Europe's most eligible heiress in her time, Eleanor of Aquitaine became one of history's most redoubtable and fascinating characters. Married first to Louis VII of France, she accompanied him on crusade to the the Holy Land, only to demand a divorce on their return. Her demand was not met by Pope Eugenius III who declared the marriage valid but she eventually prevailed upon him and was granted an annulment.
Eleanor returned to her lands in Aquitaine and immediately sent word to Henry, Count of Anjou and Duke of Burgundy, eleven years her junior. She requested that he come to Poitiers and marry her without delay. It was necessary for her to act quickly as it was not uncommon at the time for would-be suitors to use kidnapping as a seduction technique and indeed two lords had attempted to capture her on her return to Poitiers. Henry accepted her offer and the two were married in 1152.
Their marriage was initially successful. They had eight children together, five of them sons. Eleanor took a pragmatic attitude to her husband's constant infidelities and numerous bastard children.
However, in 1173 their son Henry launched a revolt against his father, by that time Henry II of England. Eleanor sided with her son and sent her other sons to support him and rallied the southern lords around Poitiers to the cause. On her way to meet her sons at Paris she was captured by her husband's troops and sent to him at Rouen. Her capture led to fifteen years of imprisonment spent mostly in various castles in England. She only gained her freedom on her husband's death in 1189 when their son Richard (Coeur de Lion, the Lionheart) acceded to the English throne. She rode in triumph and accepted oaths of fealty from the English lords on his behalf.
Eleanor outlived Richard and saw his younger brother, John, accede to the English throne. She lived into her eighties, a remarkably long life for the twelfth century, outliving all but two of her eight children. In 1201, in her late seventies, Eleanor successfully defended Mirabeau from a siege led by her grandson Arthur who was revolting against John. This was Eleanor's last stance and after the castle was relieved by her son and his troops she retired to the Abbey of Fontevraud where she took holy orders and died in 1204.
Eleanor was one of Europe's most powerful, accomplished women. Unusually, she maintained control of her ancestral lands through two marriages. She was uniquely involved in the military manoeuvres of her troops- going on crusade herself and overseeing the siege of Mirabeau.
