Lust. Sibling rivalry. Murder. Infidelity. Intertwined family trees. Double and triple crosses. Inheritance battles. Meet the Angevins! Henry and Eleanor, and their obnoxious sons, Henry, Richard, Geoffrey, and John. An ordinary, loving family when they weren’t trying to kill each other.
Eleanor inherited the Aquitaine and the County of Poitou at the age of 15 when her father died while on pilgrimage to Saint James of Compostella. He had gone to ask the saint’s help in smiting some of his vassals with whom he was feuding. Apparently, the saint wasn’t listening, since he died while awaiting the saint’s blessing.
Aquitaine and Poitou covered two-thirds of modern-day France, a prosperous area of farms and vineyards. That wealth enabled the counts of Aquitaine to support the finer arts, hosting poets and troubadours who sang chansons d’geste and chansons d’mour. (Today, the best-known chanson d’geste is the Song of Roland.) Eleanor grew up in a rich, cultured court unmatched at the time in Europe.
Her overlord was Louis VI (a/k/a the Fat), king of France, who was hellbent on expanding French crown territory. Wasting no time, Louis the Fat arranged the marriage of Eleanor to his 16-year-old heir. Eleanor was escorted from sunny, southern France to a dank, drafty abode on the Ile de France in the Seine River.
Louis VII was a saintly lad, more priest than king, while Eleanor was raised by a father who fought the church when he wasn’t fighting his vassals. She eventually gave birth to two daughters, but no heir for the French throne. Not surprisingly, Eleanor was bored with Louis and Paris after ten years of marriage. Then she met a tempestuous 18-year-old, Henry of Anjou.
Henry’s family was even more screwed up than Eleanor’s. His mother, Matilda, was the daughter of King Henry I of England and widow of the Holy Roman Emperor. She insisted on being called Empress Matilda even after becoming the Countess of Anjou when she married a much-younger man, Geoffrey, Count of Anjou. Count Geoffrey was an odd, capricious man. One of his odd habits was wearing a weed (Latin name, planta genet) in his cap.
Love had nothing to do with their marriage. It was an alliance of two ambitious people hoping to use each other to grab more power. Matilda expected to inherit the crown of England because her father arranged for the English barons to swear allegiance to Matilda after his son (Matilda’s brother) died.
But raw power beats a sacred oath any day of the week. When her father died, Matilda’s cousin, Stephan of Blois, had himself crowned King of England in 1135. For the next 19 years, Stephen and Matilda fought a civil war across southern England for control of the English crown. (The Brother Cadfael mysteries by Ellis Peters are set during this civil war.)
Matilda, probably stupidly, looked to her husband, Geoffrey, for assistance. Since she had made no secret of the fact that she thought marrying him was a step down in prestige, it’s not surprising that Geoffrey always seemed too busy to lend her any knights to fight in England. After all, he was busy fighting Stephen and the French king for control of Normandy.
Meanwhile, Henry was shuttled between his parents, much like a child today whose divorced parents share custody. During one of his stays with Geoffrey, Henry was taken to Paris to swear allegiance to the French king as the heir to the County of Anjou and Duke of Normandy.
Henry was 18 years old, a strapping, athletic lad with reddish brown hair. Eleanor was 25 years old with a dull, saintly husband. They fell deep into lust. For Eleanor, it must have felt like a real-life version of a chanson d’mour. But before they could get together, something had to be done about her husband.
Their brilliant plan was to ask the pope for an annulment on the grounds of consanguinity. After some delicate and skillful negotiations, the pope annulled Eleanor’s marriage to Louis in 1152 on the grounds that they were too closely related. All the European aristocratic and royal houses have overlapping family trees, whether in the 12th century or the 21st century. Eleanor promptly married Henry to whom she was even more closely related.
In 1154, King Stephen of England died. Based on his settlement with Matilda that had ended the English civil war, Stephen cut his own son from the inheritance and Henry became Henry II of England; the first Angevin king of England. Henry II and Eleanor now controlled all of England and most of modern-day France. They made a great team, ruling in tandem, at least until they started fighting each other.
Henry II couldn’t keep his britches on. He was a serial philanderer and Eleanor quickly lost patience and tolerance for his catting around. By 1167, she had returned to Poitou, where as Countess of Poitou, she was a vassal of the French king and could count on his support. Eleanor and Henry were at war with each other.
As their sons, Henry, Richard, Geoffrey, and John, grew older, they inevitably joined the family feud. Henry II had fought for everything he had, and he expected his sons to do the same. Henry’s favorite home had a mural showing eaglets attacking an adult eagle, which he bragged was a visual description of his relationship with his sons.
The eldest son, Henry, was slated to inherit the English throne. He badgered his father incessantly about his inheritance until he was given a coronation and became known as Henry the Young King. Richard was Eleanor’s favorite, and she ensured he was made heir to the Aquitaine. Geoffrey was made heir to Brittany, a region his father stole from the French king. John, the youngest son, had no land to inherit and was derisively nicknamed John Lackland by his father.
As any idiot could have predicted, parceling out Angevin lands was like adding gasoline to a fire. The boys fought each other to grab a bigger piece of the inheritance. They fought their father, often with the support of the French king, to whom they owed allegiance for their French lands. Eleanor usually supported her sons as they fought Henry II. (Hell hath no fury…)
In 1173, Eleanor and her sons rebelled against Henry II with support from the French king. From the Pyrenees to the Scottish border, Henry’s realm was in flames. But Henry II practiced 12th century blitzkrieg, traveling at a speed that confounded his enemies. By 1174, he had broken the rebellion and captured Eleanor, imprisoning her. (She remained a prisoner until Henry’s death.) Their sons negotiated a surrender to stay alive and out of a dungeon.
Henry and Eleanor tomb effigy
In 1183, Henry the Young King died and that meant Richard was next in line for the English throne. Henry II decided to reapportion the inheritances of his remaining sons. That set off their last rebellion, which included John Lackland, who had previously sided with his father. They were still fighting when Henry II died in 1189. Eleanor lived well into her 80’s, dying in 1204.
Richard the Lionhearted tomb effigy
Henry II was the first Angevin king and one of the greatest kings of England. But he was a dud as a husband and father. He was succeeded by his son, Richard the Lion-hearted, who bankrupted the kingdom to pay his ransom when he was captured on the way back from the Crusades. His younger brother John was a vicious, arbitrary soul, who liked to torture people. One of John’s victims was his nephew Arthur of Brittany. In 1215, John was forced to sign the Magna Carta to keep his crown. After John died, the Angevins rebranded as the Plantagenets. The last Plantagenet king was Richard III, who died in 1485.
King John tomb effigy
A brief article can’t possibly do justice to the intertwined family trees and medieval allegiances that explain so much of the complexity of Eleanor and Henry II. To get a more in-depth understanding, see Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Four Kings, by Amy Kelly (1950) and The Greatest Knight, by Thomas Asbridge (2014).
