Guest post: Finding Eleanor of Aquitaine (includes international giveaway)

I am super excited to welcome Elizabeth Chadwick back to Historical Tapestry. She has long been one of our favourite authors and I, for one, am very excited that it is finally release day for The Summer Queen! If you can handle any more excitement, we are also giving away two copies of The Summer Queen, and the giveaway is open to everyone!  Details of the giveaway are included below.

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A couple of years ago, I’d finished writing LADY OF THE ENGLISH for my UK publisher Sphere and that was the end of my contracted work for them. I had a dynamic new editor and the way was open for discussion on what I was going to tackle next. I had been considering writing about Eleanor of Aquitaine for some time. She kept crossing my path and I found myself becoming more and more intrigued by her. I had featured her in passing in a few of my novels, particularly the Marshal ones. The questions began to build up, as they always do when I become interested in a character from history. I wanted to remove the centuries’ deep layers of gilding, dust and detritus that had settled over her life story. I was curious to discover what she was really like, and perhaps in the process shed fresh light on the known (and often assumed history).

I was well aware that while I had been pondering, other authors had come along with their particular takes on Eleanor, but that didn’t bother me because I knew that our works were individual to us, and there was still plenty left to be said that hadn’t been. It probably also helped to an extent, that I had never seen Katherine Hepburn’s iconical portrait of Eleanor of Aquitaine in The Lion in Winter, so there was no chance of La Hepburn influencing the way I imagined my Eleanor.

My editor was very keen for me to write about Eleanor and we soon agreed a three book contract to cover the story of her life in fiction. We also agreed that she was to be called Alienor, which was the way her name was written in her own lifetime, and a nod of respect to her memory.

I already had an extensive library of books dealing with the 12th century, but I set out to purchase as many works about Eleanor, her life and times as I could. These included sources both primary and secondary and the inevitable slew of biographies, some of which I already had, some of which were new to my library.

As I began reading through the biographies, I began to realise how contradictory, and unsubstantiated, many views of Eleanor were. The authors often clothed her in their own opinions without any solid fact to back up their assumptions. Some seemed to be writing novels of their own, ascribing to Eleanor the emotions they felt she ought to have had, rather than sticking to what was known, and some, it has to be said, had a very shaky grasp on 12th century history, both the political and the social.

Her birth year was often reported as being in 1122, but most historians now believe that she was born in 1124. This was an important detail for me because it meant that Eleanor would have been married at the age of 13, not 15, which puts a very different slant on much of the history that comes afterwards. It might only be a difference of two years, but a significant one at that stage in a person’s life.

Two biographers and a historian gave Eleanor a half brother called Joscelin. But when I went to find out more about him in case I needed to write about him in the novel, I discovered that he was the half-brother of a different queen entirely. You can read about my detective work in this article I wrote for The History Girls. http://the-history-girls.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/eleanor-of-aquitaine-and-brother-who_24.html

There is no known description of Eleanor in the conventional historical record, but nevertheless her biographers have a good go at describing her. ‘Tall, with a superb figure that she kept into old age, lustrous eyes and fine features…it is likely that her hair was yellow and her eyes were blue.’ That’s Desmond Seward.

W.L. Warren in his biography of Henry II calls Eleanor a ‘black-eyed beauty.’

Frank McLynn in Lionheart and Lackland can almost barely contain his lust when he says of her ‘Eleanor of Aquitaine had a dark complexion, black eyes, black hair, and a curvaceous figure that never ran to fat even in old age.’

Meanwhile, others have cited a crowned auburn-haired figure on a mural at Chinon, as evidence for Eleanor being a red-head – and a green-eyed red-head at that. However, that figure is far more like to be her eldest surviving son Henry the Young King.

One prominent biographer has Eleanor buying in copious quantities of wine for her sister Petronella, but when primary sources are checked, Petronella turns out to have died several years before these pipe rolls were written.

The courts of love where Eleanor and her eldest daughter Marie are supposed to have presided over a court of ladies sitting in judgement of matters of the heart, has been proven never to have existed, although one biography dedicates numerous pages to the premise.

Then there is the whole idea beefed up by several biographers that Eleanor had an affair with her uncle while on the second crusade. You can read my views on that particular idea here: http://livingthehistoryelizabethchadwick.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/eleanor-of-aquitaine-raymond-of.html


During my research, I constantly heard statements that she was a ‘feminist’ and ‘a woman ahead of her time’. I think people would like these to be true, but they aren’t. She was a strong and charismatic woman, I agree, but she was of her time and struggling to hold her own in a society where women’s power was being constricted. But she wasn’t a feminist and even if she speaks across the centuries, her voice is of the 12th century world in which she dwelt.

Regarding my own connection with Eleanor, I have tried to do her justice and tell a story that has integrity and that shines a different light through the facets of her life, while still retaining a final glimmering layer of mystery that preserves her enigma and still begs the question ‘Who was and is Eleanor of Aquitaine?’ Make up your own mind.


Giveaway details:

- to participate, leave a comment sharing what it is that you find most fascinating about Eleanor of Aquitaine! Don't forget to include your email address in your comment.

- there are two copies of the book to be given away
- open internationally
- closes 30th June midnight GMT