Eleanor of Aquitaine: A Biography (WOMEN IN HISTORY)

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Matthew Paris, a well-regarded historian writing in the 13th century, gives three reasons for the divorce: consanguinity, the queen’s alleged adultery and the astonishing charge that ‘she was of the devil’s race.’ He meant it literally: Eleanor was like the folkloric figure of Mélusine, woman above and fish or serpent from the waist down, though she normally managed to conceal that trait. None of the Mélusine romances explicitly mention Eleanor, but they make suggestive links: she was either descended from such a creature or had inherited her lands. Caesarius of Heisterbach, a monk writing around 1230, observed that the English king (at that time Henry III, Eleanor’s grandson) was ‘said to be descended from a phantom mother’. Eleanor’s magical character might explain both Louis’s initial, passionate devotion to his queen and his later repugnance. One poet makes her tell her barons that the king had called her ‘something misshapen and unworthy of his bed’. If your motivation to read this book is to read about the real Eleanor of Aquitaine you’ve got the wrong book. Eleanor of Aquitaine will be published as a beautifully bound limited edition by The Folio Society in 2015, with new colour illustrations.

Henry II died in July 1189 and their son Richard succeeded him; one of his first acts was to free his mother from prison and restore her to full freedom. Eleanor ruled as regent in Richard’s name while he took over for his father in leading the Third Crusade, which had barely begun when Henry II died.Alison Weir meets a subject well-worthy of her mettle…her exciting story merits our attention." ( BBC History Magazine)

Historical fiction author Ariana Franklin features Eleanor prominently in her novel The Serpent's Tale (2008) and the queen appears again as a character in subsequent novel A Murderous Procession (2010). He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.This is a chapter in a wider book. It’s a really good chapter as it happens. It’s much more down to earth, rather brutal in refusing to go anywhere that’s not verifiable – and therefore gives Eleanor much less agency. Disappointing though this is, it is a very useful counterpoise to the full biographies. This is the one to go for if you want to know more, but don’t want to to wade through a full biography. It also has he advantage of putting Eleanor in context of the role of Queens that came before and after her in England. Evocative... A rich tapestry of a bygone age and a judicious assessment of her subject's place within it." ( Newsday) Drabble, Margaret (1995). The Oxford Companion to English Literature. Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press. p.314. ISBN 0-19-866221-1.