Eleanor of Aquitaine by Desmond Seward (1978, Hardcover)

Eleanor of Aquitaine
The Mother Queen
by Desmond Seward
Publisher:  Dorset Press
Copyright 1978

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

In King John, Shakespeare portrayed Eleanor as a 'canker'd grandam', governed by lust for power, who schemed against her husband Henry II -- a crime for which she spent fifteen years in prison -- and dominated her children's lives, ruthlessly turning them against their father, the King.  It is also well known that she feuded bitterly with at least one daughter-in-law and contributed to the death of her own grandson.

And, yet, there was another side to this powerful queen consort.  Splendid in person, rank, and fortune, Queen of France -- as the wife of Louis VII -- and then of England, Eleanor of Aquitaine was worshiped by men, loved by her children, and idealized in the songs of the troubadours.  She was renowned for her beauty and her generosity.  Emerging at the King's death to become regent, she immediately ordered the release of prisoners throughout England, announcing: 'By my own experience prisons are hateful to men and to be released from them is a most delightful refreshment to the spirit.'  She also patronized the great abbey at Fontevrault, a refuge for the wives of brutal husbands.

Today her glamour, her patronage of the poets, and her throwing off of the ferocious constraints with which convention shackled women in the twelfth century, are almost forgotten, as are her very real gifts as a politician and a ruler.  This book is an attempt to reconcile the paradoxes in the formidable personality of this 'monstrous injurer of heaven and earth' who was clearly loved and admired by so many.

Condition:  Used.  Hardcover.  Dust cover.  Pages are tanned and darkening from age.  Previous owner's "Library Of" stamp is on the front endpaper.  Dust cover and flaps are tanned from age.  Dust cover shows a bit of edge wear and tear and creasing.

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