Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine

Here lies the effigy of Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine at Fontevraud Abbey. If Queen Eleanor were a Dungeons and Dragons character, she’d be like level fifty. At an imaginary dinner table of bad-ass women in history, Eleanor would stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the likes of Cleopatra of Egypt, the Empress Irene of Byzantium, and Catherine the Great of Russia. And wouldn’t you like to be a fly on the wall for that dinner conversation . . .

Eleanor (d. 1204) had enough adventures for several lifetimes: she ruled independently as Duchess of the wealthy fiefdom of Aquitaine for most of her long life. She was married to King Louis VII of France but divorced him when she was thirty and married King Henry II of England. Along the way she obtained a first-rate education (she’s even reading a book on the sculpture of her tomb here), becoming famous for encouraging the chivalric literature so commonly associated with the Middle Ages. She took part in the Second Crusade. She also bore eleven children. Guess which of these things I just listed weren’t considered so great by many of Eleanor’s contemporaries?

Another thing Eleanor did that was not much appreciated by some folks was to support one of her sons in rebellion against his father. King Henry II struck back at his wife by putting Eleanor her under house arrest for about sixteen years, from the time she was 51 to age 67. Eleanor got the last laugh there, though: she outlived Henry. And when she was free, she took the reigns of power in England, managing the kingdom while her son Richard the Lionheart was off on the Third Crusade. Vibrant until her death at 82, Eleanor was often vilified by contemporary (male) writers. Even they, however, didn’t take her for granted.