INVENTING ELEANOR By Michael R. Evans: My thoughts.

Inventing Eleanor: the mediaeval and post-mediaeval image Eleanor of Aquitaine by Michael R. Evans.  Bloomsbury Academic ISBN 978 1 4411 6900 6

While browsing the Internet for research, I came across a reference to this book and feeling it would be a really useful addition to my shelves, I went ahead and bought it.

 During my research into Eleanor of Aquitaine, I constantly come across misconceptions and false information in secondary sources including biographies. I also come across comments about Eleanor being a great feminist icon and a woman way ahead of her time, and then I want to bang my head on the desk (metaphorically speaking).  So it was great to come across a work that aims to set the record straight and that tells us just where these odd notions about Eleanor originate.

From the back of the book:

‘Eleanor of Aquitaine (1124- 1204) Queen of France and England and mother of two Kings has often been described as one of the most remarkable women of the Middle Ages. Yet her real achievements have been embellished - and even obscured - by myths that have grown up over eight centuries. This process began in her own lifetime, as chroniclers reported rumours of  scandalous conduct on crusade, and has continued ever since. She has been variously viewed as an adulterous queen, a monstrous mother and jealous murderess, but also was a patron of literature, champion of courtly love and proto-feminist defender of women’s rights. Inventing Eleanor interrogates the myths that have grown up around the figure of Eleanor of Aquitaine and investigates how and why historians and artists have invented an Eleanor who is very different from the 12^th century queen. The book first considers the mediaeval primary sources  and then proceeds to trace the post-mediaeval development of the image of Eleanor, from demonic Queen to feminist icon, in historiography and the broader culture.’

This is exactly what the book does in a very readable form that still remains scholarly and detailed in its sources.   The contents include an introduction where the author sets out his reasons for writing the book and argues that she was ‘far from unique amongst 12^th century royal and noble women.’ Professor Evans seeks to unravel how she acquired her reputation for exceptionalism. He remarks on the opening page  that Eleanor’s biographers must take some of the blame for this. ‘In the absence of hard evidence (these) biographies have often been fleshed out by speculation and the creation or perpetuation of myths.’

Following a detailed introduction, Professor Evans traces Eleanor’s reputation, through the blackening of her name during her own lifetime and the time soon after her death.  He explores too the legends surrounding Rosamond de Clifford and how both women’s reputations have suffered at the hands of myth and legend.

Chapter 2 looks at Eleanor in historiography and how realistically she is portrayed. He observes that ‘historians may have striven to create (in the words of Edmond-René Labande) ‘a realistic image of Eleanor of Aquitaine’, but that image has struggled to replace that of the more colourful meta-Eleanor in the public consciousness. Hence an online author in 2013 is still able to write of Eleanor in stereotypical terms that would have been familiar to a mid-19^th-century readership of popular history.’  He goes on to explore the way in which Eleanor’s reputation has been distorted to suit the ideologies of particular historical periods and historians with axes to grind. So ‘In the late 20^th century, second wave feminist movement gave birth to a new interest in Eleanor of Aquitaine as a female hero, but often at the expense of exaggerating her deeds and influence, and reinforcing the myth of her exceptionalism.’  He also explores Eleanor’s depiction as a new-age neopagan type!  He comes the conclusion that ‘historians of Eleanor have created an image of her, and mediaeval women as a whole, that is misleading.  My thoughts exactly.

The third chapter deals with Eleanor the woman of the South and very quickly puts paid to the notion of the original Eleanor as propitiating a great Southern cause.  He says that Eleanor is ‘arguably a northern as much as a  southern figure…It was Poitou, not the south-west that was the heartland of Eleanor’s realm and where the Dukes of Aquitaine held the greatest concentration of demesne lands.’  …. He also explores a suggestion from a recent set of essays about Eleanor that claims she  didn’t actually speak Occitan at all.  The courts of love and literary patronage are shown to be relatively insignificant in Eleanor’s life. He comes to the conclusion that Eleanor of Aquitaine ‘can in no way be considered a southern figure in an alien and hostile northern world. Her native duchy straddled the divide between the North and the South, and its main power centres were closer to Paris than to the Mediterranean.’  Bam, another dearly held myth bites the dust.

The next chapter deals with Eleanor’s portrayal in drama before 1900 and goes into great detail via Shakespeare, operas and sundry plays and dramas. From there it’s onto Eleanor in drama post-1900, and of course the iconic Lion in Winter. TV series such as Robin of Sherwood also receive a mention for how Eleanor is portrayed in cameo roles.

  Professor Evans  then takes an overview of how Eleanor is portrayed in fiction and there is a fine accolade for author Sharon Kay Penman. Jean Plaidy’s take on Eleanor is discussed too and there are some ‘interesting’ quotes from Alison Weir’s the captive Queen.  There’s also a section on Eleanor in young adult fiction.

Then it’s onto Eleanor in the visual arts including mediaeval images. This was particularly interesting for me because Professor Evans discusses the mural at Chinon that is often said to portray Eleanor and Henry. Indeed many novels and biographies feature this portrait on the cover with the middle crown figure depicted as Eleanor. However, it ain’t necessarily so, and it seems,according to art historian Ursula Nielgen who has examined the work in detail and dated it to the late 12^th century that the figures are all male and more likely to represent Henry II and his four sons. I was also pleased in this section to find that Evans had picked up my research on various biographer’s beliefs on Eleanor’s appearance and I receive a mention at the beginning of the chapter.

Having thoroughly explored Eleanor in the visual arts, right up to modern ‘headless’ covers in historical fiction, Professor Evans goes on to make his conclusion, which is basically that finding the real Eleanor remains an uphill struggle because of all the myths perpetuated. However, with continuing scholarship that doesn’t pander to these myths and stereotypes we may gradually begin to see a more nuanced Eleanor than of yore.

 During his summary he remarked that while historians may shake their heads at the likes of certain recent works of historical fiction about Eleanor, ‘historical novelists such as Sharon Kay Penman and Elizabeth Chadwick are seeking to apply modern scholarship to their fiction, and consequently avoid the most egregious of the legends surround Eleanor.’  That’s nice!

Highly recommended for those who want to take a look under the surface and who are prepared with an open mind to have their perceptions and preconceptions challenged.

I would add that it is rather expensive - which seems to be the case with most academic books these days.

THE SUMMER QUEEN: Behind the scenes 9: The Research Books.

I have a huge library of research books. You can see some of them here - it needs updating with more when I have an hour to spare! My Reference Books

On my Behind the Scenes post today though,  I want to post just a few of the research books I used in writing THE SUMMER QUEEN.  I hope you'll enjoy them!


REFERENCE BOOKS USED IN THE RESEARCHING THE SUMMER QUEEN - Not in any order of preference.  Marked with 3 stars are the most interesting and/or useful, then 2, then 1. Bools marked with a question mark are ones I would advise the reader to use with caution and check up on the facts via more reliable sources. The more question marks, the more caution required!

***  'Travel Diary of the 2nd Crusade as
far as Antioch.  Primary source

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THE SUMMER QUEEN: Behind the Scenes part 5: Scandalous Ancestors

SCANDALOUS ANCESTORS

                Alienor has a reputation dwelt on by her biographers for coming from a family laden with dysfunctional characters whose lives were rife with shocking scandals. People will sometimes say ‘It’s no wonder she turned out as she did with ancestors like that.’  Actually I think she turned out rather well against the odds, and while everyone looks to her ‘interesting’ family relationships, no-one ever pauses to examine Louis’ ancestors in the same way.  I also wonder how out of the ordinary her family experiences were for everyday aristocratic experience in the 12^th century.  When you begin looking, everyone has entire racks of skeletons rattling in their cupboards!

Alienor’s paternal grandfather had a lively past.  William IX Duke of Aquitaine, was a man with an aptitude for poetry, some of it crude and bawdy, (however, one has to remember that crude and bawdy poetry was a cultural norm of the time and would have been less shocking then, than it is now) and a huge  appetite for life in all its guises.  

His first wife was Ermengarde, daughter of Count Fulke IV of  Anjou, but that marriage was dissolved after four years and was without children.  William moved on to pastures new and in 1094  married Philippa, daughter and heir of count William IV of Toulouse by whom he had several children, including two boys – William and Raymond, and five daughters.   Four years into his marriage with Philippa, the couple seized Toulouse, which Philippa regarded as her birthright, and to which her grand daughter Alienor would continue to press a claim in her turn.   Threatened with excommunication for such an act, William went on crusade in expiation.  To do so, he had to mortgage Toulouse back to the son of the man he had taken it from – which proved an unwise move and led to him and Philippa once more losing Toulouse.

Duchess Philippa persuaded her husband to give some land in northern Poitou on which to found a religious community dedicated to the Virgin Mary.  This was to become the famous Fontevraud Abbey which would later be the resting place of Alienor of Aquitaine, her second husband Henry II and their son Richard I.

William managed to fall foul of the church on a couple of occasions, the first time for tax evasion, the second time for abducting the wife of his vassal the count of Chatelleraut. The lady  went by the name of Amaberge or something similar, but came to be known as Dangereuse – for reasons that history does not disclose.   William brought her to Poitiers and installed her in an apartment built for her that came to be known as the Maubergeonne Tower.   Philippa  protested at his behaviour and complained to the church. When a bishop demanded that William give up his mistress, William replied that hair would grow on the priest’s bald pate before he gave up Dangereuse.

Philippa retired to Fontevraud, there to fulminate with Ermengarde, William’s first wife, about William’s scurrilous behaviour. (Ermengarde was then lodging at Fontevraud).

  Dangereuse had a daughter, Aenor, from her union with her cuckolded husband, Aimery of Rochefoucaud.   A marriage was arranged between Aenor and Duke William’s heir and namesake, William.  What the children thought of their parents’ liaison isn’t known.  Did William side with his mother?  Did Aenor feel for her father?  We’ll never know how this dynamic worked out, or how William X and Aenor felt about each other, although they did their duty and produced three children,  Alienor, Petronella, and William Aigret,  

Alienor, born in 1124, was only about two years old when her notorious, poetry-writing  grandfather died.  How much influence he had on his little granddaughter we don’t know. Also there is no indication as to when Dangereuse died and we don’t know how much contact she had with her.

Whatever the unknown details, the ones we do know – adulterous grandparents, one of whom was excommunicated twice and was in the habit of writing sexually and scatalogically explicit verse – have served to colour Alienor’s own reputation down the years.  She must have had the potential for being flighty and up to no good with grandparents like that, some would say.

But wait a minute.  What of her first husband’s background?  What of the relatives of Louis VII, nick-named in later years Louis the Pious.  Let’s have a look:

It all starts out well with his grandfather Philip, who married one Bertha, daughter of the count of Holland.  With Bertha he had 5 children, including Louis’ father, the future Louis VI.  However, then the cracks begin to open up.  Philip cast his eye upon a lady called Bertrade de Montfort, who unfortunately happened at the time  to be married Count Fulk IV of Anjou (who had already been married several times himself, and was working his way through  an assortment of wives).  The chronicler John of Marmoutier said of the match and Bertrade  “The lecherous Fulk then fell passionately in love with the sister of Amaury de Montfort, whom no good man ever praised save for her beauty.”  Right.

Claiming that Bertha his first wife was too fat, Philip dumped her and abducted and bigamously married Bertrade instead, for which he was excommunicated, first by the Archbishop of Lyon, and then by Pope Urban.  The ban was lifted on several occasions when Philip promised that he would put Bertrade aside, but it was all empty sincerity.  Rather like William IX’s comment that hair would grow on a bald prelate’s head before he gave up Dangereuse de Chatelleraut,  so Philip was too attached to the woman he had snatched from the Count of Anjou, to let excommunication get in the way of the relationship. Eventually the church gave up.

Orderic Vitalis says of Bertrade that she was keen for one of the two sons she had born Philip to succeed him and sent a letter to Henry I asking him to arrest her stepson Louis.  Why Henry I should be involved in this isn’t explained.  Orderic claimed too that Bertrade tried to kill her stepson Louis first through the arts of sorcery, and then through poison.  Her attempts, if there is any truth in them, didn’t work because Louis succeeded his father in 1108 and Bertrade did not die until 1117. William of Malmsbury tells us that  "Bertrade, still young and beautiful, took the veil at Fontevraud Abbey, always charming to men, pleasing to God, and like an angel."   If she did go to Fontevraud, then she must have known the self-exiled wives of William IX of Aquitaine too – what an enclave that must have been!   Bertrade’s son from her first marriage was Fulke V, father of Geoffrey le Bel, and grandfather of Henry II.  

Meanwhile, another scandal bubbling under in French royal and allied circles, involved the sister of Louis VI, Constance, who was Louis VII’s aunt.   She was married to Hugh, Count of Troyes, and bore him a son baptised Eudes.  However, Hugh believed himself impotent and contested the paternity of the child, declared him illegitmate, and instead made his nephew Theobald of Blois his heir.  Hugh and Constance’s marriage was dissolved and she went on to marry Bohemond of Antioch and departed for a life in the Middle East.  Deluded husband?  Unfaithful wife?  Who knows?

Which all goes to show that Alienor was not the only one with skeletons in her family cupboard and her husband Louis’ background was every bit as colourful as her own.  Not that you find biographers making much mention or calling Louis out on his ancestors!

THE SUMMER QUEEN Behind The Scenes 4. Alienor's age:

In THE SUMMER QUEEN, Alienor of Aquitaine begins the novel as a bride of 13 years old to the future Louis VII who is 17. 

Alienor’s birth date had long been thought to be 1122, making her 15 at her marriage, but research - now more than ten years old suggests that she was actually born in 1124 and thus only 13.  The 1124 date is the one that historians now prefer.  It's used on the Palais de Justice in Poitiers, which incorporates Alienor's great hall, built after circa 1168. 

An early 14th century manuscript, copied from earlier sources says: “In 1136 on the fifth ides of April, which in that year was Good Friday, William count palatine of Poitou and the last duke of Aquitaine, died at Saint James in Galicia, leaving his only daughter named Alienor, aged thirteen years.’

In terms of earlier sources, the text is a pastiche of excerpts from the chronicles of Geoffrey de Vigeois which were composed in Alienor’s own lifetime. Some of the information is accurate, some is not, but Alienor’s birth date is reckoned correct. The errors come when the information stated has been acquired from further afield than Aquitaine. 

The scholar who has unravelled the tangle of Eleanor's birth year is Andrew W. Lewis, Prof of history at Southwest Missouri State University. He says:

"For Eleanor of Aquitaine's age, most recent scholars have relied on Alfred Richard, the great modern specialist on the counts of Poitou. But details of this sort were not among Richard's strengths as a scholar. Moreover, he vacillated in his statements on the subject, and his argument is circular. Thus, when speaking of Eleanor's birth, he wrote that it was only from knowing that she was 82 years old when she died, in 1204, that one could place her birthday 1122. Yet when speaking of the death he gave her age as 'about 82 years', while citing no source to that effect." 

How did Richards know she was 82 when she died in 1204? There is a primary resource that speaks of her death and which is cited on other occasions - the Chronicae Sancti Albini Andegavensis. When examined by professor Lewis, however, he found that the manuscript did not give any date for her death at all and stated that she died in Poitiers, not at Fontevraud.

Professor Lewis goes on to say that greater confidence can be placed in the genealogical text composed at Limoges because the record contains an early tradition that she was thirteen at the time of her father’s death in April 1137. Lewis is of the opinion that not only would more people at that time, before the passing of generations, have known the facts, but that by canon law women had to be at least 12 years old in order to marry, and the information would have been of practical relevance. It was a deliberate statement that she had attained her majority and important. Most biographers have accepted the Richards’ statement without checking the Chronicae Sancti Albini Andegavensis. chronicle, and therefore calculate the birth date as 1122, based on false secondary sources and that non-existent ‘she died age 82 in 1204' statement.

At the outset of her marriage, then, Alienor was a thirteen year old girl, cast adrift on a sea of uncertainty and facing a future very different to the life she had led thus far. It makes for a fascinating premise to explore in a novel, and one, that as far as I know, has not been used before, other fictions having taken her age at marriage as fifteen.

THE SUMMER QUEEN Behind the scenes 3. ON ELEANOR OF AQUITAINE'S APPEARANCE

THE SUMMER QUEEN research snippets.
Behind The Scenes part 3.

 So what did Alienor look like?

Let’s see what those historians and biographers have to say on that score: 

W.L. Warren in his biography of Henry II calls Eleanor a ‘black-eyed beauty.’

Frank McLynn in Lionheart and Lackland: ‘Eleanor of Aquitaine had a dark complexion, black eyes, black hair, and a curvaceous figure that never ran to fat even in old age.’

Desmond Seward in Eleanor of Aquitaine the Mother Queen: ‘She was a beauty – tall, with a superb figure that she kept into old age, lustrous eyes and fine features. (it is likely that her hair was yellow and her eyes blue).’

Douglas Boyd in Eleanor April Queen of Aquitaine. ‘Her face was humorous and alert, framed by long auburn hair flowing freely from beneath the coronet. Her eyes according to legend were green and fearless.’

Alison Weir in Eleanor of Aquitaine, By the wrath of God Queen of England: ‘It is more likely that she had red or auburn hair since a mural in the church of Sainte Radegonde in Chinon which almost certainly depicts Eleanor and was painted during her lifetime in a region in which she was well known, shows a woman with reddish-brown hair.’ 

Marion Meade in Eleanor of Aquitaine: A biography: ‘Eleanor, exceptionally beautiful at fifteen, had matured into a saucy, hot-blooded damsel, and perhaps he (her father) feared that, unproperly chaperoned, she might grant excessive courtesies to some ardent knight.’…’If she conformed to 12th century Europe’s ideal standards of feminine beauty…she must have been blond with grey or blue eyes set wide apart. Her nose would have been straight, her skin white, and she would certainly have had a long, slender neck, firm breasts, and perfect teeth…’

The above are all interesting and show what a variation in opinion there is, most of it based either on fantasy or wrong information it has to be said, even though the authors are writing ‘factual’ works. Meade’s comment about a ‘saucy, hot-blooded damsel’ is astonishing. It’s a defamatory statement without any kind of proof, but par for the course throughout the various biographies of Alienor through which I’ve ploughed over the last 18 months.

There is not one single physical description of Eleanor out there as to her hair and eye colour.  Not one single. The chapel mural at St. Radegone is more likely NOT to be Alienor rather than Weir’s ‘almost certainly.’ Far more probable, given the dateline of the mural and the composition, is that Henry is leading out his four sons on a hunting expedition with his eldest son the Young King, the crowned figure. The dark one riding at his side, will be John, whom Henry requested to be cared for by the Young King, should Henry himself die untimely. The John figure also, along with the Young King, is nearest to his father, and John was known to be Henry's favourite son.  It’s pretty obvious that the crowned figure isn’t Alienor. The figures of the other riders are of an age to suggest that when this was painted, she was in prison and out of the picture – literally. However, that particular detail seems to have passed certain biographers by!

The black hair, black eyes, and the various droolings over the curvaceous figure would appear to be some sort of modern male wish fulfilment. I haven’t noticed her being particularly buxom on her tomb effigy! 

I have portrayed her with deep blond hair and blue eyes in THE SUMMER QUEEN. My own reasons?
1. My alternative psychic research showed her like this. However, if your opinions don’t encompass such things, then let the matter rest in the same realm of the imagination as the above descriptions by the historians.
2. There is circumstantial evidence in the historical record. If you look back through the Dukes of Aquitaine, you find an ancestor in the 10th century called William the Towhead – i.e. hair the colour of straw. So the blond gene ran in the family – which is more than we actually know about the other colours at this stage!

photo of the Radegonde mural courtesy of John Phillips

THE SUMMER QUEEN BEHIND THE SCENES Part 1

Tomorrow I'll be starting a series of short blog posts themed around the background research to The Summer Queen.  Look out nearer the 20th June for news of a giveaway.

Today here's an introduction:

THE SUMMER QUEEN:
Behind the scenes Day 1.

It was that time again when contracts come round for renewal and myself, agent and editor went to lunch to discuss what might be in the offing following Lady of the English. 

I had one or two ideas, which readers may well see coming to fruition further along the line, but what stood out for me was that I had been wanting to write about Eleanor of Aquitaine for a while. It wasn’t something that burst over me like a firework. It was born more from an enduring curiosity in her, fed by the fact that she kept cropping up as a peripheral character in my novels. I had read information about her in the standard biographies, although the detail I required didn’t go deep at that stage. I had heard all about The Lion In Winter from the various groups to which I belong online, but I had never seen it – thankfully I think because it has not coloured my view of Eleanor. I HAD watched the BBC’s The Devil’s Crown as a teenager and been blown away by the performance of Jane Lapotaire as Eleanor. If anything, it was Lapotaire’s image I carried at the back of my mind.

I was aware when I sat down with my editor that there were several novels already out there about Eleanor, but the concern proved not to be an issue. After all, everyone’s take is different, and we both felt there were many facets of her story that hadn’t been explored, or that bore looking at with a fresh eye. For example, the current opinion by historians that she was only thirteen when she married. Or the matter of the incident at Antioch where the tabloid press of her day intimated that she committed adultery with her uncle. What really happened there? And what happened in Paris when the young future Henry II and his father came calling? Who brokered that match? How much was passion and how much cold political necessity? And that was only the first novel. Eleanor of Aquitaine crammed so much into her long life that it was going to take a trilogy to work through the various dramas and scandals.

My editor was confident enough to offer me a three book contract to write Eleanor’s story and I returned form London with a brief to get to work. It seems to have been a long time coming, and paradoxically no time at all since that moment. My version of Eleanor has become Alienor, which was the name by which she was known in her own time, and already what a journey it has been.
You can read the first chapter here: http://www.littlebrown.co.uk/Articles/the-summer-queen-extract.page
And listen to the soundtrack here and the modern music that inspired my writing.http://elizabethchadwicksoundtracks.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/the-summer-queen.html

ELEANOR OF AQUITAINE'S BIRTH YEAR. (and why it matters to me the writer).

For many years it was assumed and accepted that Eleanor of Aquitaine was born in 1122.  Many of her biographers have stated it as her birth year, but her biographers tend to copy and cite each other's work,  and where one makes an error or utilises their own opinion as fact, the others all follow into the abyss. For example, I found Ralph Turner citing Regine Pernoud that Geoffrey le Bel had gone on the second crusade (when it's proven in primary source that he didn't).  Marion Meade and Alison Weir both give Eleanor a half brother called Joscelin that she never had. 

Eleanor's birth date is another case in point, where circular arguments have been used to show that she was born in 1122.  Alison Weir says  that Eleanor  "The first child, the daughter who became known to history as Eleanor of Aquitaine, was born in 1122. The exact date is not known, but the year can be determined from evidence of her age at death and from the fact that the Lords of Aquitaine swore fealty to her on her 14th birthday in 1136. Some chroniclers give 1120 as a date, but her parents cannot have been be married until 1121".  Weir, unfortunately (but typically)  does not cite the chroniclers who give 1120 as the birthdate. Nor does she cite the documents for her other statements concerning the fealty swearing.

Medieval scholar Elizabeth Brown states that she was born in 1124, the first daughter and the second child of William X of Aquitaine. So disagrees with Weir about the birth order and states that Eleanor's brother was the firstborn (no source).  Rágena C. Dearagon says when Duke William X of Aquitaine died in April 1137, his 13-year-old daughter Eleanor had been his presumptive heir for some seven years. Elizabeth Brown is a specialist in medieval and early modern French history and professor emeritus of history at the City University of New York.  Rágena C. Dearagon is associate professor of history at Gozanga University, Spokane, Washington.

The scholar who has unravelled the tangle of Eleanor's birth year is Andrew W. Lewis, Prof of history at Southwest Missouri State University. He says "For Eleanor of Aquitaine's age, most recent scholars have relied on Alfred Richard, the great modern specialist on the counts of Poitou. But details of this sort were not among Richard's strengths is a scholar. Moreover, he vacillated in his statements on the subject, and his argument is circular. Thus, when speaking of Eleanor's birth, he wrote that it was only from knowing that she was 82 years old when she died, in 1204, that one could place her birthday 1122. Yet when speaking of the death he gave her age as 'about 82 years', while citing no source to that effect."  In other words, without sources, the evidence is doubtful and inadmissable. In fact there is only one source quoted in footnotes as giving her age, and when professor Lewis checked back to the primary for himself, he found that it didn't actually mention her age at her death at all!    Lewis goes on to say that greater confidence can be placed in the genealogical text composed at Limoges in the late 13th century.  This record is an early tradition that she was 13 years old at the time of her father's death in April 1137. Lewis says that not only would more people at that time, before the passing of generations, have been likely to have known her age, but by canon law of woman had to be at least 12 years old in order to marry, and the information would have had  practical relevance. By contrast, Eleanor's exact age at her death had none.

The document Lewis cites is an early 14th century manuscript from St Martin of Limoges containing copies of early materials from St Martial of Limoges. It says that  in "1136 on the fifth ides of April, which in that year was Good Friday, William Count Palatine of Poitou and the last Duke of Aquitaine died at St James in Galicia, leaving his only daughter, named Eleanor, aged 13 years, whom he had begotten of the sister of Viscount de Chatelleraut in the principality of Aquitaine to Louis King of the French…" Now that may seem partially wrong in itself because William X died on that date in 1137, but Lewis suggests that it is either a copying error by the cleric, or more likely caused because the reckoning of the years at that time was from Easter to Easter, and so would be correct.

It is interesting that Weir says that the nobles swore fealty to her on her 14th birthday in 1136. She gives no citation for this. However the age of consent at that time was 12 for a girl, and Eleanor would have turned 12 in 1136 if the birthdate of 1124 is correct. It seems far more likely to me that Eleanor's father would have the nobles swear to her the moment she came of age, rather than leaving it until she was 14. She would also have come of age around the time that her father was campaigning with Geoffrey Le Bel of Anjou.  One has to wonder whether approaches were made by Geoffrey concerning his infant son Henry and the uniting of Anjou and Aquitaine through the marriage of the children.  Certainly Geoffrey was intent throughout his life on pursuing such a unification. He approached Eleanor and Louis VII on the matter of a betrothal  between Henry and their small daughter Marie, and as soon as Eleanor and Louis’ marriage was annulled, Eleanor and Henry were married. How much of that was set up before Geoffrey's death?  Were approaches made in 1136 concerning the 12-year-old Eleanor and the three-year-old Henry?  Was William X dismayed at the thought?  Did he prefer to put his eggs in a bigger basket when he arranged for the French to care for his daughters when he went to Compostela?  It's a point to ponder - and pure speculation on my behalf.  

I do believe that the current scholarly thinking on Eleanor's age is correct.  All the evidence points to her being in her 13^th year at the time of her marriage to the future Louis VII and makes so much more sense.  It’s also interesting for me the writer.  13 is such a  different prospect to 15.  Eleanor is often imbued with power she just did not possess at that time in her life. She was a year out of childhood and a pawn in the power struggles of the men around her - a fact reflected and explored in the less sensationalist works of scholarship.  Aristocratic medieval girls may have grown up swiftly, but 13 is still 13 and a perilously young and vulnerable age, and in terms of political clout, especially as a female, negligible, other than as a figurehead.  It makes for a rather different angle when it comes to the story telling, and that's one of the reasons why that difference of two years is important  to me the writer when others might be asking 'Does it really matter?' 

Next time round I’ll post a selection of research books with comments.

INTERVIEW WITH SHARON KAY PENMAN

I have something rather special for everyone this time around - an interview with my good friend and fellow author Sharon Kay Penman. She has been very generous and taken time out of her busy writing schedule to answer a few questions.
I have loved all of Sharon's books since first becoming hooked on her first novel The Sunne in Splendour - my edition is Macmillan 1983 - see foot of this post. At the time I was just an avid reader, not an author myself and I was blown away by this fabulous historical novel about Richard III, his family, life and times. Sharon has continued to hit it out of the park with every novel she writes, whether they be mysteries or or her richly detailed historical novels set in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, particularly featuring the 'Devil's Brood' of Angevin royalty. There's no one better.
So here, without further ado, Sharon Kay Penman welcome.

Q. I really enjoyed Devil’s Brood. I am always amazed at how you managed to keep so many threads spinning at once and I think you have a particular skill for explaining the politics of the period in a thoroughly readable manner. Do you keep spreadsheets or charts of who was related to who and what political game plans were, or is it all stored in your head?

A. I keep it all stored in my head; is that weird or what? I make extensive notes on various topics like medieval sexuality or ships or Cyprus—all subjects of heavy-duty research now for Lionheart. But I seem to have no trouble remembering the shifting political alliances or the behind-the scenes double-dealing. Maybe I was a Borgia in a past life?

Q. There are some spine tingling scenes in Devil’s Brood. The one in Canterbury Cathedral with Henry doing penance for Becket’s death will stay with me for a long, long time. Do you know that you’ve written a particularly memorable scene at the time or does it take a while/other opinions before it sinks in?

A. Usually I know if a scene is going to work. When Henry did penance at Becket’s tomb, I just sensed that it was going the way that I’d hoped. I was surprised, though, that it came so easily; I’d expected to have to suffer more! Another dramatic scene that I was satisfied with was Simon de Montfort’s death scene in Falls the Shadow. But sometimes a scene will resonate with my readers in ways I didn’t expect. The Here Be Dragons scene that readers mention most is the one in which Joanna burned Llewelyn’s bed, and I didn’t see that one coming.

Q Henry II’s son Geoffrey seems to have been a real hit with the readers in Devil’s Brood. I get the feeling you enjoyed writing about him and his relationship with Constance. There doesn’t seem to be a lot known about Geoffrey – or am I wrong? How did you find out about him, and did you have more leeway in creating his character and scenes than you did with Henry and Eleanor?

A. Your writer’s instinct is right on target here. I have always found Geoffrey to be the most intriguing of the brothers. But he has been overshadowed by his more celebrated brothers, Richard and John, and historians rarely bothered to consider his motivations. Fortunately for me, a Breton historian named Judith Everard finally made up for those years of neglect. I don’t think I could have written Devil’s Brood had she not written Brittany and the Angevins first. I certainly would not have been able to flesh out Geoffrey’s portrayal without her input, and he would have remained an enigma. She was able to reveal the reasons behind Geoffrey’s actions, and this enabled me to create a plausible, three-dimensional character, not the one described by a biographer of Richard as motivated by “mindless malice.”

Q. A member of a Penman fan e-list where I participate asked the following question when she heard I was going to be interviewing you: How could such a smart, charismatic leader have been so utterly clueless in interpersonal relationships? Did he have the kind of ego that prevented him from recognizing that anyone could have a viewpoint different from his?

A. I think Henry was the ultimate control freak, unable to delegate any real authority to his sons or to Eleanor. And he paid a high price for that sort of pride. I also think he was deeply wounded by the rebellion of 1173, and those wounds never fully healed. He forgave his sons, but he no longer trusted them, and that set him on a road which led to his terrible, tragic death at Chinon.

Q. Your next project is Richard The Lionheart, and then the story of Balien of Ibelin – the true story, not the Kingdom of Heaven version. I’m really looking forward to both. Are you finding it any different working to a tighter deadline than with some of your earlier books?

A. Oh, yes! I have always had three years to do one of my historical novels, but I only have two years for Lionheart, so I am having to fight off periodic panic attacks.

Q. Is Richard proving to be surprising in any way, or is he as you imagined so far?

A. A total surprise in many ways. When I wrote Here Be Dragons more than twenty years ago, I did not have a particularly high opinion of Richard, accepting the then popular view of him as a brilliant but bloodthirsty soldier, an ungrateful son, and a careless king. Since he was only a minor character in Dragons, I did not do extensive research about him. It was not until I was writing Time and Chance and then Devil’s Brood that my research revealed a different man. He was indeed a brilliant battle commander, but I was fascinated to discover that, while he was utterly reckless when it came to his own safety, he was very conservative when it came to the lives of his men. Henry will always be one of my favorite historical figures, but I came to see that his sons had some legitimate grievances, particularly Geoffrey and Richard. So scratch the ungrateful son charge. And research in the past twenty years has given us a more nuanced and favorable view of Richard the king. He was a good judge of other men, had a real flair for multi-tasking and strategic thinking, and his father’s sardonic sense of humor. Twenty years ago, I saw him as arrogant and ruthless, and I was right—he was. But he was a much more complicated man than I’d originally thought. I think it is only fair to judge historical figures by the standards of their time, and to medieval eyes, Richard was what they most admired, a “man of prowess.”

Q. If you were going to attend a great banquet set in the time of Henry II, but Henry and Eleanor weren’t there, who would you choose to be sat either side of you?

A. Geoffrey, most definitely. And Richard, to see if my portrayal of him in Lionheart is on-target. I wouldn’t mind getting to meet his queen, Berengaria, either. And John, of course, and…well, we’d soon have a full house.

Q. Did you ever do any fiction writing before you wrote Sunne in Splendor? When was the first time you actually wrote anything down?

A. Sunne was my first novel. I’d written stories as a child, and I’d written a “novel” in my teens about young love that mercifully later disappeared.

Q. I know you’ve said you craft each chapter and polish it before you move on. Do you ever have to go back and rewrite once you have finished the book, either because by the time you’ve got the whole in your hand a certain early piece doesn’t feel quite right, or because research you’ve done along the way necessitates a change?

A. I’ve gone back to do some minor tinkering, but I’ve never done a major rewrite. It would be wonderful, though, to be able to go back in time and correct mistakes that subsequently came to light—like my little time-traveling grey squirrel in Sunne. (I know what you mean! I have a few errors of dateline or detail that I would love to be able to correct in my earlier work!)

QWhat is a typical working day? Suppose I became a fly on your wall on a typical weekday when you got up and buzzed off when you put the light out. How would I see your day panning out?

A. I don’t keep set hours as some writers do. So if I’m working on a chapter and it is going well, I am likely to spend hours at my computer, coming up for air occasionally and to feed or walk the dogs. And since I’m an owl, not a lark, I’m likely to be writing well into the night.

Q. Do you take a day off in the week.

A. No. Spoken like a true workaholic, I know. But not a day passes when I’m not either writing or researching or thinking about plot developments.

Q. Is there anything that inspires your muse? I ask this because I listen to music away from my PC, and it resonates in my subconscious for when I’m ready to write at the PC. I wondered if there’s anything that stirs your creative juices.

A. I have a number of wonderful photographs of North Wales, taken by a brilliant Welsh photographer friend, Dave O’Shea, and I think they help to stir the “creative juices.”

Q. From talking to you by e-mail, you seem to have an excellent library of research books. Do you know how many you have? Where do you get them from? (I know we both know about Oxbow and Abe etc but not sure if readers do).

A. Yes, I have an extensive library by now, several thousand or more. I used to make day-long trips to the University of Pennsylvania about fifty miles away, for they have a wonderful medieval library. But I’ve not had to do that for years. In the old pre-internet days, I would buy my books from second-hand bookshops in the U.K. I would arrive with a wish list, and snatch up anything that might be remotely useful to me in the distant future. Then I’d have the fun of packing them up and lugging them to the Royal Post Office. But the internet has changed all that, of course. I find many of my books on ABE, both the English and French websites. The Medieval Bookshop is one of my favorites. Amazon’s mother ship and its sites for England and France are also great sources. Life is so much easier for writers now, isn’t it? I wanted to find a collection of miracles supposedly performed at Becket’s tomb, written by one of the monks at Christchurch priory. I knew it had been translated in the 19^th century, so I set out to find it. And eventually I did—in Japan. So an American author bought a book from a Tokyo book-seller that was a translation by a Victorian historian of a medieval monk’s work! And the result was the scene in Devil’s Brood where Henry is doing penance at Becket’s tomb while being kept company by a garrulous monk who just won’t shut up and who happens to be the author of that collection of miracles.

Q. You have mentioned favourite research books before that readers might like, such as Robert Bartlett’s England Under the Norman and Angevin Kings and David Crouch’s History of William Marshal. Do you have any quirky favourites? I confess that my own quirky favourite is Malcolm Jones’ The secret Middle Ages with all its strange folk art objects (such as the erotic biscuit moulds!) Can you give one that you’ve found fun that’s a bit left field?

A. I don’t know if it is quirky or not, but I really like Daily Life in the Twelfth Century (That's one of my favourites too!)

Q A question from medieval historian Gillian Polack who's a member of the Penmanreview forum: I’m really curious to know if Sharon finds it easier/harder/different to talk about the Middle Ages with Medievalists (the ones who don’t write fiction) now than it was when her first book came out?

A. An interesting question. I’ve lurked on Mediev-l for years, but I don’t travel in academic circles. I know I am always very flattered when professors write and tell me they enjoy my books, trust my research, or recommend my novels to their students.

Q From Tamara Mazzei(owner of Penmanreview and publisher of Brian Wainwright)If I were to ask Sharon a question, I think it would be whether she felt constrained by the known history of Eleanor, Henry and Thomas Becket. IMO, I think that's one thing that makes it hard to write about those particular characters -- because so much has already been written about them, in their own times and later --and in fiction and nonfiction. That's a lot of expections to have to plow through, even if one is able to ignore most of them.Looking back over all the different books she's written, HBD is still myfavorite, and I suspect at least part of the reason for that is because,with the exception of some of the political events and the parts concerningJohn, she had fewer constraints because there was less documented historysurrounding Johanna and her everyday life with Llewelyn -- and it gave hermore latitude to create a self-contained story. Perhaps I am wrong on that,but I would be curious to know Sharon's take on it.

A.I think I might feel that way about the Tudors, Tamara. So much has been written about Elizabeth Tudor, etc, that I think it would be challenging to find ground that hadn’t already been thoroughly ploughed. We don’t know as much about Eleanor as we do about Henry or their sons, lacking the personal anecdotes about her that the chroniclers passed on about her husband and sons. Women, even women like Eleanor, too often slipped through history’s cracks.

I think one reason Here Be Dragons is such a favorite with my readers is because it was unknown territory. Most readers—even in Wales—were not familiar with Llewelyn’s history, and so I was able to surprise them. It probably helped, too, that Dragons has such a compelling and true love story. And like Devil’s Brood, Dragons is the story of family entanglements and the pain we bring upon ourselves—Joanna and her father, Llewelyn and his estranged son Gruffydd. I think we can all identify with family vicissitudes and conflict, even if ours are not played out on such a grand stage.

It doesn’t seem right to be discussing the MA without mentioning a writer you publish, Tamara—Brian Wainwright. He has written an excellent historical novel about Constance of York, called Within the Fetterlock, and a hysterical spoof set in the time of the Yorkists called The Adventures of Alianore Audley.

Lastly, I’d like to thank you, Elizabeth, for inviting me to visit with you and to give me a forum to to speak to your readers about the Middle Ages, a subject dear to both our hearts.

You're very welcome Sharon. I have so enjoyed reading your answers and I'm sure visitors to the blog will too! Apologies for some slightly strange formatting. Blogger does not always take kindly to cut and paste!

My first ever venture into reading one of Sharon's novels!