Download or read book Eleanor of Aquitaine written by Desmond Seward and published by Hippocrene Books. This book was released on 1978 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is a biography of Eleanor of Aquitaine (ca.1122-1204) one of the wealthiest and most powerful women in Western Europe during the High Middle Ages. First, she became First Lady of France as the wife of Louis VII, and then First Lady of England when she next married Henry II. Many saw her as a ruthless hellcat, governed by a lust for power, who schemed against her husband and dominated the lives of her sons, Richard the Lionheart and King John. Shakespeare portrayed her as a "monstrous injurer of heaven and earth." Yet there was another side to this powerful queen consort. Worshipped by men and idealized in the songs of the troubadours, she was the sex symbol of her age. She also became renowned as a generous and strong ruler, throwing off the constraints that shackled twelfth-century women. Among her achievements was her patronage of the abbey at Fontevrault, a refuge for battered wives