Eleanor of Aquitaine 1122-1204
(c) Mark Beaulieu 2002,2005, San Diego.
Somewhere in the middle of reading Michael Chrichton's book, Timeline, set in the 1300's, it was clear this was not to be an epic story. In Ridley Scott's movie, the Gladiator, the slashing epic of survivorship, Russell Crowe resisted Scott about saying his famous long line about vengeance, because he felt his character was about family, love, and honor. To graduate to the time that expresses noble Roman values should have been the job of the Crichton story, rather than settle for a "Westworld" back lot substory. Too bad his quantum time machine did not arrive 200 years earlier for then we uncover one of the greatest medieval epic mysteries. For hiding in the12th century is a woman whose invention of romantic culture was to clash with, and obliterate the Dark ages. This is the story of Eleanor of Aquitaine.
Eleanor's life was nothing less than any Hollywood producer could imagine. It ranges from amorous courts in the Aquitaine, to exotic locations of conflict and romance in the Middle East, to both the creation and devastation of the greatest cities in the world, fighting friend and foe in the Second Crusade, dramatic encounters with royal husbands and lovers, pitting the Holy Church and Islamic thinkers. Epics are rare for an actor, rarer for an actress. In an epic, one transcends the basic drama of life. One's character undergoes a personal transformation so great that it changes society as well. Eleanor's witness of dark brutality stokes her passion to become a key source of illumination giving Europe its "early renaissance." She briefly united Western Europe with her family and her own, largely forgotten code of love, honor, romance, and chivalry. Her story is the root of a new human mythology of a personal culture based in love - a force she believed is the stem of civilization. Her beauty and stature inspired the masses, created powerful knights and predictably disturbed the powerful and official institutions of the time.
Born in France, though not a saint, Eleanor's life had a far more lasting spiritual and social effect than the revered Joan of Arc. Eleanor is known as the template for Joan, the inspiration of the Templar knights. She was recast as Guenivere a new character in King Arthur's tales. She provides the bloodlines for the Queens Elizabeth to come. She was audacious, brazen and exotically romantic. The very shape of love is the trail of her story, from desire and intrigue, to eros, to motherhood, to matriarchal power. So little is known about this woman's persona that so changed Western civilized values. What we should know of her was largely erased by the ruling Kings and Church that saw no purpose in her values, so little evidence remains though her legacy was profound..
After years of deduction, interpretation and emotional archaeology it is possible to resurrect her life. By backtracking her jailings, locations, actions, it is possible to form a framework of intriguing dramas that reveal her living power. She respected faith but opposed religious authority and the laws of kings for she wanted to create a romantic vision of the world. She behaved as a different kind of Catholic who created a code of behavior that sanctioned reasons for divorce. Romance rather than the state of marriage formed the base of her human relations, and she governed that way. Those who followed her direction, like Sir William Marshall became truly noble.
Her transforming power advanced culture in terrible times. She acted in a vacuum of historical inevitability. As large numbers of lords and men went to fight and die in the Crusades, they created a void in which woman rose to take responsibility for the land. Such women tested civil relations, cultural values, and common law. So became an era of warrior lovers, chivalrous knights, landed woman, the rituals of romance, post-feudal rights of landowners - all flourishing in her lifetime until king and church bore down with their erasure. In her French domain in Poiter far away from the English castle of King Henry II, and the Parisian fortress of Louis VII, her long term realization was realized. In her powerful court in Poitier she invented the many romantic arts and solidified her romantic legend.
Like many medieval ladies of the time, Eleanor was passion-starved in dead marriage. Rather than remain silent or to fall to the delirium of rampant promiscuity, she had the royal right to define a code of love based on honorable intents expressed in writing and song. She challenged the negative outcomes in marriage. In her time, everyone knew that the sanctity of marriage was a religious, enforceable condition. Lovers had no personal choice or authority to evaluate their own sense of human merits. Eleanor's answer was to create courting rituals, inspire the art of writing letters, celebrate romantic fashion, establish singers of love songs, invent the valentine ceremony, fortify rituals like giving flowers, and establish the ritual of engagement rings. The strategy to profess love led to sensational courts of love, with their own strange dockets and hearings. Not trivialized as a noble soap opera, this was as real as a court of law today. Court proceedings led to a code of manners that improved emotional development and strengthened the benefactors - those who combined love with their profession such as the chivalrous knight - the capital invention of Eleanor's court.
Eleanor's demise was brought on by her extreme accomplishments. Cardinals and kings destroyed her writing, her culture, and her civil inventions. The newly discovered behaviors of love and "courting" were either forbidden or converted back to the precepts of the church. Individual knights became subservient to the state and personal honor evaporated. Her mistaken beliefs that women had the same rights as man, that women should be valued in love, that women were not property and should have property were corrected upon her death. In spite of her official heresy, her concepts of romance, chivalry, equality, and popular troubadour music prevailed through more common folk traditions. Official decree and record did a very good job at wiping out her official record. Eventually the Roman Church murdered all of Eleanor's secular Templars - converting all survivors to believe not in her romantic order but the new Holy Templar order.
The real challenge is to recover her story and restore the conditions of her time. Biographers and playwrights have written tediously of the kings and bishops around her and vilified or trivialized her story. The total of her life, even though royal and advantaged, was a battle against royalty and advantage. She defied the bounds of marriage and showed the advantages of love, family, and civility. Although France and England were the same country to her, she outlived her husband Kings who imprisoned her. Eleanor's family and her grandchildren ultimately ruled every major country in Europe. A rather triumphant ending to a life. Winston Churchill said of Eleanor's history:
"Tiresome investigators have undermined this excellent tale, but it certainly should find its place in any history worthy of the name."
Expressing historical actions told through passionate lives is the story-teller's mission. Eleanor lived in a way different from what you or I have ever been told or can imagine. The screenplay Eleanor of Aquitaine heralds the legacy of a woman, a family and the boldest qualities of the human race. It is all acted against the brutal, powerful and dark official forces that form the background of the time.
Mark Beaulieu
San Diego