of Aquitaine Queen consort of Henry II King of England - Eleanor of Aquitaine: the mother queen of the Middle Ages

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With him along is come the mother queen,
An At, stirring him to blood and strife.

Shakespeare, King John

When Eleanor of Aquitaine died in 1204 her long career had been the most colourful and the stormiest of any English queen consort before or since. No other English king has possessed so formidable or so lavishly gifted a wife as Henry II. In her day the greatest heiress in Europe, she became in turn queen of France and queen of England, and among her sons were Richard the Lion-heart and king John. It is not a vulgar exaggeration to call her the sex symbol of her age, for she was as beautiful as she was regal, and universally admired. Splendid in person, in rank and fortune, and in adventure, when young she was the idealized and adored lady for whom troubadours wrote their songsand whom disapproving chroniclers compared to Messalina.

At the same time Eleanors story is a family saga. She was very much the royal matriarch who, if not exactly a Livia, ruthlessly dominated her children and turned them against their father. It seems more than likely that her extreme possessiveness helped to bring out their evil qualities, and it may well have been largely responsible for Richards homosexuality. She feuded bitterly with at least one daughter-in-law and contributed towards the destruction of her own grandson.