A Princess's Lot in the Middle Ages: The Story of Eleanor of Aquitaine
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Nowadays every little girl goes through a phase of wanting to be a princess. Parents are obliged to stream Disney movies around the clock and purchase miniature gowns, tiaras, and tea sets for the would-be Princess Jasmine, Ariel, Cinderella, Snow White, Tiana, et al. Handsome princes, splendid coaches, lavish balls, and just a whiff of adventure seem to be the enviable life of such young women.
In the real life of the Middle Ages, however, the fate of princesses was often far less glamorous. They were essentially breeding stock, existing solely to be married off to men they were unlikely to have ever met for the benefit of their family's wealth or standing. They might be forced to marry a fellow countryman, but just as often they were packed off to a foreign country to wed someone of a different religion, or speaking a different language. Pity the poor princess whose royal father decides he needs to cement a pact with a barbarian tribe on his borders; one day she is living in a marble palace, the next she is living in a yurt and drinking out of a cup fashioned from the skull of one of her new husband's enemies.
And what of the poor prince who is compelled by his family to take a foreign princess as his bride? He might find his new spouse physically repellent (as did Henry VIII and George IV), leading to an estrangement and the recruiting of a royal mistress from the ranks of her more attractive ladies-in-waiting. He might discover that his wife is cleverer and more ambitious than he and end up like Czar Peter III, overthrown and murdered.
Consider then the career of Eleanor (1124–1204), the heiress to the Duchy of Aquitaine, the richest and most sophisticated area of France. Her father died when she was 13 years old, at which point she fell under the guardianship of the King of France, Louis VI, who immediately arranged her marriage to his teenage son, also named Louis. The match was very advantageous to the French crown as it seemed to ensure that Aquitaine would lose its semi-independent status and become a firm possession of the Capetian dynasty. Shortly thereafter, the old monarch died and Eleanor found herself the Queen of France.
Eleanor of Aquitaine marrying Louis VII in 1137 (L) and Louis VII departing on the Second Crusade (R).
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Eleanor's marriage to Louis was marked by scandal. She was accused of having an affair with Geoffrey, the Duke of Anjou, and she accompanied her husband on the disastrous Second Crusade where her behaviour offended many. Relations between the royal couple were strained during their absence from France and there was talk of the marriage being annulled. When in 1152, after almost 15 years of marriage, Eleanor had failed in her paramount task of producing a male heir, Louis VII arranged with Church officials to have the marriage dissolved on the grounds that they were too closely related—they were third cousins once removed. Though such a link might seem absurdly distant to us in the 21st century, it violated Church rules of consanguinity, designed to prevent incest—rules that ensured Christian Europe was not clan-ridden or closed off and that it was relatively inclusive and socially mobile.
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Eleanor was now an unmarried heiress and instantly prey to the medieval aristocratic sport of abduction and forced marriage. Taking her future into her own hands, Eleanor dodged two kidnapping attempts by ambitious French nobles and wrote in secret to Henry, Duke of Normandy, telling him to come at once and marry her. Within two months of her first marriage being declared invalid, she had wed a prince nine years younger and destined before too long to become Henry II, the King of England and founder of the Plantagenet dynasty.
The best word to describe the 35-year marriage of Eleanor and Henry would be 'tempestuous.' She provided for him the requisite potential male heirs—five boys—as well as three daughters. (Henry also spawned a clutch of illegitimate children.) The sons proved to be treacherous and greedy, all of them leading armed rebellions against their father at one time or another, and Eleanor unwisely supported them. For her folly, she was imprisoned by Henry in various castles for 13 years; she was released upon his death in 1189. (A movie chronicling an imaginary Christmas reunion of Henry, his queen, and his disloyal sons is '
Eleanor outlived her husband by another 15 years and proved to be an able regent for her son Richard I, a.k.a. Richard the Lionheart, when he was on the Third Crusade, and helped her youngest son John seize the English throne when Richard died.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
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