ELEANOR: APRIL QUEEN OF AQUITAINE

"Mother of Richard the Lionheart and King John, Eleanor of Aquitane was unique in being queen-consort of both France and England. In an age when women rarely travelled, she crossed Europe and Turkey on horseback to reach the Holy Land with the Second Crusade." "Despite custom giving control of wives' inheritance to their husbands, she resisted both her spouses' efforts to rule her strategic duchy of Aquitane. Refusing to be any man's chattel, she divorced King Louis of France to marry Henry of Anjou and make him Henry II of England. But this was no love match: Eleanor knew her body was a tool of the state. After bearing Henry five sons and three daughters, their final falling out led to her uniting the adult sons against him for a full scale war, in which her betrayal by men she trusted led to fifteen bitter years as Henry's prisoner." "On his death, Eleanor proclaimed herself still Queen of England and ruled it, although aged sixty-seven, until Richard arrived to claim the throne. Throughout the next decade and a half - which saw Richard's futile crusade and imprisonment in Germany, his death, and the disastrous succession by John - this extraordinary queen remained a figure of power, influencing matters of state far beyond her beloved Aquitane. No woman before or since has known such excess of wealth and poverty, power and humiliation." "Often depicted as an oversexed and unscrupulous French duchess, Eleanor is reappraised by Douglas Boyd for the first time in terms of her own Mediterranean culture of Aquitane, which shines a new light on the woman who changed the course of European history for 300 years."--Jacket.