Reconstructing Eleanor's history is challenging as many of her records were either destroyed, rewritten, or heavily distorted by the historians working for her royal husbands and church. Her hateful surviving son King John, and the multigenerational inquisition of the Holy Roman Church removed much. Her way of life was exteme. Certainly the romantic soles and personally valorous knights she created were beyond the range of Church power. The Church went on a program of genicide, inquisition and torture to eradicate all who believed in her code. Shortly after her death in 1227 Pope Gregory IX launched the Albigensian Crusade. This crusade against their own kind, sought out the thousands of original secular Templar knights whose faith to the brotherhood of knights. Those who would not completely recant romantic ethics and surrender to the will of the Romand Catholic Church were put to death. The enormous folklore that survived indirectly through her social customs, the songs of Troubadors, romantic literature, the behavior of knights and the many ritual of romance were her great legacy, but what actually happened on the crusade fields of death and the coutly fields of love?
Most of what we know of Eleanor escaped to England, some kept by Templar knights, historians, some letters in the Vatican. Many damning citations were written by those who opposed her way of life and now miscolor her majestic history.
Eleanor of Aquitaine was born a duchess of the Aquitaine region in west of France in 1122 in Belin near Bordeaux. Her father, Duke William died of tainted water leaving the 15 year old to became ruler of the lands. When the King of France died a month later, Louis the VII chose Eleanor, the young Queen of France in 1137.
Her ideas and laws she put in force were as unique as her language, dress, and tastes. In the codebook is Outremer - the mid east, among others to be added.
( researching illuminated poster)