In her new book on Eleanor of Aquitaine, Lindy Grant provides a fine overview of the celebrated queen’s life and legend. The first three chapters recount the story of Eleanor’s life as queen of France, queen of England, and finally, dowager queen of England (in which role she flourished). The following six chapters address particular aspects of Eleanor’s life, including her family, her wealth, her interactions with clerics, and the extent of her power. The book takes excellent advantage of primary sources, especially charters and the English pipe rolls, which ground its claims in solid empirical data. On that basis, it provides the most useful analysis yet produced of Eleanor’s household, including the backgrounds of those who attended upon her and the positions they occupied in her administration. The abundant color photographs, maps, and family trees make the volume a pleasure to read, especially at such a reasonable price. At the same time, as Grant acknowledges, Eleanor of Aquitaine confronts the challenges faced by any serious scholar who takes on a figure at once so famous and so ephemeral.
Though Eleanor is the best-known queen of the Middle Ages, her celebrity is due less to her recorded life than to her legend. We would like to know what role Eleanor played in the colorful events at the Capetian and Angevin courts during the twelfth century, but, as Grant recognizes, we have little evidence on this topic to consider. Of the mysterious interaction between Eleanor, her first husband, Louis VII of France, and her uncle, Raymond of Antioch, during the Second Crusade, which did so much to destroy her reputation, she states, “It is impossible to know what really happened between Eleanor and Raymond in Antioch” (85). Of the Young King’s rebellion against her second husband, Henry II of England, she relates, “It is impossible to know how deeply implicated she was in planning the revolt” (167). Throughout the book, Grant offers speculations, often qualified by “doubtless” or “probably,” instead of assertions. She writes that, putting aside the basic facts, “The other aspects of her life are all problematic; they are clouded by legend, or by paucity of evidence” (10); “There is surprisingly little evidence beyond the legends and fantasies” (170); and “The pervasive legends hide her from us. The evidence that does survive is fragmentary, difficult, and deceptive” (175). Time and again, she states simply, “We can never know” (114). Grant could turn her attention to the “pseudo-historical” material that did so much to make Eleanor a memorable figure, such as the popular vernacular chronicles, the troubadour razos, the exempla, the ballads, and the crusade romances which speak of her, but their lack of firm historical foundation causes her to reject these sources. Of Andreas Capellanus’s famous account of the so-called Courts of Love, in which Eleanor allegedly participated, she remarks, for example, “It was a satirical fantasy, not a reflection of what actually happened at Eleanor and young Richard [I of England]’s court at Poitiers” (34). Troubadour verse, like that which makes mention of Eleanor and her circle, is dismissed as “an intrinsically misogynistic art form” (106). (Even trobairitz verse, like that of Maria de Ventadorn, who lived on Eleanor’s lands and whose role in debating courtly love resembles that attributed to Eleanor?) If one dismisses accounts of Eleanor which are not historically verifiable, one has very little to go on.
The problem in writing about Eleanor is not only that her celebrity is due to her legend, but also that her life by itself can seem so unexceptional. When Grant considers Eleanor role as duchess of Aquitaine and countess of Poitou, she states, “She showed no interest in administrative rulership within Aquitaine” (165). Her political power was mediocre (174), and her political judgment marred by “terrible errors” (173), especially when it came to her participation in the Young King’s revolt. When Grant considers Eleanor as a patron of religious institutions, she finds her to be unusual primarily in “her stinginess with gifts” (130). Eleanor was not a sponsor of literature, art, or architecture. Under her rule, she writes of Poitiers, “Nothing suggests that it was a center of vibrant cultural efflorescence” (34). Grant concludes, “Unlike so many of her contemporaries, indeed many of her family, both female and male, she made little use of patronage, either religious or cultural, as a lever of power” (172). Even Eleanor’s tomb sculpture at the Abbey of Fontevraud, which the queen may have commissioned, and which has often been praised for the naturalistic flow of its drapery and the unusual decision to represent its subject reading a book, she finds “disappointingly rustic” (151). When Grant asks, “Was Eleanor an exceptional woman?” (174), her answer is that she was, but only in the length of her life and the variety of her experiences.
Grant does find some positive elements in Eleanor’s character. Like most historians, she perceives her as a weak queen regnant but a powerful dowager queen. During the four years when Richard the Lionheart was off waging the Third Crusade and suffering captivity in the Holy Roman Empire, Eleanor rose to the occasion, displaying the “confidence, competence, and effectiveness” (163) that came from what was by now lengthy experience in affairs of state. Grant writes, “There is no question that she saved the day when Richard was on crusade and during the crisis of his imprisonment” (172). She even compares Eleanor’s role during Richard’s absence to that of Winston Churchill during World War II: “Like Churchill, she had precisely the skills, the qualities, the authority, and the courage to handle the crisis; like Churchill, in other circumstances, her political skills and judgment had been uncertain” (173). Though Grant does not enter into comparisons, the Eleanor that emerges from this book is less powerful and, indeed, less compelling than contemporary women rulers like the Empress Matilda, Mélisende of Jerusalem, or Blanche of Castile, to say nothing of Tamar the Great of Georgia, who is easily the most outstanding queen of this century. Grant provides a historically unimpeachable introduction to Eleanor in this volume. But if Eleanor has stirred the Western imaginary since the twelfth century and if she continues to inspire novels, plays, and films today, the reason may not be found in strictly historical texts.