Eleanor was a formidable woman, well-read, sensual, coquettish, full of vices.
Louis was passionately in love with his wife.Louis, whose piety exasperated
Eleanor, was seeking ways to dissolve her marriage. The marriage was finally
annulled in 1152 under the pretext they were too closely related.
Eleanor was also known as the Dutchess of Aquitaine and Countess of Poitou.
The first of England's Plantagenet queens, Eleanor married Henry of Anjou,
later Henry II of England, as her second husband in 1152. She was 32 and Henry
was 20. Their first son, William, was born 4 months after their wedding.
The eldest child and heiress of William X, duke of Aquitaine, she married her
first husband, Louis VII of France, in 1137 at the age of 15 and bore him 2
daughters, Marie and Alice. In 1147 she took the cross with her husband at
Vezelay and accompanied him to the Holy Land on the Second Crusade.
Beautiful, intelligent and forceful, she has become celebrated as much through
legend as through historical fact. That she donned the dress of an Amazon and
surrounded herself with a band of Amazonian bodyguards is almost certainly
invention. That she flirted (and possibly more) with her uncle, Raymond of
Antioch, while in Palestine is hinted at by contemporary chroniclers, as is
the unsubstantiated rumour of her affair with Saladin, commander of the Muslim
forces in the Third Crusade ( who would have been only 11 at the time).
Whatever the reason, her marriage to the French king was annulled in 1151.
Eleanor was actively involved with Henry in the politcal life of England and
his French domains, and bore him five sons and three daughters. But relations
between king and queen deteriorated. Eleanor's resentment against her husband
grew, fuelled by her discovery of his affair with "The Fair Rosamund" (whom
she is rumoured to have bled to death). From 1169 onwards she conspired
actively with her sons against their father, even disguising herself as a man
to follow her sons to France.
Her influence on the artistic, literary and cultural life of the 12th century
was as great as her impact on its politics : she founded her own literary
court and under her patronage the medieval tradition of courtly love first
emerged. Eleanor died at Fontrevault in France in 1202, at the exceptional age
of 82.
********
The Book of the Medieval Knught by Stephen Turnbull
Gascony's connection with England dated back to the 12th century. when its heiress, Eleanor of Aquitaine, one of the richest women in Europe was divorced rfom her husband, Louis VII, King of France, and married a certain Henry Plantagent. Henry had
just inherited Maine, Touraine and Anjou from his father and was already Duke of Normandy and Suzerain of Brittany. With the possession of Aquitaine (or Gascony) he now controlled more territory in France than the King of France, and in 1154, on the
death of King Stephen, Henry became King Henry III of England.
**********
After 1167, she and Henry drifted apart and towards the end of the reign she spent the greater part of each year in prison while he enjoyed a succession of mistresses.
Eleanor 
