Duchess of Aquitaine: A Novel of Eleanor

Delightful story! I love reading about women (especially historical women, even if they are fictionalized) who are strong, smart and witty. Eleanor of Aquitaine was all of these things and more. This is a book that I will read again and again.

At 15, Eleanor knows as the heiress to Aquitaine and Poitou, men will come out of woodwork to claim her as their bride upon the death of her father. She believes that no one less than a king should be her husband. Her goal is to become the Queen of France and not the wife of some duke or worse. The Duchess achieves her objective when she marries King Louis VII, but finds her spouse a loser especially after the disastrous Second Crusade. Concluding he is not worthy of her Eleanor looks across the Channel where Geoffrey of Anjou reigns. However, following her divorce of Louis VII, it is the son Henry Plantagenet that catches her attention. Biographical fiction fans will receive immense pleasure from this deep look at a woman of ambition who marries to achieve her political objective of ruling as a queen. Eleanor sets her mind to become the monarch early on and chooses Louis, who she dubs a loser so she turns to the English throne. The descriptions of the era in France, the Holy Land, Byzantine, and England run deep while the key characters come alive. Margaret Ball provides a powerful look at the twelfth century through the escapes of Eleanor, queen of two countries. Harriet Klausner

The legendary Eleanor of Aquitaine cuts her teeth on the politics of expediency, cobbling together a marriage in 1137 with the son and heir of Louis the Fat, Louis VII, "pale, blonde, beardless, soft as a girl, with meek eyes cast down like a novice monk's." Thinking this a masterful bargain, Eleanor, at fifteen, controls Aquitaine and Poitou after he father's untimely death, seeking only to secure her lands and her person from plundering by a less noble union. It is an impulsive match she will learn to regret as the years pass, Louis a stern spiritual taskmaster with a cold and passionless heart. The saintly Louis is more brutal in his icy contempt for others than any soldier, bereft of compassion, as rigid in his beliefs as a saint and just as dangerous. Upon his arrival to claim his bride, his southern retainers trample Aquitaine and Poitou as though they are poor stepchildren, earning the enmity of Eleanor's subjects. On the fateful day of her marriage, Eleanor's mistake is in assuming that her intended, the future King of France, is a potential political astute, rather than an unwitting and insecure pawn, who might better spend his days in self-flagellation and repentance in a dank monastery cell. Eleanor underestimates the nature of the man she marries and his commitment to his spiritual life. Louis the Pious will never appreciate his wife's talent for politics or her female charms, too enraptured by the nature of sin to live in the real world. On Crusade with Louis in 1147, Eleanor realizes the depth of her unhappiness and the futility of her struggle against men who will not countenance the intelligence of women. After humiliating defeat, Louis leaves the land of the infidels, revising his actions until he has become a hero, Eleanor the cause of the losses. Ball's decidedly feminist-friendly Eleanor has reached womanhood despite a stifling environment, anxious to be free of Louis and once more in control of her own property. Perhaps this is her only real conceit, for Eleanor is pawn to any man who can claim her once she leaves Louis' protection. So she makes another educated gamble, allying herself with Henry Plantagenet, who will be King Henry II of England, eschewing the emotional vacuum of her marriage to Louis for a future with Henry. Eleanor is remembered as a pawn of history, a frivolous and unfaithful wife. Perhaps not. Surviving indifference, betrayal and a natural prejudice against the female sex, the extraordinary Eleanor of Aquitaine is born to rule, Queen of France, future Queen of England and mother of Richard the Lionheart; unfortunately Louis is too blinded by asceticism and his own virtue to appreciate the value of such a consort. Luan Gaines/ 2006.