Eleanor of Aquitaine: Wife of Louis VII of France and subsequently of Henry II of England and mother of Richard the Lionheart, Eleanor played a prominent part in the politics of the 12th century. It will also create the devil's brood of Plantagenets - including Richard Cœur de Lion and King John - and the most notoriously vicious marriage in history. Theirs is a union founded on lust which will create a great empire stretching from the wilds of Scotland to the Pyrenees. This woman is Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine, and her sole purpose now is to return to her vast duchy and marry the man she loves, Henry Plantagenet, a man destined for greatness as King of England. The Captive Queen: It is the year 1152 and a beautiful woman of thirty, attended by only a small armed escort, is riding southwards through what is now France, leaving behind her crown, her two young daughters and a shattered marriage to Louis of France, who had been more like a monk than a king, and certainly not much of a lover. Through the story of these first five Plantagenet queens, Alison Weir provides an enthralling new perspective on a dramatic period of high romance and sometimes low politics, with determined women at its heart.A special bundle of one fiction and one non-fiction title from bestselling historian Alison Weir, both exploring the life of Eleanor of Aquitaine.
The lives of Eleanor’s successors were just as remarkable: Berengaria of Navarre, queen of Richard the Lionheart, Isabella of Angoulême, queen of John, and Alienor of Provence, queen of Henry III, and finally Eleanor of Castile, the grasping but beloved wife of Edward I. Her narrative begins with the formidable Eleanor of Aquitaine, whose marriage to Henry II establishes a dynasty which rules for more than 300 years and creates the most powerful empire in Western Christendom - but also sows the seeds for some of the most destructive family conflicts in history and for the collapse, under her son King John, of England’s power in Europe. We see events such as the murder of Becket, the Magna Carta and the birth of parliaments from a new perspective. Crusading queens, queens in rebellion against their king, queen seductresses, learned queens, queens in battle, queens who enlivened England with the romantic culture of Southern Europe - these determined women often broke through medieval constraints to exercise power and influence, for good and sometimes for ill.Īlison Weir’s ground-breaking history of the queens of medieval England now moves into a period of even higher drama, from 1154 to 1291: years of chivalry, dynastic ambition, conflict with the church, baronial wars and the all-pervading bonds of feudalism. The Plantagenet queens of England played a role in some of the most dramatic events in our history.
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