#Eleanor of Aquitaine

[tomato-bird-art]

“What shall we hang? The holly or each other?”

Made a last minute print inspired by my favorite Toxic Christmas Movie, The Lion in Winter (1968). I always love doing a detailed piece like this! I’ll be selling prints at EBABZ tomorrow, but feel free to pick up a copy on my storenvy as well <3

[wonder-worker]

A central element of the myth of [Eleanor of Aquitaine] is that of her exceptionalism. Historians and Eleanor biographers have tended to take literally Richard of Devizes’s conventional panegyric of her as ‘an incomparable woman’ [and] a woman out of her time. […] Amazement at Eleanor’s power and independence is born from a presentism that assumes generally that the Middle Ages were a backward age, and specifically that medieval women were all downtrodden and marginalized. Eleanor’s career can, from such a perspective, only be explained by assuming that she was an exception who rose by sheer force of personality above the restrictions placed upon twelfth-century women.

-Michael R. Evans, Inventing Eleanor: The Medieval and Post-Medieval Image of Eleanor of Aquitaine

"...The idea of Eleanor’s exceptionalism rests on an assumption that women of her age were powerless. On the contrary, in Western Europe before the twelfth century there were ‘no really effective barriers to the capacity of women to exercise power; they appear as military leaders, judges, castellans, controllers of property’. […] In an important article published in 1992, Jane Martindale sought to locate Eleanor in context, stripping away much of the conjecture that had grown up around her, and returning to primary sources, including her charters. Martindale also demonstrated how Eleanor was not out of the ordinary for a twelfth-century queen either in the extent of her power or in the criticisms levelled against her.

If we look at Eleanor’s predecessors as Anglo-Norman queens of England, we find many examples of women wielding political power. Matilda of Flanders (wife of William the Conqueror) acted as regent in Normandy during his frequent absences in England following the Conquest, and [the first wife of Henry I, Matilda of Scotland, played some role in governing England during her husband's absences], while during the civil war of Stephen’s reign Matilda of Boulogne led the fight for a time on behalf of her royal husband, who had been captured by the forces of the empress. And if we wish to seek a rebel woman, we need look no further than Juliana, illegitimate daughter of Henry I, who attempted to assassinate him with a crossbow, or Adèle of Champagne, the third wife of Louis VII, who ‘[a]t the moment when Henry II held Eleanor of Aquitaine in jail for her revolt … led a revolt with her brothers against her son, Philip II'.

Eleanor is, therefore, less the exception than the rule – albeit an extreme example of that rule. This can be illustrated by comparing her with a twelfth century woman who has attracted less literary and historical attention. Adela of Blois died in 1137, the year of Eleanor’s marriage to Louis VII. […] The chronicle and charter evidence reveals Adela to have ‘legitimately exercised the powers of comital lordship’ in the domains of Blois-Champagne, both in consort with her husband and alone during his absence on crusade and after his death. […] There was, however, nothing atypical about the nature of Adela’s power. In the words of her biographer Kimberley LoPrete, ‘while the extent of Adela’s powers and the political impact of her actions were exceptional for a woman of her day (and indeed for most men), the sources of her powers and the activities she engaged in were not fundamentally different from those of other women of lordly rank’. These words could equally apply to Eleanor; the extent of her power, as heiress to the richest lordship in France, wife of two kings and mother of two or three more, was remarkable, but the nature of her power was not exceptional. Other noble or royal women governed, arranged marriages and alliances, and were patrons of the church. Eleanor represents one end of a continuum, not an isolated outlier."

[ladygodgiven]

[stephantom]

Eleanor: You'd only just found Rosamund. Henry: Not her so damn particularly. I found other women. Eleanor: Countless others. Henry: What's your count?

+ bonus

[liveactionproblematicotd]

Today’s problematic ship is King Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine from The Lion in Winter

Toxic

Requested by anonymous

[shirleyjacksonism]

"What does it mean to be a descendant of something monstrous? To still love the monster?"

On Earth We're Breafly Gorgeous, Ocean Vuong // How to Wear Your Mother's Lipstick, Warsan Shrine // Taint, Paul Tran // The Lion in Winter (1968) // Mirror Traps, Hera Lindsay Bird // No Human Hands to Touch, Elizabeth Wein // Family Tree (Intro), Ethel Cain // The Winter Prince, Elizabeth Wein // On Hysteria, Sam Sax

[medievalandfantasymelee]

👑🌹The Queen of Love and Beauty🌹👑

Round 2: 6 of 6

The Queen of Love and Beauty shall hold the honour of presenting unto the winner of the Tournament his Champion's Coronet.

Vote for the lady who, to you, best exemplifies feminine dignity, grace and loveliness

The three contenders with the most votes will advance.

Row 1

- Princess Isabella Maria Lucia Elizabetta of Valencia [Karen David], Galavant (2015-2016)

- Danielle de Barbarac [Drew Barrymore], Ever After: A Cinderella Story (1998)

Row 2

- Eleanore of Aquitaine [Katharine Hepburn], The Lion in Winter (1968)

- Guinevere [Angel Coulby], BBC’s Merlin (2008-2012)

Row 3

- Isabeau of Anjou [Michelle Pfeiffer], Ladyhawke (1985)

- Padmavati [Deepika Padukone], Padmaavat (2018)

[bucksboobs]

She ordered the assassiSLAYtion of the ArchMOTHER of CUNTerbury by asking “will no one rid me of this SERVEulant PUSSY?”

[angevinyaoiz]

All the blossoms in my garden 🪴

An Angevin-Plantagenets family tree I made for my medieval art collection zine, “If All The World Were Mine!” The physical edition is now available, so check it out if you can :D

[cesareeborgia]

↳ favourite queen consorts of england

[incendavery]

queen eleanor's confession

[tomato-bird-art]

Thanks everyone for liking my Lion in Winter fanart! I had a lot of fun at EBABZ yesterday even though literally only ONE person recognized it lol (and I gave it out for free just for that hahah...shout-out to u!!!)

For the people who DO know the movie, you can get a copy of this print (as well as my other historical inspired works...) on my storenvy!

[satansemployee]

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— callbacks in the lion in winter (1968)‎‎

A little project to tide me up while I wait to complete my binding of the movie screenplay. This is the second draft of the screenplay for the movie, so a couple quotes might not be found in the movie (like John's "mother me") but also might be missing. even though this draft has some amazing deleted lines.

the quotes are just in order of when I thought about them, since I was surprised by just how explicit some themes are. watching it with subtitles the amount of "dogs barking" around when Henry does anything is almost comical. But at the same time they're not simple callbacks, ya know? The motivs are just subtle enough to be motivs but you can still find them in writing. Anyway. James Goldman has now become my ridicolous writing standard to aspire to that I'll never achieve. gooood for me.

(edited on 29/06 and added another callback)

[eleanor-of-fuquitaine]

HENRY: Isn't some agreement possible?

The Lion in Winter (1968)

[wonder-worker]

A ‘Black Legend’ was formed within [Eleanor of Aquitaine's] own lifetime and in the decades immediately after her death by clerical chroniclers who viewed her with suspicion as a powerful and independent woman. [She was depicted as ‘a queen who was not only an adulteress but who usurped male sovereignty by demanding an annulment of her first marriage, choosing her second husband on her own authority and later instigating her sons into rebellion against him’] The Black Legend was inflated by posthumous exaggeration or invention, so that as early as the mid-thirteenth century her rumoured affair with Prince Raymond was transformed into a dalliance with Saladin. The later Middle Ages and early-modern period added further calumnies, notably the legend that she murdered Rosamond de Clifford, her rival for the affections of Henry II.

If the medieval and early-modern image of Eleanor was a largely negative one, the twentieth century saw a backlash – inspired to a great extent by Second-Wave Feminism – which sought to restore the image of Eleanor, with a few added embellishments. A ‘more flattering kind of character distortion’ developed that created ‘an idealized picture of her as a romantic figure’. For authors such as Amy Kelly, Régine Pernoud and Marion Meade, Eleanor became a feminist heroine, political thinker and activist, patron of the troubadours, judge of the ‘Courts of Love’ and bearer of the enlightened culture of the Midi to a gloomy and priest-ridden north. While providing a useful corrective to the Black Legend, the twentieth-century backlash threatened to create a counter-mythology as powerful as the one it sought to overturn. In the words of Jacques Le Goff, she is as much a figure of romance as of history, and ‘has been both the victim of a black legend and the beneficiary of an embellished [or golden] myth’.

-Michael R. Evans, Inventing Eleanor: The Medieval and Post-Medieval Image of Eleanor of Aquitaine

[entropiasgift]

"Dear me, whatever shall we do with mother?"