Eleanor of Aquitaine
4/13/202654 min
Eleanor of Aquitaine was one of the most powerful figures of the medieval world: twice a queen, a crusader, a rebel and the architect of an empire. Through her marriages to Louis VII of France and Henry II of England, she helped create the vast Angevin Empire and reshape European politics. She led forces on the Second Crusade, rebelled against her husband and played a decisive role in the rise of her sons, including Richard the Lionheart and King John.
Historian Dr Elena Janega, host of Gone Medieval, joins the podcast to explore Eleanor’s extraordinary life - from the vibrant court of Aquitaine and the failure of the Second Crusade, to her dramatic divorce, imprisonment, and enduring political influence. This episode reveals how Eleanor’s authority and intelligence held a volatile dynasty together until her death.
Produced by Mariana Des Forges and edited by Dougal Patmore.
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First 90 secondsDan Snow· Host0:00
Have you been enjoying my podcast and now want even more history? Sign up to HistoryHit and watch the world's best history documentaries on subjects like how William conquered England, what it was like to live in the Georgian era, and you can even hear the voice of Richard III. We've got hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, and there's always something more to discover. Sign up to join us in historic locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe. [gentle music] If you want a job done properly, get a woman to do it. That seems to me the unanswerable lesson of that wild ride, that wild period in Western European history, which was the late twelfth and early thirteenth century, the era of the Angevin Empire, the era of the Lionheart, the soft sword, the road to Magna Carta, the era, we should call it, of Eleanor of Aquitaine. Kings loved her. Men died for her. She redrew the map of medieval Europe. She was the only woman to be crowned both Queen of France and England. She marched on the Second Crusade to the Holy Land. She led a coup against her own husband. Even the Pope feared her. Eleanor of Aquitaine was the beating heart. She was the matriarch of that most powerful and explosive families,