Queen Eleanor: Independent Spirit of the Medieval World: A Biography of Eleanor of Aquitaine by Polly Schoyer Brooks |
by Elizabeth Chadwick
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by Elizabeth Chadwick
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by Marion Meade
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by Douglas Boyd
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Product Description
Product Description
In this biography of Eleanor of Aquitaine, one of the most exciting women in European medieval history, Boyd takes the reader to the heart of this extraordinary woman. He reveals her as a peculiarly "modern" character - she rejects as a liberated woman the subordinate role decreed by the Chruch and Salic law; she refused to be a consenting victim of ethnic cleansing; and she promotes her vision of a continent wide dynasty - and sets her into the context of southern French civilization, with its love of comforts and pleasures in life. The book not only recreates the turbulent life of this woman, but takes the reader into the world she knew - her friendships, the food she ate, the clothes she wore, the sounds, sights and smells around her.
From the Author
Previous biographies of Eleanor have presented her as a shadowy, unscrupulous French duchess on the make. This is because medieval historians relied until recently on the misogynistic celibate chroniclers, who relished unsubstantiated sexual scandal as a way of diminishing a powerful woman.
My study of new sources, including contemporary troubadour poetry written in Occitan – Eleanor’s first language – reveals a very different person. In the first place, she wasn’t French. Secondly, she was effectively the queen of her own Mediterranean people before marrying Louis VII and England’s Henry I.
Why did she go on the Second Crusade? Why did she have eleven children? Why did she risk everything to rebel against Henry and pay the price of fifteen years’ deprivation of liberty? What happened when her son Richard the Lionheart died? These and many other questions are answered for the first time. And in the process, one of English history’s great dilemmas is resolved: Henry’s appointment of his chancellor Becket as archbishop of Canterbury and Becket’s murder.
Why do I call her the April Queen? You have to read the book to find out!
My study of new sources, including contemporary troubadour poetry written in Occitan – Eleanor’s first language – reveals a very different person. In the first place, she wasn’t French. Secondly, she was effectively the queen of her own Mediterranean people before marrying Louis VII and England’s Henry I.
Why did she go on the Second Crusade? Why did she have eleven children? Why did she risk everything to rebel against Henry and pay the price of fifteen years’ deprivation of liberty? What happened when her son Richard the Lionheart died? These and many other questions are answered for the first time. And in the process, one of English history’s great dilemmas is resolved: Henry’s appointment of his chancellor Becket as archbishop of Canterbury and Becket’s murder.
Why do I call her the April Queen? You have to read the book to find out!
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