In the competition for remarkable queens, Eleanor of Aquitaine tends to win.
In addition the book includes the fruits of her own research, breaking new ground on Eleanor\'s relationship with the Church, her artistic patronage and her relationships with all of her children, including her family by her first marriage..
A number of oft-repeated myths are debunked and a fresh vision of Eleanor emerges.
The result is a complete re-evaluation of this remarkable woman\'s even more remarkable life.
In this biography Sara Cockerill has gone back to the primary sources, and the wealth of recent first-rate scholarship, and assessed which of the claims about Eleanor can be sustained on the evidence.
But the reality is that Eleanor of Aquitaine\'s life has been subjected to successive reinventions over the years, with the facts usually losing the battle with speculation and wishful thinking.
It might be thought that this material would need no embroidery.
The headlines: orphaned as a child, Duchess in her own right, Queen of France, crusader, survivor of a terrible battle, kidnapped by her own husband, captured by pirates, divorced for barrenness, Countess of Anjou, Queen of England, Mother of at least five sons and three daughters, supporter of her sons\' rebellion against her own husband, his prisoner for fifteen years, ruler of England in her own right, traveller across the Pyrenees and Alps in winter in her late sixties and seventies, and mentor to the most remarkable Queen medieval France was to know (her own granddaughter, obviously).
In fact her story sometimes seems so extreme it ought to be made up.
In the competition for remarkable queens, Eleanor of Aquitaine tends to win
