Strong Women - Eleanor of Aquitaine
I like writing about strong women. Powerful women who have bucked the trend of what society demands of them. Who have been determined enough to be their own person and stand up to authority. Women who stand in their power no matter what is ranged against them, including kings. Who wear that power with seeming ease and donโt give it away no matter what is thrown at them. The type of women who personify the alchemical marriage of the Divine Masculine and Divine Feminine. One of those women for me is Eleanor of Aquitaine. Eleanor of Aquitaine was born around 1124 in Bordeaux, France, to the Duke of Aquitaine, William X. She was the eldest child and the reason there is no certainty around the date of her birth is because she was a woman. In much of history, even high-born women were seen as relatively inconsequential other than as bargaining chips for advantageous marriages, so marking their birth formally was not a priority. It would have been different had she been the first-born son. Despite that fact, Eleanor became one of the most powerful people in Western Europe of her time. A woman, one of the most powerful people. That fact alone makes her utterly amazing in my books. But what also makes her wonderful to me is that she owned that power, wore it with seeming ease. In 1137, at the age of around 13, she was married to King Louis VII of France. The same year in which she inherited the duchy of Aquitaine, in the south-west of France, one of the largest and most powerful vassal states in France at the time. The French king ruled over the relatively small Ille de France in the north-west of today's geography of the country. It was obviously a strategic marriage made in a year when both their fathers died. When Louis assumed the French throne in 1137, he did so as the co-ruler of Aquitaine also. Eleanor bore Louis two daughters - an unsatisfactory outcome for a king - and accompanied him on the Second Crusade. After 15 years of marriage, it was annulled on the grounds of the closeness of their familial relationship (they were fourth cousins), but the reality was it had been decided that at 26 years of age, she was too old to have the son the king and his court wanted. Around about the same time, Henry Plantagenet Duke of Normandy, arrived in the French court to pay homage to Louis. It is said that something transpired between Henry and Eleanor, who was 11 years Henry's senior. Certainly, Eleanor did not dispute the annulment and while she had to relinquish her daughters, they remained legitimate and her lands were restored to her control. Whatever happened between them, Eleanor and Henry were married in 1152, and she became Queen of England in 1154.