Eleanor Of Aquitaine: By the Wrath of God, Queen of England - Softcover

Weir, Alison

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099523558 ISBN 13: 9780099523550

Publisher: Vintage, 2008

Synopsis

Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine was one of the leading personalities of the Middle Ages and also one of the most controversial. She was beautiful, intelligent and wilful, and in her lifetime there were rumours about her that were not without substance. She had been reared in a relaxed and licentious court where the arts of the troubadours flourished, and was even said to have presided over the fabled Courts of Love. Eleanor married in turn Louis VII of France and Henry II of England, and was the mother of Richard the Lionheart and King John. She lived to be 82, but it was only in old age that she triumphed over the adversities and tragedies of her earlier years and became virtual ruler of England.

Eleanor has exerted a fascination over writers and biographers for 800 years, but the prevailing myths and legends that attach to her name still tend to obscure the truth. By careful research, Alison Weir has produced a vivid biography with a fresh and provocative perspective on this extraordinary woman.

About this title

Review

Combining the pace and descriptive quality of a novel with the authority of a text book, 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 Lionheart, Eleanor played a prominent part in the politics of the 12th century. The author of a number of other books on the medieval period, Alison Weir brings all the colour 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 82 years of 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 be put to death. Eleanor of Aquitaine is a vivacious but scholarly book with extensive notes and references appended, giving an objective and rich account of the staunch Eleanor, her feuding family and her complex and unstable world. --Karen Tiley

Review

"Her biography reads like a medieval romance, a marvellous intermingling of fact with legend...fascinating...splendid" (Literary Review)

"Weir approaches Eleanor's story with an objective eye and a mass of primary and secondary source material. The result is as vivid as it is informative" (The Times)

"Sensible and eminently readable" (Times Literary Supplement)

"When you finish the book you feel you have been put painlessly (but not necessarily without tears) in possession of the facts of this extraordinary, indefatigable woman, her sufferings and triumphs" (Bevis Hillier Spectator, Books of the Year)

"Triumphantly done" (Sunday Times)

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0099523558
• ISBN 13: 9780099523550
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 464