Eleanor of Aquitaine: By the Wrath of God, Queen of England

Alison Weir

ISBN 10: 0099523558 / ISBN 13: 9780099523550

Published by Vintage Publishing, 2008

About this Item

2008. 01st Edition. Paperback. Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine was one of the leading personalities of the Middle Ages, and also one of the most controversial. Having inherited a vast feudal domain stretching from the Loire to the Pyrenees, she was one of the greatest heiresses in history. This biography offers a perspective on this woman. Num Pages: 464 pages, 16pp b/w plates. BIC Classification: 1DBKE; 3H; BGH; HBJD1; HBLC. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 198 x 130 x 29. Weight in Grams: 332. . . . . . Seller Inventory # V9780099523550

Bibliographic Details

Title: Eleanor of Aquitaine: By the Wrath of God, ...

Publisher: Vintage Publishing

Publication Date: 2008

Binding: Soft cover

Condition: New

Edition: 1st Edition

About this title

Synopsis:

Eleanor of Aquitaine was a remarkable woman. She was an important factor in the reign of four kings, lived to the ripe old age of 82, bore 10 children and outlived all but two of them. Her sons were kings of England and her daughters queens of Castile and Sicily, while her later descendants included a Holy Roman emperor and kings of France and Spain, as well as a couple of saints. In an age of men, she was indeed a powerful woman.Born in 1122 into the sophisticated and cultured court of Poitiers, Eleanor of Aquitaine came of age in a world of luxury, bloody combat, and unbridled ambition. At only fifteen, she inherited one of the great fortunes of Europe - the prize duchy of Aquitaine - yet was forced to submit to a union with the handsome but sexually withholding Louis VII, the teenage king of France. The marriage endured for fifteen fraught years, until Eleanor finally succeeded in having it annulled - only to enter an even stormier match with Henry of Anjou, who would soon a

Review:

Combining the pace and descriptive quality of a novel with the authority of a textbook, Alison Weir's study of the revered and reviled Eleanor of Aquitaine should be valuable to anyone with an interest in medieval European history. Wife of Louis VII of France and subsequently of Henry II of England, and mother of Richard "the Lion-Hearted," Eleanor played a prominent part in the politics of the 12th century. The author of a number of other books on the medieval period (Life of Elizabeth I, The Children of Henry VIII), Weir brings all the color and ever-present dangers of Eleanor's world to life, filling the text with absorbing background detail and revelatory contemporary anecdotes. She is concerned throughout to make critical analysis of the primary sources, the later myths about Eleanor, and other modern biographies. This results in a fresh and thoughtful perspective on the energetic life of a determined and ambitious woman living with the sexism, excesses, and violence of a society in which the word of a single man could condemn thousands to death. Eleanor of Aquitaine is a vivacious but scholarly book with extensive notes and references, giving an objective and rich account of the staunch Eleanor, her feuding family and her complex and unstable world. --Karen Tiley, Amazon.co.uk