Source Text:

Name: Eleanor de Aquitaine Famous memorial
Birth Date: 14 Nov 1122
Birth Location:
Death Date: 1 Apr 1204 (aged 81)
Death Location:
Burial: Fontevraud Abbey
City: Fontevraud-l'Abbaye
County: Département de Maine-et-Loire
State: Pays de la Loire
Country: France
Memorial ID: 6437

French and English Monarch. Duchess and heiress of Aquitaine and Gascogne, Countess of Poitou. Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine inherited the duchy of Aquitaine from her father in 1137. In the same year, on July 25th, she married Louis of France. The couple was very different. Louis had been raised at a monastery and was very calm and she was a woman of independent spirit. In 1147, they both joined the Crusade. During their stay in Antioch she was suspected to have a liaison with her uncle Raymond de Poitiers, who reigned as Prince of Antioch, and she had to return to France alone. She gave birth to two daughters, Marie and Alix, that were later married to two brothers. In March 1152, she got divorced and married again in May, the 19 year old Henry Plantagenet, which led to a scandal. With the divorce and remarriage, Louis not only lost a wife, that he had apparently loved, but also her inheritance which considered of West and a large part of South France. In 1154, Henry became King and his sphere of influence extended thereby from Scotland to the Pyrenees. Over the years they had 8 children. In the beginning, the marriage seems to have been very happy, but later Henry started to have affairs. With much energy, she made politics against her husband. In 1173, she encouraged her three oldest sons to rebel against him and to claim their inheritances early. In 1174, Henry defeated his sons and captured Eleonore. He imprisoned her for most of the following 16 years. She was released when the message of his death reached her prison. While Richard was in on the Crusades, she reined the country very skilled. She traveled all her life governing her children's possession in France. In the Winter of 1199/1200 with the high age of 77, she travelled over the Pyrenees to Castile to visit her daughter Aenor and accompany her granddaughter Blanca to France to marry the dauphin. In later years, she more often retired to the Abbey of Fontevraud where she died and was buried beside her husband and two of her children. She had survived her husbands and eight of her ten children. During the Revolution, her body was exhumed, her bones scattered and never recovered.

Family Members
Parents
Guillaume X of Aquitaine 1099–1137
Aenor de Châtellerault 1103–1130
Spouses
King Louis VII 1120–1180
(m. 1137)
Henry II 1133–1189
(m. 1152)
Siblings
Aelis Petronille de Aquitaine 1125–1151
Children
Marie de Champagne 1145–1198
Alix "Countess of Blois" Capet 1150–1198
William De Poitiers 1153–1156
Henry Plantagenet 1155–1183
Mathilda Plantagenet 1156–1189
Richard I 1157–1199
Geoffrey II Plantagenet 1158–1186
Eleanor Plantagenet 1162–1214
Joan Plantagenet 1164–1199
King John I 1166–1216
John I 1166–1216