Eleanor of Aquitaine
Queen of France and England, Mother of Empires
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3.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
In the competition for remarkable queens, Eleanor of Aquitaine tends to win. In fact her story sometimes seems so extreme it ought to be made up.??The headlines: orphaned as a child, Duchess in her own right, Queen of France, crusader, survivor of a terrible battle, kidnapped by her own husband, captured by pirates, divorced for barrenness, Countess of Anjou, Queen of England, mother of at least five sons and three daughters, supporter of her sonsí rebellion against her own husband, his prisoner for fifteen years, ruler of England in her own right, traveller across the Pyrenees and Alps in winter in her late sixties and seventies, and mentor to the most remarkable queen medieval France was to know (her own granddaughter, obviously).??It might be thought that this material would need no embroidery. But the reality is that Eleanor of Aquitaineís life has been subjected to successive reinventions over the years, with the facts usually losing the battle with speculation and wishful thinking.??In this biography Sara Cockerill has gone back to the primary sources, and the wealth of recent first-rate scholarship, and assessed which of the claims about Eleanor can be sustained on the evidence. The result is a complete re-evaluation of this remarkable womanís even more remarkable life. A number of oft-repeated myths are debunked and a fresh vision of Eleanor emerges. In addition the book includes the fruits of her own research, breaking new ground on Eleanorís relationship with the Church, her artistic patronage and her relationships with all of her children, including her family by her first marriage.
Customer Reviews
Adequate scholarship, Bad history.
This book is, in many ways, little more than a hatchet job against Henry II who is presented with little nuance or proper context as a kind of malevolent despot lacking any of the captivating qualities which better works have awarded him. Why? All the better to further the image of Eleanor as the long suffering, caged wife who is somehow the victim of sinister male machinations and yet the great unicorn bestriding European diplomacy. Ultimately, this book as no new tune to sing—merely to sing a tired one shrilly out-of-tune.
“…Henry presents with a number of the hallmarks of the successful psychopath.” Assuming that ‘successful’ psychopaths even effectively exist, much less found a legal system which directly affects the lives of hundreds of millions across the word and which has played a vital part in defining what the English-speaking define as “justice”. Truly, I laughed out loud at this statement. What nonsense.
The book’s scholarship is adequate, though no where near that of better works of this period such as those of W.L. Warren. Cockerill is insufferably “Team Eleanor”. The politics and machinations of the various players on the European chessboard are almost completely decontextualized.
For instance, Cockerill’s sympathetic tone in the case Mary of Boulogne is misleading in the extreme. Henry is presented as unscrupulously ruthless—he was after a medieval monarch—in his forcing of with Mary from a nunnery to the altar to serve Henry’s end of a clever diplomatic match. This conveniently avoids the pressing facts that such a marriage was completely within Henry’s legal rights to make and that he (Henry) might be more inclined to deal ruthlessly with the sister of man who once sought his assassination, William of Boulogne.
In this instance and many others, Cockerill willfully omits the intense complexities of Henry II the man; a man it who, it must be said, was one of the most complex, brilliant, and influential to ever wear a crown. This may firmly place me in the “Team Henry” camp—certainly, I am proud to be called so. Indeed, almost half the world is in many ways the product of the aspirations and achievements of “Team Henry”. It is much better than falling into the entrapments of bad history which Cockerill’s “Team Eleanor” approach illicit.
Context can make or break a rendition of history, and it plainly breaks this book. Angevin scholars and readers would be better served seeking elsewhere for a well-rounded, better nuanced telling and interpretation of the life of that most incomparable of queens—the ever-remarkable Eleanor of Aquitaine.