Eleanor Of Aquitaine Quotes

I inhale hope with every breath I take.

…she remembered watching a summer sunset from this very spot. Not so long ago; just a lifetime.

Autumn that year painted the countryside in vivid shades of scarlet, saffron and russet, and the days were clear and crisp under harvest skies.

For every wound, the ointment of time.

…a cynic who was still saddened whenever his jaundiced view of mankind was confirmed...

During her lifetime Eleanor of Aquitaine had not been a patient woman. While she had lived, she had learned to bide her time, but biding one's time is a very different thing from patience.

Even after more than five hundred years in Heaven, Eleanor of Aquitaine still missed quarreling and dressing up. Eleanor missed strong, sweet smells. Eleanor missed feeling hot and being cold. Eleanor missed Henry. She missed life.

You will get no poetry from me, nor songs of love. But I will love you, every day for the rest of my life.

It was just like him, she thought; with him, a happy ending was always a foregone conclusion. But such was the power of his faith that when she was with him; she found herself believing in happy endings, too.

Why is it honesty when a man speaks his mind and madness when a woman does?

When does he ever think?" Richard straddled a chair and accepted a wind cup from Raoul. "If he were to sell his brain, he could claim it had never been used.", Chapter 7

...Life without sinning was like food without salt, pure but tasteless.

In time of war, the Devil makes more room in Hell.

Grief is not very different from illness: in the impetus of its fire it does not recognise lords, it does not fear colleagues, it does not respect or spare anyone, not even itself." [First letter to Pope Celestine (1193)]

The great hall was shimmering in light, sun streaming from the open windows, and ablaze with colour, the walls decorated with embroidered hangings in rich shades of gold and crimson. New rushes had been strewn about, fragrant with lavender, sweet woodruff, and balm... the air was... perfumed with honeysuckle and violet, their seductive scents luring in from the gardens butterflies as blue as the summer sky.

Court life for a queen of France at that time was, however, stultifyingly routine. Eleanor found that she was expected to be no more than a decorative asset to her husband, the mother of his heirs and the arbiter of good taste and modesty.

Pitiful and pitied by no one, why have I come to the ignominy of this detestable old age, who was ruler of two kingdoms, mother of two kings? My guts are torn from me, my family is carried off and removed from me. The young king [crown prince Henry, †1183] and the count of Britanny [prince Geoffrey, †1186] sleep in dust, and their most unhappy mother is compelled to be irremediably tormented by the memory of the dead. Two sons remain to my solace, who today survive to punish me, miserable and condemned. King Richard [the Lionheart] is held in chains [in captivity with Emperor Henry VI of Germany]. His brother, John, depletes his kingdom with iron [the sword] and lays it waste with fire. In all things the Lord has turned cruel to me and attacked me with the harshness of his hand. Truly his wrath battles against me: my sons fight amongst themselves, if it is a fight where where one is restrained in chains, the other, adding sorrow to sorrow, undertakes to usurp the kingdom of the exile by cruel tyranny. Good Jesus, who will grant that you protect me in hell and hide me until your fury passes, until the arrows which are in me cease, by which my whole spirit is sucked out?" [Third letter to Pope Celestine (1193)]

Outside, the sky was clear, stars gleaming in its ebony vastness like celestial fireflies. It was bitterly cold, and Hywel's every breath trailed after him in pale puffs of smoke. The glazed snow crackled underfoot as he started towards the great hall.

Without the light the beauty remains hidden,” Gofrid said. “But it is always there. Just like God’s love, or a father’s, or a mother’s. Remember that, Alienor. You are loved, whether you see it or not.

she knew what such grief was like and she had built her own defenses high over the years. But if you raised them too much, they became a prison and in the end you drowned with no one to hear you scream.

We've schemed and fought and loved until we are so entangled in hearts and minds that there is no way to set us free. God help us both, Harry, for we will never be rid of each other. Not even death will do that.

At least it was never dull, my darling. And you will be remembered long after we've all turned to dust. But so will I.

She knew she'd wounded him when he'd least expected it, and her satisfaction lasted until the door had closed behind him. Once he was gone, it ebbed away along with her anger, leaving her with naught but the ashes and embers of a dying hearth fire.

There was a time when I thought I could change everything. I have learned the hard way that we only have so much strength: better to use it for fights where we stand a chance of winning.

From whom but the Devil did this advice come under which you are acting? Those who are urging you to repeat your former wrongdoings against an innocent person are seeking in this not your honour but their own convenience. They are clearly the enemies of your crown and the disturbers of your realm.

You might as well face it. You're not going to be able to fight for the crown. You'll just have to grit your teeth and let us hand it over to you at the bargaining table.

Perhaps the most important lesson I have learned is to embrace the small pleasures and turn them into lasting memories.

It is not easy to be stranded between two worlds, the sad truth is that we can never feel completely comfortable in either world.

All that remained were poignant memories, and she must face reality, not live on dreams.

Geoffrey looked startled to see both his great-uncles bearing down upon him with such haste; he hadn’t realized men their age could move so fast.

Twilight was laying claim to the cité, and the sky was a deepening shade of lavender, spangled with stars and fleecy clouds the colour of plums.

When people want to insult a man, they cast slurs upon his courage. But the worst they can say about a woman is to impugn her chastity.

That you should choose your battles wisely. You cannot fight everything and win. Sometimes the price of losing is beyond what you can afford to pay, but that applies to winning as well.

He could still remember how breathtakingly beautiful Eleanor was that day. He'd have been content to gaze into her eyes for hours, trying to decide if they were green with gold flecks or gold with green flecks. She had high, finely sculpted cheekbones, soft, flawless skin he'd burned to touch, and lustrous dark braids entwined with gold-threaded ribbons he yearned to unfasten; he'd have bartered his chances of salvation to bury his face in that glossy, perfumed hair, to wind it around his throat and see it spread out on his pillow. He'd watched, mesmerized, as a crystal raindrop trickled toward the sultry curve of her mouth and wanted nothing in his life so much, before or since, as he wanted her.

This was the moment he most loved about tourneying, that first glorious sortie with banners streaming, trumpets blaring, and the earth atremble with pounding hooves as hundreds of knights came together in a spectacular clash of sound and fury.

Hell and furies!" Eleanor had begun to pace, her skirts swirling about her ankles. "What was he thinking?" "When does he ever think?" Richard straddled a chair and accepted a wine cup from Raoul. "If he were to sell his brain, he could claim it had never been used.

Culture is what we choose to repeat.

By the wrath of God, queen of England.

The darkest prisons were those of the mind.

But where is it written in the Gospel that we are instructed to hate anyone, however erroneous their beliefs might be?

She never knew from one moment to the next how he was going to behave toward her and therefore she constantly had to adjust her balance. It was exhausting.

I thought I was wed to a king- now I find I am wed to a monk.

together they watched the fireflies twinkle in and out like hopes in the darkness.

Because to outwit your rivals, first you had to know their ways and how to play their games.

All that remains is regret for what might have been. It is like standing in the ashes of a fire you once approached to warm your body a little, but which burned you to the bone instead.

He’d passed the longest night of his life locked in mortal combat with his ghosts, calling up and then disavowing twenty years of memories. He would banish that bitch from his heart if it meant cutting her out with his own dagger. And when at last he allowed himself to grieve, he did so silently and unwillingly, his tears hidden by the darkness, his rage congealing into a core of ice.

The formal education of women was rarely considered important. Girls of good birth were taught domestic skills at home or in a convent, and rarely learned to read and write, for it was feared that if they did they would waste their talents writing love letters or reading romances that led to promiscuity.

A husband or wife did not have the right either to demand sex from his or her spouse or to refuse it, and there was a catalogue of forbidden sexual practices, notably homosexuality, bestiality, certain sexual positions, masturbation, the use of aphrodisiacs, and oral sex, which could incur a penance of three years’ duration. Nor were people to make love on Sundays, holy days, or feast days, or during Lent, pregnancy, or menstruation. People believed that if these rules were disobeyed, deformed children or lepers might result.

In this martial world dominated by men, women had little place. The Church's teachings might underpin feudal morality, yet when it came to the practicalities of life, a ruthless pragmatism often came into play. Kings and noblemen married for political advantage, and women rarely had any say in how they or their wealth were to be disposed in marriage. Kings would sell off heiresses and rich widows to the highest bidder, for political or territorial advantage, and those who resisted were heavily fined. Young girls of good birth were strictly reared, often in convents, and married off at fourteen or even earlier to suit their parents' or overlord's purposes. The betrothal of infants was not uncommon, despite the church's disapproval. It was a father's duty to bestow his daughters in marriage; if he was dead, his overlord or the King himself would act for him. Personal choice was rarely and issue. Upon marriage, a girl's property and rights became invested in her husband, to whom she owed absolute obedience. Every husband had the right to enforce this duty in whichever way he thought fit--as Eleanor was to find out to her cost. Wife-beating was common, although the Church did at this time attempt to restrict the length of the rod that a husband might use.

Indeed, she had started to wonder if her blessings might be in her daughters and their progeny rather than in her sons. There was greatness in the female side of her line, and if she could nurture it and enhance its luster, then she would.

Giraldus claimed that he had heard about Eleanor's adultery with Geoffrey from the saintly Bishop Hugh of Lincoln, who had learned of it from Henry II of England, Geoffrey's son and Eleanor's second husband. Eleanor was estranged from Henry at the time Giraldus was writing, and the king was trying to secure an annulment of their marriage from the Pope. It would have been to his advantage to declare her an adulterous wife who had had carnal relations with his father, for that in itself would have rendered their marriage incestuous and would have provided prima facie grounds for its dissolution.

All he wanted was enough time to consider all his options without being dragged into his household’s petty squabbles or being nagged by his wife about that damnable pilgrimage. Was that so much to ask? Apparently so, for he’d yet to find a peaceful moment at Caen, not with Marguerite sulking and Aimar lurking and Will acting put-upon and Geoff wanting to lay plans and Richard strutting around as if he were the incarnation of Roland and poor Tilda grieving over Maman’s absence and his father refusing to heed any voice but his own.

Aquitaine, or Gascony as the English preferred to call it, was actually a duchy subject to the French crown which had been inherited by English kings after the marriage of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry II. Its status had long been a source of dispute and conflict between the two kingdoms, leading ultimately to the outbreak of the Hundred Years War in 1337.

Richard grinned, very pleased with himself for having found a way to honor his mother, thwart his father, and serve God, while having a grand adventure at the same time.

Hal and Richard show all the good will of Cain and Abel.

To call it a “setback” is like calling the Expulsion from Eden a minor misunderstanding.

as was his way, once he acknowledged the problem, he set about finding a means to resolve it

one may scarcely find one man among seven women, so many women are there widowed whilst their husbands are alive’.

Without the light the beauty remains hidden,” Gofrid said. “But it is always there.

Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,

The book is Brittany and the Angevins: Province and Empire, 1158–1203, by Judith A. Everard,

The women were active, the men passive, and that made Richenza smile as she absorbed wisdom in that moment. Her grandmother had often been told she did not know her place, but truly she did.

He'd never seen one so vibrant, though, or so vividly compelling... those glowing green eyes sparkling with sunlight and curiosity and silent laughter, and when she glanced in Henry's direction, she held his gaze, a look that was both challenging and enigmatic... He was utterly certain that this was Eleanor of Aquitaine, and no less sure that the French King must be one of God's greatest fools.

It was a basic tenet of faith with men of Ranulf’s class that a knight, trained in the ways of war since boyhood, could easily vanquish lesser foes, as much a belief in the superiority of blood and breeding as in the benefits of battle lore and killing competence. Ranulf had accepted this comforting conviction, too, but no one seemed to have told his assailants that they were inferior adversaries.

He believed that his superior intellect mattered more than his physical defects and saw no reason why he must defer to these fortunate young men with handsome faces and healthy bodies and empty heads.

I know you do not care much for such revelries, but trust me—this one you will enjoy, Harry. You and I will sit at the high table, eating porpoise and swan, whilst we watch my male kinfolk eating humble pie!

Arthur managed to speak to his grandmother [Queen Eleanor of England], demanding that she evacuate the castle with all her possessions and then go peaceably wherever she wished, for he wanted to show nothing but honour to her person. The Queen replied that she would not leave it, but if he behaved as a courtly gentlemen, he would quit this place, for he would find plenty of castles to attack other than the one she was in.

A gain I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to men of skill but time and chance happen to them all.

Petronella’s expression was hard with defiance. “I love him.” Her voice was fierce. “You don’t know anything about love.” “Oh, but I do,” Alienor replied bitterly. “Because I love you, and you have just broken my heart.

More than men had died at Lincoln. It seemed to Stephen that reality was a casualty, too, for nothing made sense anymore. What was he doing here in the solar of Lincoln Castle, bleeding all over the Earl of Chester’s wife?

Well, dearest, what would you tell a farmer who had an over-abundant harvest? To plant less, of course!"... "I am not complaining about the frequency of the planting," she said. "I’d just rather not reap a crop every year.

That springtime does not last forever and that the fine seasons should have their harvest gathered and stored against harsher times. That you should choose your battles wisely. You cannot fight everything and win. Sometimes the price of losing is beyond what you can afford to pay, but that applies to winning as well.” She narrowed her focus on the girls. “Be very careful and think before you act. Make friends with those who you know will stay true to you and reward them fittingly.

But Lord Harry has a good heart. Moreover, he truly likes women." "Most men do, lass," Ranulf pointed out in amusement, and was surprised when she shook her head again. "No, my Lord." She contradicted him with an odd smile, one that was both cynical and sad. "Most men like to lay with women.

All that remains is regret for what might have been. It is like standing in the ashes of a fire you once approached to warm your body a little, but which burned you to the bone instead. Now the ashes are cold, and sometimes you remember that even when your hand was in the flames, you still had a terrible need to thrust it deeper.

The last time Ranulf had run into Sulien, the older man had called him a misbegotten English Judas and spat onto the ground at his feet. Yet now that same man was approaching the bed with a jovial smile, so apparently pleased to see the Judas again that Ranulf half-expected him to announce that a fatted calf had been killed in his honor.

Perhaps the Queen's prayers, and those of Bernard, had been efficacious, or perhaps Louise had been more attentive in bed, for during 1145--the exact date is not recorded--she bore a daughter, who was named Marie in honour of the Virgin. If the infant was not the male heir to France so desired by the King--the Salic law forbade the succession of females to the throne--her arrival encouraged the royal parents to hope for a son in the future. Relationships between aristocratic parents and children were rarely close. Queens and noblewomen did not nurse their own babies, but handed them over at birth into the care of wet nurses, leaving themselves free to become pregnant again.

It puzzled Maud that her male relatives could not see this. Was it that men could not believe a woman might share their ambitions, their need for power? Eleanor saw herself as more than Henry’s queen, mother of his children. First and foremost, she was Duchess of Aquitaine, never doubting that she could have ruled as well as any man and better than most.

She wanted to order him clapped in irons, as he so deserved. But she was stopped by what she saw in the faces of the watching men: disapproval, instinctive and involuntary, but disapproval, nonetheless. They were not comfortable when power was wielded by a woman, not at a man’s expense, a man who had just acquitted himself so spectacularly at Lincoln, winning their reluctant respect in a way she knew she never could.

John, watching in dismay, saw his great chance slipping through his fingers, and he swung around to demand of his father, “Papa, does this mean Richard has bested you and Aquitaine is lost?” Eleanor winced, Geoffrey rolled his eyes, and Henry gave his youngest a look John had never gotten from him before. “My life would have been much more peaceful if I’d had only daughters,” he snapped. “As for Aquitaine, it is yours if you can take it.

There can have been no doubt in Eleanor's mind as to what was expected of her as a wife. In her day, women were supposed to be chaste both inside and outside marriage, virginity and celibacy being highly prized states. When it came to fornication, women were usually apportioned the blame, because they were the descendants of Eve, who had tempted Adam in the Garden of Eden, with such dire consequences. Women, the Church taught, were the weaker vessel, the gateway to the Devil, and therefore the source of all lechery. St. Bernard of Clairvaux wrote: "To live with a woman without danger is more difficult than raising the dead to life." Noblewomen, he felt, were the most dangerous so fall. Women were therefore kept firmly in their place in order to prevent them from luring men away from the paths of righteousness. Promiscuity--and its often inevitable consequence, illicit pregnancy--brought great shame upon a woman and her family, and was punishable by fines, social ostracism, and even, in the case of aristocratic and royal women, execution. Unmarried women who indulged in fornication devalued themselves on the marriage market. In England, women who were sexually experienced were not permitted to accuse men of rape in the King's court. Female adultery was seen as a particularly serious offence, since it jeopardized the laws of inheritance. Men, however, often indulged in casual sex and adultery with impunity. Because the virtue of high-born women was jealously guarded, many men sought sexual adventures with lower-class women. Prostitution was common and official brothels were licensed and subject to inspection in many areas. There was no effective contraception apart from withdrawal, and the Church frowned upon that anyway: this was why so many aristocratic and royal bastards were born during this period.

Yesterday I heard some of the castle servants talking about a funeral for one of the stable lads. He went skating last week on the pond in the village, but the ice was not thick enough and he drowned. I like to skate on the ice,too, Papa, have my own pair of bone skates. I could drown crossing the Channel as Uncle Robert fears... or I could drown back in Angers, if I was unlucky like that stable lad." Geoffrey's mouth twitched. "God help me," he said, "I've sired a lawyer!

Ranulf had spent much of his life watching those he loved wrestle with the seductive, lethal lure of kingship. It had proved the ruination of his cousin Stephen, a good man who had not made a good king. For his sister Maude, it had been an unrequited love affair, a passion she could neither capture nor renounce. For Hywel, it had been an illusion, a golden glow ever shimmering along the horizon. He believed that his nephew had come the closest to mastery of it, but at what cost?

After the dedication, Eleanor saw Bernard privately, probably at her own request. He came prepared to offer more spiritual comfort, thinking that she too might be suffering qualms of conscience over Vitry, but he was surprised to learn that she was not. Nevertheless, several matters were indeed troubling her, not the least the problems of her sister. She asked him to use his influence with the Pope to have the excommunication on Raoul and Petronilla lifted and their marriage recognised by the Church. In return, she would persuade Louis to make peace with Theobald of Champagne and recognise Pierre de la Chatre as Archbishop of Bourges. Bernard was appalled at her brazen candour. In his opinion, these affairs were no business of a twenty-two-year-old woman. He was, in fact, terrified of women and their possible effects on him. An adolescent, first experiencing physical desire for a young girl, he had been so filled with self-disgust that he had jumped into a freezing cold pond & remained there until his erection subsided. He strongly disapproved of his sister, who had married a rich man; because she enjoyed her wealth, he thought of her as a whore, spawned by Satan to lure her husband from the paths of righteousness, and refused to have anything to do with her. Nor would he allow his monks any contact with their female relatives. Now there stood before him the young, worldly, and disturbingly beautiful Queen of France, intent upon meddling in matters that were not her concern. Bernard's worst suspicions were confirmed: here, beyond doubt, was the source of that "Counsel of the Devil" that had urged the King on to disaster and plunged him into sin and guilt. His immediate reaction was to admonish Eleanor severely.

I am not going to let him win, Guillaume. Not this time. I could not keep him from making my mother pay the price for our failed rebellion. Fifteen years she has been his prisoner, fifteen years! And she is his prisoner, for all that she no longer wants for a queen’s comforts. I have had to submit to his demands and subject myself to his whims and endure the indignity of having him brandish the crown before me as he would tease a dog with a bone. But no more. I will not let him rob me of my birthright, and I will not let him keep me from honoring my vow to defend the Holy Land. I do think he is behind that very opportune rebellion in my duchy, and I would not put it past him to be conniving with the Count of Toulouse, either. And if by chance he did not, it is only because he did not think of it. No, a reckoning is long overdue, and we will have it at Bonsmoulins.

Money, influence, and human imperatives always spoke more loudly than conscience and God.

We must all sleep alone in the tomb, my love, but in life we are joined as one flesh - as our children attest.

...the world was a place where those who had power could do what they wanted and those without it were the victims. The world would try to make him its victim, so it was always best to strike first.

When you look at them as babies in the cradle, you never know what they are going to become, but you always hope for the best.

As she prayed, she thought of Mary, holding her infant son in her lap, nurturing and sustaining him through his childhood, and then watching all that love and care dying tortured on the cross. But in dying, the Blessed Virgin's son had granted eternal life to all.

She crossed herself and gazed at the windows, shedding rainbow colours on the chapel's stone floor. The light from these windows shone just the same as it had when Harry was alive; that had not changed. And she must go on the same too, unchanging, for even when the sun did not shine the colours in the glass still existed.

I have memories of him that are like jewels, and others that are stones but my memories of you are always consistent, Mama." "And are they jewels or stones." Alienor asked with a strained smile. "Neither," Matilda answered. "They are pure gold.

If her own situation was a cup of poison, then she should drink from it herself and not expect Isabel to sip.

Did he think to win them over like this? She remembered the boyish charm he had once possessed and wondered where it had gone. Perhaps like a bag of gold dust with an open top, the winds of time had swirled it away in a glittering spiral until there was nothing left but an empty pouch.

Better the robes of a magnate and the hauberk of a warrior than to grow stale for want of challenges.

What good is having the heart of a lion if you cannot roar?

Although she was in a fine humour and good spirits, she needed to recuperate. She was like a fine candle without enough wax to sustain the wick.

... all his ambitions were dust in his grave. It all came down to dust in the end.

Alienor glanced across at the girls who were still oblivious of their fate as they sat over their game of chess. They had been born to be pieces on a board, but whether pawns or queens depended on the skill with which they played the game, and how clever their opponents were.

The children either become like their parents or else they flee in the opposite direction.

Sometimes a river runs on the surface, and sometimes it runs underground, but always it is present. Even if you do not see it, you can feel it.