? Eleanor of Aquitaine & King Henry – A marriage
made in Heaven….or Hell….?
.
? Fate could not have connected two more strong, intelligent, attractive, and energetic people than Henry and Eleanor, despite their eleven-year age gap.
Two strong-minded, forceful and determined people, they were equally matched.
? Eleanor, who was about thirty, had already been queen of France for fifteen years through her first marriage.
By her second, she would soon be the formidable queen of England.
? Daughter and heiress of William X, Duke of Aquitaine and Count of Poitou, she was beautiful, wanton, capricious, sophisticated, highly intelligent, and accustomed to having her own way.
She had inherited her father’s enormous estates on his death in 1137 and her first husband, Louis VII of France, had been quite unable to stand up to her.
? Eleanor bore him two daughters, went on crusade with him and ordered him about until her infidelities and her failure to produce an heir proved too much.
The marriage was annulled in March 1152 on grounds of consanguinity.
? The annulment gave Eleanor back Aquitaine and Poitou, which she took with her eight weeks later to Henry, Count of Anjou and Duke of Normandy.
Henry was nineteen years old, bull-necked, stocky and freckled, a man of electric energy and ferocious impatience, compelling charm and an ungovernable temper.
He was ruthless when crossed, and some of his contemporaries uneasily credited the story that his family, the Plantagenets, were descended from the Devil.
? The marriage took most people by surprise.
It was rumoured that the bride and groom had already lie together ahead of the ceremony.
There was also a story that Eleanor had known the groom’s late father, Geoffrey of Anjou, considerably better than she should have done 😉
? Henry succeeded to the throne of England in 1154, and Eleanor became Queen.
Their marriage was lusty, even though Henry had affairs, over the next twelve years Eleanor bore Henry five sons and three daughters.
Two of their sons, Richard and John, would be kings of England.
? Not surprisingly Eleanor’s life with Henry was stormy.
When the sparks were not flying in the bedroom, they hated each other.
They would then take off to the bedroom, to ‘reconcile’
This would continue throughout their marriage, love, hate, sex, love, hate, sex…..
? Eleanor may well have encouraged her sons to rebel against their father in 1173, and after that Henry kept her penned up as a prisoner in England, until he died in 1189.
Under both Richard and John she was active in matters of state.
In 1204, Eleanor died in a nunnery at Fontrevault in Anjou, in her early eighties.
She was entombed in Fontevraud Abbey next to her husband Henry, and her son Richard.
? However, during the French Revolution, the abbey of Fontevraud was sacked and the tombs were disturbed and vandalised.
Consequently the bones of Eleanor, Henry, Richard, Joanna and Isabella of Angoulême were exhumed and scattered, never to be recovered.
? Katherine Hepburn and Peter O’Toole as Eleanor and Henry in ‘The Lion In Winter’ ~ 1968
