Inhumane, a ball and chain, its Eleanor of Aquitaine! (Eleanor of Aquitaine - Alison Weir)

Member Name: monkeyboy2

Product:	Eleanor of Aquitaine - Alison Weir
Date:	19/08/09 (43 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A history of exciting times full of great characters

Disadvantages: It's about Eleanor of Aquitaine

Eleanor of Aquitaine is, as you may have guessed, a historical biography of the great medieval queen; wife of Henry II, mother of Richard I, and co-founder of a dynasty that was to last nearly 300 years.

Eleanor was born in 1122 as the eldest child to the Duke of Aquitaine and became the heir of her father's domains when Eleanor was eight years old and only after her younger brother died. When she was a mere fifteen years old her father died from drinking contaminated water while on pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela and she inherited one of the richest lands in Europe. As the most eligible woman in the world, she was coveted by all ambitious nobles but was entrusted by her father's will to the care of Louis the Fat King of France, who was to be her protector.

However, the crafty King Louis the Fat (who was so incredibly obese that he could not get out of bed and was to soon die of "a flux of the bowels") decided that, instead of looking after Eleanor, he would marry her to his son and so secure for his dynasty the most powerful and richest duchy in what is now France. And so at sixteen, Eleanor was married to the young man who would become King Louis VII. Unfortunately, it was not a match made in heaven.

Eleanor proved to be a scandal at the court of her husband, with her fashions and rumours of affairs, and, though she bore him two daughters, they were eventually separated when Eleanor pushed for an annulment of their marriage. She quickly and secretly married a man eleven years her junior, Henry of Anjou, the future Henry II of England. She bore him eight surviving children in almost as many years before falling out with her husband and living far apart.

Eventually, three of her sons revolted against their own father and Eleanor supported them, and especially Richard, who was clearly her favourite. Eleanor was captured by the King and was imprisoned for an incredible sixteen years! Released upon the King's death, Eleanor favoured Richard in the ensuing struggle and ended up ruling England for him while he was busy murdering heathens in the Holy Land. Eventually, Eleanor outlived all but two of her children and died during the reign of her youngest, the pantomime baddie King John.


Not only was she at the centre of West European events during fascinating times, Eleanor was remarkably long-lived and is therefore a good figure upon which to hang a historical narrative covering the period of the late twelfth century. History books that cover a period rather than a person are increasingly out of favour because they do not sell as well as biography. Take this book for example. If it were called "England and France: 1122 to 1204" it would clearly not sell as well as "Eleanor of Aquitaine (From the author who brought you: The Lady Elizabeth!)" but because the evidence for Eleanor's life and personality is so slim, the book in actual fact reads much more like a general history of the age.

And this is no bad thing because despite the fact that Eleanor was a very strong and influential woman for her time and is thus something of a feminist icon, it is ironically through her husbands and sons that her story really takes off. For she was forever hidden behind castle walls, pulling strings in secret, and that may be remarkable but it isn't exciting. Much better are the stories of what Henry II achieved - putting down endless rebellions throughout his empire and crafting the first proper laws in England, and the constant presence of William the Marshall, possibly the greatest and hardest knight to have lived, and of course Richard's psychotic rampages while on the Third Crusade, one of the best stories going. Whenever the book cuts back to what Eleanor was doing at the time, I was deeply bored. The period is so rich and fascinating that it seems a waste of time to dwell on what Eleanor purchased in a particular year and how much she paid for it. Oh, she bought twenty yards of red cloth for £3? Great.

Weir's style is perfectly adequate, though it is never written especially well. She often gets bogged down in needless detail while passing over other events with barely a mention. At one point she says in the middle of a sentence that Henry II and Eleanor laid down their crowns at a church and swore to never wear them again. What? Why, what was that about, was it symbolic, is the story even true, where does the evidence come from? But Weir just skips right over it. Sloppy. Despite such lapses, the author does display a keen eye for reliable evidence, often citing her reasons for discounting certain previously accepted stories.

Another criticism, though one that can be levelled at most histories, is the lack of interest Weir shows in ordinary people. She acknowledges that peasants were seen by their rulers as the scum of the earth but then makes little attempt to describe the way in which the actions of Eleanor's warmongering family affected the ordinary folk. It is almost as if they did not exist. When a castle is sacked, it is though the only person to suffer is its lord and not the men forced to fight for the petty power games of their lieges, or the women raped and murdered so that one noble does not lose face to another. Although, if you want to read about that in detail, yes, read a social or Marxist history, but to my mind Weir does a poor job of describing anything other than the nobility, as if they were the only people involved.

This isn't a bad book but it isn't particularly good either. It serves as a good introduction to the period, though as it focuses on Eleanor it can be quite boring. I would suggest a biography of Henry II or Richard I or a history of the Plantagenet line in general instead of this, and there are plenty of those sorts of books about.

Summary: Get a book about the 2nd and 3rd Crusades instead