Eleanor Of Aquitaine: By the Wrath of God, Queen of England

Product Information

Sometimes that provides great context in terms of land and economy, sometimes you can’t help feel it’s to get the page count up with a lot about Henry II.

The author exhibits a breathtaking grasp of the physical and cultural context of Queen Eleanor`s life. She then, very provocatively, says she feels she should tell him that she slept with his father five years before. I am delighted that Random House has decided to publish a newsletter to coincide with the publication of Eleanor of Aquitaine in paperback.An alluringly candid portrait of this most public yet elusive woman… A truly epic landscape of twelfth-century Europe in all its blood and glory. Her custodians, bearing in mind the love that the new King, Richard the Lion Heart, had for his mother, and his fearsome reputation, had not demurred when this grand old lady demanded to be set free.

LOUIS is more concerned about the threat posed by Henry's prospects of uniting Anjou, Normandy and England under his rule. The perpetrators of the crime were condemned to be castrated also, but that did not help the lovers. A few of my history friends have read this book and enjoyed it, so I wanted to see what the hype was about regarding this particular title. If there is no corroborative evidence that lends credence to a source, I have tended to trust those who were near to events and therefore probably in a position to know, or who knew such people. On the other hand Shakespeare in Love was fantastic, pure entertainment and so believable, but Elizabeth was disappointing for me.

As Queen of France, Eleanor had two daughters, went on the Second Crusades, was kidnapped by pirates, and saw numerous battles. That should have been the happy ending to their story, but Heloise, not wishing to stand in the way of Abelard`s preferment in his chosen career, chose openly to deny that she was his wife. Much of what we know about Eleanor of Aquitaine, Queen of France and then Queen of England, we know from recorded rumor—gossip often qualified by the curious phrase “it was said,” or the love songs, ballads, and romances that gossip inspired. The author does not ‘pick a side,’ but instead asks all of us to revisit our preconceptions of this most inspiring medieval queen.

They discuss the dismal progress of the crusade, then THIERRY, with an extravagant show of reluctance, asks LOUIS if he has heard the rumours about Eleanor. And if any academic is sniffy about that, there is always Shakespeare, who certainly wrote 'faction'.

And when she talks about the woman she spent months on end trying to under­stand, she is very protective and defensive. So, she married the young Count of Anjou, who would become the first king of the Plantagenet dynasty, King Henry II, who had a large family and split her time between England and France.