Plantagenet Princesses: The Daughters of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry II

A unique look at the lives of two daughters that highlights the dichotomy of lives of royal women, as both daughters and mothers of kings, who also knew both prison and power.

The names of few medieval monarchs and their queens are better known than Eleanor of Aquitaine, uniquely queen of France and queen of England, and her second husband Henry II. Although academically labeled "medieval," their era was the violent transition from the Dark Ages, when countries' borders were defined with fire and sword. If princes fought for their succession to crowns, the princesses were traded—usually by their mothers—to strangers for political power without the bloodshed. Years before what would today be marriageable age, royal girls were dispatched to countries whose speech was unknown to them and there became the property of unknown men. Eleanor's daughters Marie and Alix were abandoned in Paris when she divorced Louis VII of France. By Henry II, she bore Matilda, Aliénor, and Joanna. Joanna was imprisoned by William II of Sicily and worse treated by her brutal second husband in Toulouse. If Eleanor was libeled as a whore, Aliénor's descendants include two saints, Louis of France and Fernando of Spain. And then there were the illegitimate daughters, whose lives read like novels . . .

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