Eleanor of Aquitaine: the Mother Queen
“This stately and masterful lady, who as queen of France had been accustomed to deference and respect, might now expect as unmarried heiress to Aquitaine to be seized at any moment and married at the point of the sword. She was once more what she had been when her father died — the quarry of every fortune hunter and robber baron.The only escape possible was remarriage to a man of her own choice. An English chronicler (Gervase of Canterbury) suggests that Eleanor dispatched envoys to Henry, duke ...of Normandy, to offer him her hand, but this is unlikely. What probably happened was that she sent secretly to Henry accepting an offer that he had made, perhaps in Paris the previous summer. Her vassals had already been summoned to meet her, ostensibly to consider military matters, and she was therefore able to ask for their approval of the match without delay. Ironically, although she was no less closely related to the duke than she was to Louis, the couple did not bother to obtain a papal dispensation (although in 1146 a proposed marriage between Henry and Eleanor’s daughter had been vetoed by St Bernard on the grounds of consanguinity).MoreLess
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