In Our Time - Eleanor of Aquitaine

Episode Date: January 28, 2016

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, times and influence of Eleanor of Aquitaine (c1122-1204) who was one of the most powerful women in Twelfth Century Europe, possibly in the entire Middle Ages. She inherited land from the Loire down to the Pyrenees, about a third of modern France. She married first the King of France, Louis VII, joining him on the Second Crusade. She became stronger still after their marriage was annulled, as her next husband, Henry Plantagenet became Henry II of England. Two of their sons, Richard and John, became kings and she ruled for them when they were abroad. By her death in her eighties, Eleanor had children and grandchildren in power across western Europe. This led to competing claims of inheritance and, for much of the next 250 years, the Plantagenet and French kings battled over Eleanor's land.WithLindy Grant Professor of Medieval History at the University of ReadingNicholas Vincent Professor of Medieval History at the University of East AngliaAndJulie Barrau University Lecturer in British Medieval History at the University of CambridgeProducer: Simon Tillotson.

Thank you for downloading this episode of In Our Time. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uket, slash radio four. I hope you enjoy the programme. Hello, Eleanor of Aquitaine was the most powerful woman in 12th century Europe, possibly in the entire Middle Ages. Born in 1122, she inherited land from the Loire down to the Pyrenees, about a third of modern France.

At 15, she married the King of France, Louis VIII, and later joined him on the Second Crusade. She became stronger still after their marriage was an old as her next husband, Henry Plantagenet, became Henry II of England. Two of their sons, Richard and John, became kings, and she ruled for them when they were abroad. By her death in her 80s, in 12-04, Eleanor had Plantagenet children and grandchildren in power across Western Europe.

This led to competing claims of inheritance, and for much of the next 250 years, the Plantaginates and the French kings battled over Eleanor's land. With me to discuss Eleanor of Aquitaine are Lindy Grant, Professor of Medieval History at the University of Reading. Nicholas Vincent, Professor of medieval history at the University of East Anglia. And Julie Barreau, University of Lecturer in British Medieval History at the University of Cambridge. Nick Vincent.

Where did the power line, what we now call Western Europe, when Eleanor was young? Well, we're talking about a situation in which these great power structures, the Holy Roman Empire and the Kingdom of France, have fractured into a situation. a series of semi-independent feudal principalities. So France is divided into a series of duchies and counties, with the King of France claiming a degree of overlordship, but not really being able to implement policy on any basis day by day in any of those regions. Was he based in Paris?

Yes. On the Eau de La Cite? Literally in the island of France. So he's in the island of French royal power in the middle of a sea. of these feudal barons. Now, what was, so that all these, it's split up into, but were they competing with each other, were they fighting each other, what was

going on? Yeah, I mean, they come, they go, we are in a sort of game of throne situation with these competing barons, these dukes and counts and so forth, rising and falling and in constant competition with their neighbours. What do we know about the position of Eleanor's family

just when she was born? They're immensely powerful, but their power is itself peculiar. They're down in the south. They're down in the south, so they're that bottom left-hand corner of France, from the Loire down to the Pyrenees. They have an enormous trade there from wine,

from the river trades that go into the Atlantic. They are immensely wealthy, but they too rule over a territory that is divided amongst a series of feuding sub-lords, counts and vikans, so that their control over that region is itself fractured. Could you generally be called Aquitaine or is that not sufficient? Yeah, I think Acetane is the best way of describing it

because it comprises a series of counties and regions like Gasconi and Pua-Too, and all of these fall under the general name of Ackitaine. Are we talking about a specific language here? Is there a generalised French around the place or is a lot of what we would call dialects in this? There's a lot of dialect here. So the further south we go, we're getting, into a language where the French for yes is Ock, and it's therefore Ossetans,

it's the southern French version of northern French we. And I suspect that even as in the 19th century, a large part of that would have been incomprehensible to people from the north of France. And these are songs of the Avern are in that, aren't they? Yeah, precisely, so we're in that sort of region. What do we know about her early life? Surprisingly little. We don't know when she was born.

We don't know where she was born. a general idea of the year, though, I hope. It's sometime in the early 1120s. So 1122, 1124, something like that. But there's an enormous amount of mythologising that goes on later. So there's an enormous desire to pin her down to a particular location, a particular date.

But her grandfather and her father were, is this true, were thought to be troubadours, lovers of the art of song? Certainly her grandfather. Her grandfather had helped introduce that sort of peritory, probably from across the Pyrenees, probably ultimately from the Arabic world.

We're talking about a Trubodore culture in parts of southern France with which he is associated. In those days, the childish father of a man or woman wasn't really a concept, was it? So this high spirit had an extraordinary bold, extraordinary woman, seemed to have left no trace

until she married a man. That's precisely right. So the birth of daughters is not something that the chroniclers take notice of. And this is a region that is actually very, very poorly recorded in terms of the chronicle record. So not even a little

bit of an indication? Not at all really, until the 19th century when people begin inventing all sorts of versions. Okay, Julie Barrow in 1137 Ellen's father died and she married the new king of France, Louis the 7th. She might have been 13, she might have been 15, 15 at the outside. Why did she marry him?

Well, I mean, why was she married to him? She probably had absolutely little to say about it. William the 10th, her father, died on his way to Camposela and he didn't expect to die. No one expected him to die. And he probably was thinking of remarrying.

This is a pilgrimage. You don't expect to die in it. No, well, a lot of people, surprisingly, lots of people did. But he certainly didn't. And there are rumours that he was planning to remarry, probably to have a male heir. So when he fell ill on pilgrimage, he knew that he was leaving two daughters that is oldest, older the two Eleanor, would be the heiress,

but it was complicated for a girl to be an heiress. And it wasn't impossible. We have several examples in the first half of the 12th century of women coming to a throne or coming to some position of responsibility. But it was always a gamble. It was always more likely to be challenged. And then there was a huge question of who that girl slash woman would marry. and what sort of claims the husband would have on that inheritance.

So probably William had to think very fast about what to do. And what seems to have happened is that he got in touch with the French and said, there is that daughter of mine. Would you marry her off and probably knew that that would be to the air of the French throne? So it probably wasn't something that was desirable from William's point. point of view, but he had to make do with a very problematic situation. And so it was an arranged marriage that when she would marry the future King of France. Or by that time, then King of France, because his father had died too, hadn't.

No, he hadn't died yet, but he had been crowned in his father's lifetime in 31 when he became the heir after his older brother died. So, and Louis and Eleanor were re-crowned after their marriage. Are we emerging into some sort of recognition of a few facts about her? Do we know what she was like when she got married? No, we have no likeness. I mean, her looks were never really described by anyone. We have no idea what she did.

But not just at her nature or anything she did. No, nothing. We just got married. How, what should we do know, do we know how well she was educated? No, we, as Nick said, we know absolutely nothing about the sort of person she was when she married. Right. So she marries Louis the 7th and where do they set up? Well, Louis came to fetch her.

They got married in Bordeaux and that in itself is really interesting because it's the first time in over three centuries that a king of the Franks, so those northern kings, went as far south as Bordeaux. So what it meant in diplomatic and political terms was huge. And Louis came with a huge entourage. a lot of nights, they were clearly expecting possible trouble. So he went to fetch her, they got married, and then they went back up north.

And there was no trouble. No. She had access. What sort of access did she have to the territory and wealth she'd been left? Very little. She had to give it all to him. Yes. And he became, as soon as they were married, he became king of the Franks and of the French.

and Duke of the Akritanians, and it became his title as well as hers. And as far as we know, she had little autonomous hold on any form of power on Akutan during their marriage. Would her hold on power have been increased had she had male ears? Well, it would have given her status. I mean, clearly by the time they went on crusade, the fact that she didn't have a son put her in a very fragile position, she had failed the first duty of a queen or any aristocratic woman, which was to produce that male air. So I don't know about power, but status. And yes, definitely.

So let's turn to that second crusade, Lindy Grant. She has one daughter when she goes on it, 10 years, about 10 years after the marriage. Now, as I read it, in Bernard de Clairvaux, she and the king swore on the sword to go to the crusades. Is that true? if it's true, she's going, well, if it's one of your notes, if it's true, that gives her, she's in a position of some sort of power. I'm trying to find out something about this woman, about to whom, what, everything happened. You don't know.

She goes off on, she goes off on crusade with her husband. He responds to the people. Is that unusual? Well, this is the first crusade that a king has gone on. So I suppose there were no precedence. Because she went, several other aristocratic women went, and it might seem a rather strange thing to do, but in fact a hundred years later when Louis's grandson,

great-grandson went on Crusade, he too took his wife and several great ladies of France went to. I think the Crusade was thought of perhaps as a pilgrimage with some fighting, rather than fighting with a pilgrimage. And so perhaps in that context, the women went along as well. And they set off. They went across to Byzantium, to Constantinople,

and then across Asia Minor, and they were aiming for Antioch. The expedition was not particularly successful. They fell out with the Emperor of Constantinople. and they were attacked in Asia Minor and they must have arrived rather relieved, eventually at Antioch in March 1148, and Antioch was under the control of Eleanor's uncle, Raymond de Poitier. So they were received there with great splendour. But that's when things really begin to go wrong between Eleanor and Louis.

We know that there was some kind of real quarrel between them there. About 10 years later, John of Salisbury writing about it says that Raymond of Poitier, who was Eleanor's uncle, was very charming and Eleanor enjoyed talking to him and Louis became very jealous. and John of Salisbury says that Louis loved Eleanor in a very childish way, that he was passionately in love with her, and he became extremely jealous and very, very upset. Within 30 years, there were rumours that this had been a sort of huge affair between Eleanor and Raymond, and we simply don't know. Maybe she just enjoyed chatting to him.

But also, Louis turned down Raymond's strategic suggestion that they attack in a different way, which was, according to Eleanor, what I've read, better than going for Jerusalem, because there were two threadbare in terms of weight of arms. Louis objected that. He wanted to get out of Antioch, didn't he? So he went to Jerusalem. It was a disaster, and then they had to sail back. Yes, Louis wanted to go to Jerusalem, and Eleanor probably took Raymond's view that actually

they would be much better to fight up in northern Syria. So there may well be that might have been the quarrel between them. But Abbott Sousier writes to Louis in 1149 saying, may I dare to praise the Queen to you, but please put aside your bitterness towards her until you get back home. But it's at that time, Nick and Liz Binson, that other things are brewing in the dark legends of Eleanor that she had an affair with Saladin,

that she fought, herself fought at the front in the crusade. Is this just the way that great people at that time, when rumour took the place of fact? Yes, I mean, this is the 14 times of its day. This is nonsense. It's projecting onto this woman all sorts of ideas of the evils of womankind, and this idea that she fights as an Amazon warrior.

Going back to what Lindy was saying, just there. I think also there's an awful lot of politics going on here. This isn't just about personalities. Raymond of Antioch had a perfectly legitimate claim to the Duchy of Aucitaine. He was the younger brother of Eleanor's father

and his exclusion from Ackitaine was an extraordinary act on behalf of the King of France. So they may well not just have been dallying with one another in an emotional sense. It may well have involved political negotiations over the future of Ackitaine. So this is rumour and fantasy. No salad, no finalised amaz and fine, well we got that out of the way.

She had a second daughter, though. The Pope tried to keep their marriage together, failed. It was annulled. On what grounds, Nick was it annulled? Like all marriages, it was annulled on the grounds of contiguity. So they were closely related to one another. And all aristocratic marriages at this time were in theory annulable

because it was very difficult to find marriage partners who weren't in some way related to one another. And then the sort of the she's abducted by twice for people who want to sort of take her wealth rather than herself but in the end married this 19 year old young man, not yet king but about to be king Henry and he soon was king

and she went to England as Queen of England. There's again another rumour that she had with his uncle or... Father. Father. I wasn't going to go quite near the bone as that, but your father, thank you. Thank you for reminding me. And then she married the son. Yes. So again, that marriage happens incredibly quickly, and she's really, at this stage, she's a sort of walking title deed.

She is the jackpot that they're all after. They want these rich lands in southern France. And Henry marries her within a matter of weeks of her divorce from Louis. And that comes as a terrible shock to the Kings of France. because this is the last thing that the King of France wants, this great rival on the Loire, to scoop all this territory in the South. Yes, and then what happens when they start to have sons, sons, sons and daughters and daughters,

makes it even worse. But Julie Barrow, we have what became known as the Black Legend, which Lindy's talked about a little. Can you develop that a bit, the stories that there are a lot of them. Is it all smoke, no fire? Well, yes, I think most of it is our stories about how somehow she went against nature. So she's rumored to have slept with her uncle, and she's rumored to have slept with the father of her future husband.

Later, she, well, is accused of having turned against her husband, which goes against nature because men and women were supposed to be one. So there is that whole thing about her being, yeah, going against the, natural order of the world. And so even if you have all those different stories, they actually make sense together. But there are no, there is no reality behind it that we can discern. And a lot of those stories came out late. I mean, all the stories about Jeffrey, so Henry's father, the first time they really are out, as far as we can tell, is the 1180s, so quite a long tie afterwards. So there is also the sort of anti-engevin, anti-plantagenets.

But is the 1180s, I'm not trying, I'm not being purring here, but is the 118 such a long time after? We're still in the 12th century. I mean, there's a strong oral history in those days. Yeah, but... I can remember things from 30 years ago, but maybe better enough. Not about not remembering, but it sort of made sense in a moment when lots of people in England started criticizing the dynasty and trying to show them as, to a certain extent, monstrous. And she was the centerpiece of that new image that was drawn of the family.

So the political thing was the English didn't take to her, didn't want her there, and began to use black propaganda? I don't know about the English, but there was certainly critics. And going for the woman was always the easiest way of doing that. Especially the powerful women? Yes. Yes. Lindy, Lindy Grant, the idea is Aquitaine, courtly love, Anna's involvement and all that. either herself creating it.

Now, what sort of validity does that have? That's, I think, another legend. Eleanor was given, sent by Henry to hold court at Poitier in the late 1160s with her son, Richard, who was made counter Poitier. And people began, people have thought that

she held these extraordinary courts that were focused on poetry, the courtly love poems of the south of the Ochatan, the Trubodore poems. The real piece of evidence for this, the piece of evidence around which this developed, is again a piece of writing produced in the 1180s by somebody called Andrew the Chaplin, a book on courtly love. which he wrote probably in Champagne, where he was at the court of Eleanor's daughter, Marie, Countess of Champagne.

And this book features famous women holding court, courts of love, in which they judge various cases like, you know, is it proper for a man to commit adultery, should you commit adultery with this sort of person or that sort of person? and it's supposed to be the famous women, Marie of Champagne, Eleanor's niece, the Countess of Flanders, who sit there and hold these courts and make these judgments. Now, this book is probably a piece of satire very much based on Ovid's de'amore, and certainly it didn't reflect any sort of reality going on at Poitiers,

but it lies at the basis of this idea of Eleanor as being the Queen of the Trubedores. It is persistent, though, and what did she do with all this wealth and influence at these courts? I mean, there she is, in a position of enormous power. She's incredible wealth. Her baggage alone is set to have slowed down the movement of the Second Crusade and be partly responsible for the defeat of, well, again, this is in the notes. The defeat, because it took so much time and space. Put that to one side. What's she doing with herself?

In Pouatou, she and Richard are running it fairly effectively for Henry. That's later. That's much later on. Well, in the 1160s and then until, of course, she joins the revolt against Henry of her sons. What's surprising then and later is that she doesn't seem to use this wealth to found new monasteries in the way that the rest of the family do, her husband, her sons, her husband's predecessors and her predecessors as queens of England. So she doesn't seem to do that. It's very unclear what she spends all this wealth on. She gives to fontifo, but otherwise her patronage the great nunnery, which is on the border of enjou and Poitou,

and which has received gifts both from her family and from Henry's family in the past. Nick, you're seeing as if you wanted to come in. I think the question there is what real control she had over her own estate, and I suspect she was allowed in a very limited control in the alienation of land. She couldn't really give away very much land. She gave away rents. She probably did a lot of shopping.

Lindy. And I think also that because of this legend, we overlooked the fact that this was an extremely pious household. She has an awful lot of chaplains and clerks, probably a very elaborate liturgical life to her own court, which is obviously total contradiction to this legend of all of these courts of love, but maybe a lot of that money went on a very elaborate court ritual. Sorry, can I move on to something you mentioned, Lindy, can I move on to that now in Nick? Why did she back her older sons started a rebellion against their father in 1173? Can you describe how that came about A and B, why she decided to back them? Okay, a couple of things.

We're talking about an empire that is monstrous in the minds of contemporaries. The empire that Henry II established through all of these scattered estates through marriage and inheritance that he brings together is something completely unseen in France since the time of Charlemagne. It's self-consciously projecting itself as something entirely new, and that's one of the reasons the chroniclers are so critical of it. And the big question was whether that would be passed down as a single estate to these sons, Henry II and Eleanor, had several sons.

So there was always the question of which of those sons would get which bits of the empire. And then throughout her life, Eleanor's problem was the actual day-to-day control that she had over her estate. And I think the manipulation of her sons against her husband was really the only way that she could exercise political authority. Why did it get away with it for so long? I don't think that he did, actually. So he lent her a degree of authority, this is Henry the 2nd,

he lent her a degree of authority in the 1150s in England, then in Puaude in the 1160s. But it does all go very wrong. it also went wrong at a terrible moment for Henry the 2nd. In 1170, Henry the 2nd got mixed up in the murder of Thomas Beckett. Yes. He either commanded. I'm glad you brought that in.

I was wondering when he would make his entrance. Well, he certainly plays a big question. You say mixed up. A lot of people think responsible for us are better for us, no? I'm being very cautious in the language. I mean, people said that he commanded the murder, and certainly I didn't think he was terribly upset. He may have been upset by the circumstances, but the disappearance of Beckett was a great thing for Henry the 2nd.

but that in the eyes of contemporaries brands him as a son of Satan. He is the devil's spawn, and it makes a rebellion against him that much more easy to comprehend. So, Judy Barlow, can you tell us what form this rebellion took? He has five sons, how many of them getting involved. One of them has already been crowned future king, hasn't he? One of the sons. He's called the next king or the future king or the young king. The young king, that's it, right.

So he was involved. and the three of the others and so they decided to they came to France well they were in France and Henry the Young King was in a very unfortunate position that he had the title officially he was fully king

but he had no power no land Why did his father do that to clear things up? You mean the coronation it's unclear there was a settlement in 69 when in an agreement with the French King, where what Henry II did was to get his sons to do homage to the French king for

several parts of the empire, which was a way of not doing it himself. So he probably thought that it was a very clever move. And he gave Henry was his oldest, the patrimony. So in theory, Anjou and Normandy and England were for Henry. So he gave Henry a theoretical hold of all that, but no practical power. And that young man, after a few years, didn't bear it anymore, apparently. So what he did was to run to his father-in-law, who was the French king.

And there, Louis treated him as the real king and the two younger brothers, Richard and Jeffrey followed. And from them on, mayhem erupted, and took a very long and complicated story short by the summer of 74. It's obvious that Henry Second has won. There's real fighting, is there? Because there's disruption in Scotland, Scotland,

Scotland, England, everywhere. And what is interesting that it's not so much a rebellion against the dynasty is just people choosing between two kings. So there was a legitimate ring to it. And there are examples. There were examples in the past

of that sort of thing working out. It just didn't. Now, the big question is, Lindy, why did Eleanor take the part of her sons? Yes, it was a terrible mistake. I think that everybody was having to make the decision as to which way which king would win. And I suppose Henry is looking rather on the back foot at this stage, and young Henry looks like the future.

And Eleanor was not the only person who made the wrong calls. so did a very large number of the aristocracy, both in France, in the French territories and in England. And I think it looked as though the young men, young Henry, and his younger brothers would win, and that that would be the winning side. But in the end, Henry the second one, and that left Eleanor, who had been captured by him,

Eleanor, a prisoner then for a very long time. I mean, 15 years. 15 years. But hold on. Is there other real battles and stuff? Does she get caught and imprison before the battles? Can you just give us some idea? So she says she's on their side.

They're in France. She's in London? No, she's on, yes. She's in France too. Yes. And but how does she get caught so easily then? She's sort of trapped before the real fighting starts. And she's carried off into captivity.

By Henry II? Oh, he gets so right. Go straight to the further juggler. Fine, yeah. Think that this is an incredibly complicated, extremely dysfunctional family. Everyone's related to everyone else, all of these people who get mixed up in it, the kings of Scotland, the Counts of Flanders, the kings of France,

they're all very closely interrelated. They've all got marital histories going back over 100 years. And Eleanor then goes off into captivity in England. Yuri. And what is interesting, that she's completely left out of the political settlements of the rebellion. in the autumn of 74, Henry makes peace with his sons and actually makes a compromise with them.

And she's not there, and she's not there physically, but she's not there at all. She's not considered as part of the story. She's at that point completely taken out of public view. So she's not seen as one of the players, which is quite interesting. Is this relate back to what you were saying earlier in the programme that she was going against nature,

by rebelling against her husband. And he gave her house arrest for the next 15 years. Yes, and there is a story, and we don't know whether it's true, that when she was captured, she was dressed as a man. And whether it's true or not, it doesn't really matter. What matters is what it says again about her going against social order and the natural order of the world. And she's in our house arrest, strict house arrest for about 10 years,

probably quite comfortable, though, because she probably spent something. of it in Salisbury where there were recently refurbished for all apartments that she liked very much and we know from the pipe rolls that she had a very decent income even all her lands were confiscated so

we don't have to imagine her in a dungeon but she was out of public life absolutely completely until the mid-80s and then she re-emerged when Henry II died in 1811 89 and with great force

perhaps her greatest force in the last part of a very long life she lived into her ageist. Yeah, like a cork out of a bottle. I mean, this is an abusive marriage in which she's been locked up for 15 years. And out she pops, and she is determined from that point onwards that she is going to run the share. And she does, for a large part of the 1190s.

Richard, her son, King of England, went off on crusade and was then captured on his way back to England. Ransom for a huge amount of money, Eleanor essentially ran the share. The show being the whole of what you called previously an empire aiming to match that of Charlemagne. And above all, raising the ransom for Richard, making sure that Richard was going to be let out of captivity

dealing with the Pope. She negotiated a series of marriages throughout that decade that really set the family up for the next hundred years. The whole of politics after 1189 has Eleanor very, very much staff on it. And she's very active in this, isn't she? She goes across the Pyrenees, they get

brides for her sons and granddaughters and so on. She builds, she actually sees the plantagenets wherever she can. I think she's very conscious of the dynasty, even though in spite of the way her husband has treated her, she's obviously very close to her sons, Richard and John, and to her children. She's based at Fontsivreau for a lot of this period. Which is exactly where in France? Well, it's, as I said, just on the border of Pouet-Eau, and enjou, so just a bit north of Poitiers,

but I suppose from there she can get to England fairly easily. Richard asks her to go off, as you say, down to Spain. She has perhaps connections down there, and she negotiates Richard's marriage with Berengaria of Navarre. She brings Berengaria from Navarre and takes her on Crusade to meet up with Richard in Cyprus. and then in 1200 King John asks her to go and choose a new bride,

a member of the family who is going to be... That's her youngest son, who is now king of England and he has to... He's in the middle of negotiating a very difficult treaty with the King of France and the King of France insists that a granddaughter of Eleanor, a daughter of the King of Castile,

Castile will be married to the heir to the French throne. And Eleanor is sent all the way to Castile, where her daughter is queen, to choose this small daughter to go back to become Queen of France. And it's a really important diplomatic visit as well as just choosing this child who is going to play this very important role anyway. We've talked about taking over, Nick. What did she do? Richard's away at the Crusades. Does she run everything? Is she now proper regent? People do what she says.

She's at last got power. She is the Queen of England. She's certainly got a lot of power. There's an enormous power struggle going on in England. So the justiciers and the people that Richard had left behind, they all go to war with one another. John, Richard's younger brother, gets mixed up in that war. The French stick their war in. There's a great degree of complication there, but Eleanor is at the centre of it. Just going back to something Lindy said there too, Fontreau-day is a rather remote place.

It's in a wood, you know, in the middle of nowhere. But it lies pretty much on the Loire. And the Loire is one of those great rivers of France. You go up the Loire, you're in the Atlantic, you can go pretty much wherever you want. So it's really at an axial point. It's at a very, very important meeting point in France. How did she raise the money to get Richard out of Germany,

the ransom money, which were told was colossal? Well, the administrative machine of the Androvin monarchy was at that point very strong. So there was all sorts of things she could pull out to get money out of the people. Richard has raised extraordinary amount of money before his crusade. And it sounds as if that ransom was actually, it was quite a popular thing. She didn't seem to have had that much trouble getting people to pay for Richard. Because he was popular. And because it was, I mean, having one's king in captivity in Germany didn't look very good at all.

So I think that was not particularly difficult. But what is interesting at that stage is that she doesn't just do that. But she gets mixed up and deeply involved in all sort of really important and not womanly things, like choosing the next Archbishop of Canterbury. And we have letters of people addressing her as the person in charge. So it's not just about dealing with her son. It's not just her as a mother. She clearly at that point, as Nick said, seen as in charge,

even if she doesn't have any precise title. And she switches immediately to John when Richard dies, doesn't she, Linde, and shores him up? Yes, she does. She acts very much as Duchess of Akitin. She ensures, she goes to do homage for Akitin to the French king, and that sort of ensures that Akitin will stay in the family. She supports John against a night. potential heir who is Arthur of Brittany, the son of an older brother.

And I think it's her support for John against Arthur, I think, makes a real difference. It really brings the aristocracy of Aitaine and, indeed, enjou, in behind John. So she plays a very, very important role there. It's a colossal juggling act that she's done. I mean, one isn't exaggerate, here, there and everywhere, pulling the whole, holding the whole thing together, in a way, possibly nobody else could have done. Yes, I think that's right.

And the circumstances of her death, we're now sort of heading towards Toronto 4, the circumstances in which she dies, it is probably no coincidence that the whole thing collapses, more or less at the time of her death, that somehow or another, she is the survivor who's held this whole thing together,

and when she dies, it really collapses pretty much immediately. And then we're going to the 100 years war? The fact that she... She's responsible for the 100 years war, really. Is that what you're saying? I don't think that we don't need to blame her for it, but certainly if England hadn't had those lands in southern France

and that hadn't remained with the English crown thereafter when King John lost the northern bit, England wouldn't have had that toehold in France and there would not have been a hundred years war. And so in a sense, yes, she does determine the next 300 years of English history. Extraordinary, isn't it? Yeah, I'm trying to take that in.

Judy, there's been, at this time when she's being very effective with Richard and, well, effective in certain people's point of view, with Richard and John and so. Has this sniping, stroke, mythologizing,

stopped? Mind she's quite old, but she's quite old, you know, 70s and early 80s. You get some chroniclers who are sort of reluctantly admitting that she is a force of nature.

And the most extraordinary text we have is by someone called Richard of Devices, who describes her as that, as a force of nature, as a formidable woman. So you can feel that by that stage, partly because, probably because she's an elderly woman, she's there as a queen mother. So all the sort of stories about her sexual life

are not relevant anymore. At that stage, you feel that people, while she's doing it, have to recognize that she's extraordinary. But as soon as she's dead, all the mythologizing carries on and return. So there is a brief window when you feel that suddenly she's looked at as she is,

and then it just vanishes. So it's a brief moment. Lindy, can I ask you about her connection with Fontereux, and she gave a lot of money to that? So we haven't stressed enough, although she didn't give money to build great objects or cathedrals or she did

she was very pious it seems and this mattered a great deal to can you tell us a bit about that place and her place in that place yes font of Rose we say have said it was a great nunnery it was seen as a reformed order

of the 12th century and it's in this very specific place it's in the county of enjou but the diocese of Poitiers so it was absolutely on the board of the two, and so Eleanor's family had given to it, and so

had Henry's family. And in fact, Henry and Richard were great supporters of Fontifreau. Both of them were real architectural patrons of the Abbey as well. Eleanor retired there. She built a wall around it, whereas Richard builds a posh cloister. She just builds a protective wall. But she did,

She did give it a very grand processional cross, and she gave it some wonderful silken cloths and things like that. And the other thing is that, I suppose, she turns it into the sort of dynastic morselaum. Henry died at Chinon fairly close to Fontefro, and so his body was brought to Fontsouro for burial. After all, he had given so much to it. Richard died a long way away from Fontefro

but I think it's Eleanor who insists on bringing his body there to be buried alongside his father and then Eleanor I think commissions the tombs for the two kings Can you summarise very briefly Nick I'm sorry but her influence on other queens at the time and in her dynasty because she bred queens as well as everything else

Yes she did I think that thereafter the Kings of England did not want another one like that and there is a clear difference between the sort of power that she exercised. She's the most powerful woman in medieval Europe, probably. She's certainly probably the richest. She has this sort of imperial style to her, and thereafter there is no real queen that matches her in terms of political influence. She travels on all these journeys in great state, I presume.

One assumes so. Linde is looking skeptical there, because there are queens of France and there are others who sort of try to step into the shoes. Your scepticism has a severe time limit limit. Right. I would just say that the one queen who really does rival her influence and power is the granddaughter that she bought from Castile who becomes Blanche of Castile, Queen of France, mother of St. Louis,

and actually has a political career that probably rivals Elean's. Well, there you go. Thank you very much. Indeed, Linda, Linda Grant, Julie Barrow and Nicholas Vincent. Next week we'll be talking about chromatography, and thank you for listening. And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests. What did I miss out? Eleanor has a younger sister when she comes to be Queen of France,

and the younger sister comes to one of Louis VIII's cousins, the Count of Vermon-Drope elopes with the younger sister, who's called Petraina. And this turns into war. And between Louis and the Count of Champagne, and it's a dreadful war because during it, Louis besieges the town of Vitri in Champagne, and the townspeople of Vitri take refuge in the church, and Louis fires the church, and these people are all burnt.

and it's seen that he's launched this vicious and terrible war almost because of Eleanor's younger sister. That whole story is very much behind Lewis going on crusade. And I think that that's an important point. There are lots of members of this family. There are all sorts of cousins and so on of Eleanor who play a big part in all of this, and they are generally written out of the story.

No one has properly traced all of that. Eleanor's side of the family. What happened to the two daughters of Louis? The first two daughters. The first two daughters. They both married brothers, the Count of Blois and the Count of Champagne. And the one who married the Count of Champagne had an extraordinary career.

She was regents of the county, when her twice. And then she went off to the Holy Land to die. So she's a woman who had an interesting life. Did Alanah keep in touch of them? Well, this is this whole issue of the courts of love. Maria of Champagne is a great patron of romantic literature, would one call it, that of Cretienne de Troyes. And she is the person who features very largely in the book on Courtly Love by Andrew the Chaplain. But exactly how much Eleanor and Maria are in touch is very unclear.

And certainly, I don't think that you can say that Marie, went to the court at Poitiers, as people tried to argue earlier. You get a whole series of modern historians trying to work out the psychology. Was she a good mother? Was she a good mother? And we really don't know. But we can say that she's rather like Queen Victoria, she's related to every dynasty in Europe somehow or another is related to Eleanor. There are many more history and discussion programmes from Radio 4 to download for free.

Find these on the website at BBC.co.com.uk slash Radio 4. I'll.