ralfa Faye, who, you know, nobody has a good word for. And it just seems really silly thing to do. I mean, the other thing, you know, one might want to report at the end when she decides that we're going to have John as opposed to Arthur. And it's very interesting because some of her household and some of her relations,

including relations who've been very close to Richard. actually support Arthur against John, because people know that John is treacherous and vicious and, you know, just a really nasty piece of work. I mean, you can't trust him any further than you can throw him. But it really, I think if Eleanor hadn't declared for John, I think Anjou and Akitaine and possibly Normandy would have gone with Arthur. So this has been such an incredible conversation.

I guess in order to wrap us up, one of the things I was really struck by in the book is you have this really fascinating emphasis on how familial relationships work around Eleanor. And yes, we're used to seeing talk about her relationships with her sons, in particular Richard and John, obviously. but we've not really looked at her mother's side of the family, almost at all, before this. Why is it that you think that this aspect of her foundational story hasn't been looked at up to this point? I think partly people have been absolutely fascinated by the granddaughter of William the Knight of the great troubadour. I mean, and that he's Elinov Akitin. And so nobody's looked that much at her mother's family. The other thing is it's not that easy.

I mean, because they're not princes, you know, they're that sort of lower level of aristocrats. They're jolly difficult sort of trace in the, you know, you can look at various cartilaries and, you know, for instance, I started looking at them, discovered that they'd been very close to Fontifro, that lots of them had given lands to Fontsverro. They've put four members of her mother's family

have become nuns at Fontifro, you know, early in the century. So, you know, it really is a matter of sort of plying one's way through carteries and things. So the Fontevary carteries are published and those very useful, carty of this obscure abbey called Noyei, which is where it's close to Chatelle Rhoix and the carteries published but it wasn't a very important, Abby, but that's where the Chateau were buried and they gave lots and lots of things to it. And you can see the Faye family, the Chatellejo, various interrelated families from Torene and Enjou all, you know, giving together to, they're a sort of social group and you begin to build a vision.

an impression of this sort of little society, this rather provincial society, perhaps. So it's not so terribly easy to do, but it just seemed to me that it is really important in thinking about Elner and just seeing her as, you know, first of all, somebody northern, but also somebody who, you know, almost orphaned. She is orphaned, you know,

but doesn't have that kind of support from a major family that a queen of France, a queen of England, an heiress of Akuten, might be expected to have? I mean, it's quite an interesting point because it's easy to forget that as much as she's the granddaughter of William the 9th, she's the granddaughter of D'Angelo. She is the granddaughter of D'Angereux. She is the granddaughter of D'Angers.

Yes. Absolutely, absolutely. And how far everybody was aware of this all the time. And people are quite careful about mentioning it. Because, of course, you know, she's very powerful at the court of her sons. But Gerald of Wales mentions it and, you know, one or two others. But they're a bit carefully. They don't sort of, nobody says, ah, you know, like granddaughter,

like grandmother and sort of things quite as much as they do. What I did think was very funny is that when Ellen was young at the French court, I mean, chroniclers are not very interested in her. They sort of say, well, she was a very noble girl, but nobody says she's very pretty or anything. People don't start talking about her beauty until after the instant at Antioch. Ah, I see. Now maybe she's somebody who, you know, just improved with age,

but she maybe is somebody who gets to know how to make an entrance, you know, wearing all these sort of, you know, amazing furs and silks and things like that and sort of sweeping them around her and, you know, just gets better at that. And maybe, you know, that's quite difficult to do when you're 13, which is what she is when she first arrives at the court of France. But it is very interesting that, you know, this idea that she's very beautiful, nobody says that until a scandal attached to her. And then she must be beautiful because of course.

Well, now you notice. I don't know. I think that's very funny. No, that is an incredibly funny thing to think. Oh, cut. Professor Grant, I could keep you here all day. This has been so interesting, and I cannot recommend this book enough to anyone who is interested in Eleanor's legacy, because it really does help elucidate so much about her life that I think has got buried under the legend.

And it's easy to simply talk about the beautiful, worldly, refined Eleanor. it's a lot less likely that we talk about. As someone who came up in a kind of rough scrabble situation, hanging out with lesser nobility, and it kind of made her way through a series of advantageous marriages, you know? Well, I suppose she was the heiress to contend in spite of her mother's family. But anyway, thank you very much. I've hugely enjoyed chatting about her as well.

So thank you. Thanks once again to Professor Lindy Grant and to you for listening to Gone Medieval from History Hit. Remember, you can enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original TV documentaries, including my recent film The Medieval Apocalypse, and add-free podcasts by signing up at historyhit.com forward slash subscription. You can follow Gone Medieval on Spotify,

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