Eleanor of Aquitaine

This is a blog post at a special request. Eleonor of Aquitaine was perhaps
the most famous queen in the Middle Ages. 

But who was she? 

On 1 April 1204 at the age of about 82, Eleanor of Aquitaine died
at Poitiers. Who was Eleanor of Aquitaine?

Family

Eleanor's year of birth is not known precisely: a late 13th-century
genealogy of her family listing her as 13 years old in the spring of 1137
provides the best evidence that Eleanor was perhaps born as late as 1124.

Eleanor (or Aliénor) was the oldest of three children of William X,
Duke of Aquitaine, whose glittering ducal court was renowned in
early 12th-century Europe, and his wife, Aenor de Châtellerault,
the daughter of Aimery I, Viscount of Châtellerault, and Dangereuse
de l'Isle Bouchard, who was William IX's longtime mistress as well
as Eleanor's maternal grandmother. Her parents' marriage had been
arranged by Dangereuse with her paternal grandfather William IX.

Her family were members of the House of Ramnulfids also called
the House of Poitiers. 

Education

By all accounts, Eleanor's father ensured that she had the best
possible education. Eleanor came to learn arithmetic, the constellations,
and history. 

She also learned domestic skills such as household management
and the needle arts of embroidery, needlepoint, sewing, spinning,
and weaving. 

Eleanor developed skills in conversation, dancing, games such
as backgammon, checkers, and chess, playing the harp, and singing.

Although her native tongue was Poitevin, she was taught to read
and speak Latin, was well versed in music and literature, and
schooled in riding, hawking, and hunting.

Eleanor was extroverted, lively, intelligent, and strong-willed.
Her four-year-old brother William Aigret and their mother
died at the castle of Talmont on Aquitaine's Atlantic coast
in the spring of 1130. 

Eleanor became the heir presumptive to her father's domains.
The Duchy of Aquitaine was the largest and richest province
of France. Poitou, where Eleanor spent most of her childhood,
and Aquitaine together was almost one-third the size of modern
France. Eleanor had only one other legitimate sibling, a
younger sister named Aelith (also called Petronilla). 

Her half-brother Joscelin was acknowledged by William X as
a son, but not as his heir. The notion that she had another half-brother,
William, has been discredited. 

Later, during the first four years of Henry II's reign, her siblings
joined Eleanor's royal household.

First Marriage

On 25 July 1137, Eleanor and Louis were married in the
Cathedral of Saint-André in Bordeaux by the archbishop of Bordeaux.
Immediately after the wedding, the couple were enthroned as
duke and duchess of Aquitaine.

It was agreed that the land would remain independent of France
until Eleanor's oldest son became both king of France and
duke of Aquitaine. 

Thus, her holdings would not be merged with France until
the next generation. As a wedding present she gave Louis a rock
crystal vase,  currently on display at the Louvre.

Louis's tenure as count of Poitou and duke of Aquitaine and
Gascony lasted only a few days. Although he had been invested
as such on 8 August 1137, a messenger gave him the news that
Louis VI had died of dysentery on 1 August while he and Eleanor
 were making a tour of the provinces. He and Eleanor were
anointed and crowned king and queen of France on
Christmas Day of the same year.

Conflicts

Louis soon came into violent conflict with Pope Innocent II.
In 1141, the Archbishopric of Bourges became vacant, and the
king put forward as a candidate one of his chancellors,
Cadurc, while vetoing the one suitable candidate, Pierre de la Chatre,
who was promptly elected by the canons of Bourges and consecrated
by the Pope. 

Louis accordingly bolted the gates of Bourges against the new bishop.
The Pope, recalling similar attempts by William X to exile supporters
of Innocent from Poitou and replace them with priests loyal to himself,
blamed Eleanor, saying that Louis was only a child and should be taught
manners. Outraged, Louis swore upon relics that so long as he lived
Pierre should never enter Bourges. An interdict was thereupon
imposed upon the king's lands, and Pierre was given refuge by
Theobald II, Count of Champagne.

Louis became involved in a war with Count Theobald by
permitting Raoul I, Count of Vermandois and seneschal of France,
to repudiate his wife Eleanor of Blois, Theobald's sister, and to
marry Petronilla of Aquitaine, Eleanor's sister. 

Eleanor urged Louis to support her sister's marriage to Count Raoul.
Theobald had also offended Louis by siding with the Pope in the
dispute over Bourges. The war lasted two years (1142–44) and
ended with the occupation of Champagne by the royal army.
Louis was personally involved in the assault and burning of
the town of Vitry. More than a thousand people who sought
refuge in the church there died in the flames. Horrified, and
desiring an end to the war, Louis attempted to make peace with
Theobald in exchange for his support in lifting the interdict on
Raoul and Petronilla. This was duly lifted for long enough to allow
Theobald's lands to be restored; it was then lowered once more
when Raoul refused to repudiate Petronilla, prompting Louis to
return to Champagne and ravage it once more.

In June 1144, the king and queen visited the newly built monastic
church at Saint-Denis. While there, the queen met with Bernard of
Clairvaux, demanding that he use his influence with the Pope
to have the excommunication of Petronilla and Raoul lifted,
in exchange for which King Louis would make concessions
in Champagne and recognise Pierre de la Chatre as archbishop
of Bourges. Dismayed at her attitude, Bernard scolded Eleanor for
her lack of penitence and interference in matters of state. In response,
Eleanor broke down and meekly excused her behaviour, claiming to
be bitter because of her lack of children (her only recorded pregnancy
at that time was in about 1138, but she miscarried.

Louis, however, still burned with guilt over the massacre at Vitry and
wished to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land to atone for his sins.
In autumn 1145, Pope Eugene III requested that Louis lead a
Crusade to the Middle East to rescue the Frankish states there
from disaster. Accordingly, Louis declared on Christmas Day
1145 at Bourges his intention of going on a crusade.

Crusade

Eleanor of Aquitaine also formally took up the cross symbolic of the
Second Crusade during a sermon preached by Bernard of Clairvaux.
In addition, she had been corresponding with her uncle Raymond,
Prince of Antioch, who was seeking further protection from the French
crown against the Saracens. 

Eleanor recruited some of her royal ladies-in-waiting for the campaign
as well as 300 non-noble Aquitainian vassals. She insisted on taking
part in the Crusades as the feudal leader of the soldiers from her duchy. 

The Crusade itself achieved little. Louis was a weak and ineffectual
military leader with no skill for maintaining troop discipline or morale,
or of making informed and logical tactical decisions. 

In eastern Europe, the French army was at times hindered by Manuel I
Comnenus, the Byzantine Emperor, who feared that the Crusade would
jeopardise the tenuous safety of his empire. Notwithstanding, during
their three-week stay at Constantinople, Louis was fêted and Eleanor
was much admired. She was compared with Penthesilea, mythical
queen of the Amazons, by the Greek historian Nicetas Choniates.
He added that she gained the epithet chrysopous (golden-foot)
from the cloth of gold that decorated and fringed her robe.
Louis and Eleanor stayed in the Philopation palace just outside
the city walls.

From the moment the Crusaders entered Asia Minor, things began
to go badly. The king and queen were still optimistic—the Byzantine
Emperor had told them that King Conrad III of Germany had won
a great victory against a Turkish army when in fact the German
army had been almost completely destroyed at Dorylaeum. 

However, while camping near Nicea, the remnants of the German
army, including a dazed and sick Conrad III, staggered past the
French camp, bringing news of their disaster. The French, with
what remained of the Germans, then began to march in
increasingly disorganised fashion towards Antioch. They were
in high spirits on Christmas Eve, when they chose to camp in
a lush valley near Ephesus. Here they were ambushed by a
Turkish detachment, but the French proceeded to slaughter this
detachment and appropriate their camp.

Louis then decided to cross the Phrygian mountains directly in
the hope of reaching Raymond of Poitiers in Antioch more quickly.
As they ascended the mountains, however, the army and the king
and queen were horrified to discover the unburied corpses of the
Germans killed earlier.

On the day set for the crossing of Mount Cadmus, Louis chose to
take charge of the rear of the column, where the unarmed pilgrims
and the baggage trains marched. The vanguard, with which
Queen Eleanor marched, was commanded by her Aquitainian vassal,
Geoffrey de Rancon. Unencumbered by baggage, they reached the
summit of Cadmus, where Rancon had been ordered to make
camp for the night. Rancon, however, chose to continue on, deciding
in concert with Amadeus III, Count of Savoy, Louis's uncle, that a
nearby plateau would make a better campsite. Such disobedience
was reportedly common.

Accordingly, by mid-afternoon, the rear of the column—believing
the day's march to be nearly at an end—was dawdling. This resulted
in the army becoming separated, with some having already crossed
the summit and others still approaching it. In the ensuing Battle of
Mount Cadmus, the Turks, who had been following and feinting for
many days, seized their opportunity and attacked those who had not
yet crossed the summit. The French, both soldiers and pilgrims, taken
by surprise, were trapped. Those who tried to escape were caught and
killed. Many men, horses, and much of the baggage were cast into the
canyon below. 

The king, having scorned royal apparel in favour of a simple pilgrim's
tunic, escaped notice, unlike his bodyguards, whose skulls were brutally
smashed and limbs severed. He reportedly "nimbly and bravely scaled
a rock by making use of some tree roots which God had provided for
his safety" and managed to survive the attack. Others were not so
fortunate: "No aid came from Heaven, except that night fell."

Louis's refusal and his forcing her to accompany him humiliated Eleanor,
and she maintained a low profile for the rest of the crusade. Louis's
subsequent siege of Damascus in 1148 with his remaining army,
reinforced by Conrad and Baldwin III of Jerusalem, achieved little. 

Damascus was a major wealthy trading centre and was under normal
circumstances a potential threat, but the rulers of Jerusalem had recently
entered into a truce with the city, which they then forswore. It was a
gamble that did not pay off, and whether through military error or
betrayal, the Damascus campaign was a failure. 

Louis's long march to Jerusalem and back north, which Eleanor was
forced to join, debilitated his army and disheartened her knights;
the divided Crusade armies could not overcome the Muslim forces,
and the royal couple had to return home. The French royal family
retreated to Jerusalem and then sailed to Rome and made their
way back to Paris.

Even before the Crusade, Eleanor and Louis were becoming estranged,
and their differences were only exacerbated while they were abroad.
Eleanor's purported relationship with her uncle Raymond, the ruler
of Antioch, was a major source of discord. Eleanor supported her uncle's
desire to re-capture the nearby County of Edessa, the objective of the
Crusade. In addition, having been close to him in their youth, she now
showed what was considered to be "excessive affection" towards
her uncle. Raymond had plans to abduct Eleanor, to which she consented.

Home, however, was not easily reached. Louis and Eleanor, on separate
ships due to their disagreements, were first attacked in May 1149 by
Byzantine ships. Although they escaped this attempt unharmed,
stormy weather drove Eleanor's ship far to the south to the Barbary
Coast and caused her to lose track of her husband. Neither was heard
of for over two months. In mid-July, Eleanor's ship finally reached
Palermo in Sicily, where she discovered that she and her husband
had both been given up for dead. She was given shelter and food
by servants of King Roger II of Sicily, until the king eventually
reached Calabria, and she set out to meet him there. Later, at
King Roger's court in Potenza, she learned of the death of her uncle
Raymond, who had been beheaded by Muslim forces in the Holy Land.
This news appears to have forced a change of plans, for instead of
returning to France from Marseilles, they went to see Pope Eugene III
in Tusculum, where he had been driven five months before by a revolt
of the Commune of Rome.

Eugene did not, as Eleanor had hoped, grant an annulment.
Instead, he attempted to reconcile Eleanor and Louis, confirming
the legality of their marriage. He proclaimed that no word could be
spoken against it, and that it might not be dissolved under any pretext.
He even arranged for Eleanor and Louis to sleep in the same bed.
Thus was conceived their second child—not a son, but another
daughter, Alix of France.

The marriage was now doomed. Still without a son and in danger
of being left with no male heir, as well as facing substantial
opposition to Eleanor from many of his barons and her own
desire for annulment, Louis bowed to the inevitable. On 11 March 1152,
they met at the royal castle of Beaugency to dissolve the marriage.
Hugues de Toucy, archbishop of Sens, presided, and Louis and
Eleanor were both present, as were the archbishop of Bordeaux
and Rouen. Archbishop Samson of Reims acted for Eleanor.

On 21 March, the four archbishops, with the approval of Pope Eugene,
granted an annulment on grounds of consanguinity within the fourth
degree; Eleanor was Louis' third cousin once removed, and shared
common ancestry with Robert II of France. Their two daughters
 were, however, declared legitimate. Children born to a marriage
that was later annulled were not at risk of being "bastardised," because
"[w]here parties married in good faith, without knowledge of an
impediment, ... children of the marriage were legitimate." 
Custody of them was awarded to King Louis. Archbishop Samson
received assurances from Louis that Eleanor's lands would be
restored to her.

Due to her first marriage Eleanor became a member of the
House of Capet. 

Second marriage

As Eleanor travelled to Poitiers, two lords—Theobald V,
Count of Blois, and Geoffrey, Count of Nantes, brother of Henry II,
Duke of Normandy—tried to kidnap and marry her to claim her lands.
As soon as she arrived in Poitiers, Eleanor sent envoys to Henry,
Duke of Normandy and future king of England, asking him to come
at once to marry her. 

On 18 May 1152 (Whit Sunday), eight weeks after her annulment,
Eleanor married Henry "without the pomp and ceremony that
befitted their rank."

Eleanor was related to Henry even more closely than she had been
to Louis: they were cousins to the third degree through their
common ancestor Ermengarde of Anjou, wife of Robert I, Duke of
Burgundy and Geoffrey, Count of Gâtinais, and they were also
descended from King Robert II of France. 

A marriage between Henry and Eleanor's daughter Marie had
earlier been declared impossible due to their status as third cousins
once removed. It was rumoured by some that Eleanor had had an affair
with Henry's own father, Geoffrey V, Count of Anjou, who had advised
his son to avoid any involvement with her.

On 25 October 1154, Henry became king of England. A now heavily
pregnant Eleanor, was crowned queen of England by Theobald of Bec,
the Archbishop of Canterbury, on 19 December 1154. 

Over the next 13 years, she bore Henry five sons and three daughters:
William, Henry, Richard, Geoffrey, John, Matilda, Eleanor, and Joan.

Eleanor's marriage to Henry was reputed to be tumultuous and
argumentative, although sufficiently cooperative to produce at least
eight pregnancies. Henry was by no means faithful to his wife and had
a reputation for philandering. Henry fathered other, illegitimate
children throughout the marriage. Eleanor appears to have taken an
ambivalent attitude towards these affairs. Geoffrey of York, for
example, was an illegitimate son of Henry, but acknowledged by
Henry as his child and raised at Westminster in the care of the queen.

During the period from Henry's accession to the birth of Eleanor's
youngest son John, affairs in the kingdom were turbulent: Aquitaine,
as was the norm, defied the authority of Henry as Eleanor's husband
and answered only to their duchess. Attempts were made to claim
Toulouse, the rightful inheritance of Eleanor's grandmother
Philippa of Toulouse, but they ended in failure. 

A bitter feud arose between the king and Thomas Becket, initially
his chancellor and closest adviser and later the archbishop of Canterbury.
Louis of France had remarried and been widowed; he married for the third
time and finally fathered a long-hoped-for son, Philip Augustus, also
known as Dieudonné—God-given. "Young Henry," son of Henry and
Eleanor, wed Margaret, daughter of Louis from his second marriage.
Little is known of Eleanor's involvement in these events. It is certain
that by late 1166, Henry's notorious affair with Rosamund Clifford had
become known, and Eleanor's marriage to Henry appears to have become
terminally strained.

In 1167, Eleanor's third daughter, Matilda, married Henry the Lion
of Saxony. Eleanor remained in England with her daughter for the year
prior to Matilda's departure for Normandy in September. In December,
Eleanor gathered her movable possessions in England and transported
them on several ships to Argentan. Christmas was celebrated at the
royal court there, and she appears to have agreed to a separation from
Henry. She certainly left for her own city of Poitiers immediately after
Christmas. Henry did not stop her; on the contrary, he and his army
personally escorted her there before attacking a castle belonging to
the rebellious Lusignan family. Henry then went about his own business
outside Aquitaine, leaving Earl Patrick, his regional military commander,
as her protective custodian. When Patrick was killed in a skirmish,
Eleanor, who proceeded to ransom his captured nephew, the young
William Marshal, was left in control of her lands.

The Court in Poitiers

The Palace of Poitiers, the seat of the counts of Poitou and dukes of
Aquitaine in the 10th through to the 12th centuries, where Eleanor's
highly literate and artistic court inspired tales of Courts of Love.

Of all her influence on culture, Eleanor's time in Poitiers between
1168 and 1173 was perhaps the most critical, yet very little is known
about it. Henry II was elsewhere, attending to his own affairs after
escorting Eleanor there. 

Some believe that Eleanor's court in Poitiers was the "Court of Love"
where Eleanor and her daughter Marie meshed and encouraged the
ideas of troubadours, chivalry, and courtly love into a single court.
It may have been largely to teach manners, something the French courts
would be known for in later generations. Yet the existence and reasons
for this court are debated.

There is no claim that Eleanor invented courtly love, for it was a
concept that had begun to grow before Eleanor's court arose. All that
can be said is that her court at Poitiers was most likely a catalyst
for the increased popularity of courtly love literature in the Western
European regions 

Revolt

💥 In March 1173, aggrieved at his lack of power and egged on by
Henry's enemies, his son by the same name, the younger Henry,
launched the Revolt of 1173–1174. He fled to Paris. 

From there, "the younger Henry, devising evil against his father
from every side by the advice of the French king, went secretly into
Aquitaine where his two youthful brothers, Richard and Geoffrey,
were living with their mother, and with her connivance, so it is said,
he incited them to join him."

Eleanor left Poitiers, but was arrested and sent to the king at Rouen.
The king did not announce the arrest publicly; for the next year,
the queen's whereabouts were unknown. On 8 July 1174, Henry and
Eleanor took ship for England from Barfleur. As soon as they
disembarked at Southampton, Eleanor was taken either to
Winchester Castle or Sarum Castle and held there.

Years of imprisonment 

🔏 Eleanor was imprisoned for the next 16 years, much of the time
in various locations in England. During her imprisonment, Eleanor
became more and more distant from her sons, especially from Richard,
 who had always been her favourite. She did not have the opportunity
to see her sons very often during her imprisonment, though she was
released for special occasions such as Christmas. About four miles
from Shrewsbury and close by Haughmond Abbey is "Queen Eleanor's
Bower", the remains of a triangular castle which is believed to
have been one of her prisons.

In 1183, the young King Henry tried again to force his father to
hand over some of his patrimony. In debt and refused control of
Normandy, he tried to ambush his father at Limoges. He was joined
by troops sent by his brother Geoffrey and Philip II of France. 

Henry II's troops besieged the town, forcing his son to flee. After
wandering aimlessly through Aquitaine, Henry the Younger caught
dysentery. 

On Saturday, 11 June 1183, the young king realized he was dying
and was overcome with remorse for his sins. When his father's ring
was sent to him, he begged that his father would show mercy to his
mother, and that all his companions would plead with Henry to set
her free. 

Henry II sent Thomas of Earley, Archdeacon of Wells, to break
the news to Eleanor at Sarum.Eleanor reputedly had a dream
in which she foresaw her son Henry's death. In 1193, she would tell
Pope Celestine III that she was tortured by his memory.

King Philip II of France claimed that certain properties in Normandy
belonged to his half-sister Margaret, widow of the young Henry, but
Henry insisted that they had once belonged to Eleanor and would
revert to her upon her son's death. For this reason Henry summoned
Eleanor to Normandy in the late summer of 1183. She stayed in
Normandy for six months. This was the beginning of a period
of greater freedom for the still-supervised Eleanor. 

Eleanor went back to England probably early in 1184. Over the next
few years Eleanor often travelled with her husband and was sometimes
associated with him in the government of the realm, but still had a
custodian so that she was not free.

Widowhood

Upon the death of her husband Henry II on 6 July 1189, Richard I
was the undisputed heir. One of his first acts as king was to send William
Marshal to England with orders to release Eleanor from prison; he found
upon his arrival that her custodians had already released her. 

Eleanor rode to Westminster and received the oaths of fealty from many
lords and prelates on behalf of the king. She ruled England in Richard's
name, signing herself "Eleanor, by the grace of God, Queen of England." 

On 13 August 1189, Richard sailed from Barfleur to Portsmouth and
was received with enthusiasm. Between 1190 and 1194, Richard was
absent from England, engaged in the Third Crusade from 1190 to 1192,
and then held in captivity by Henry VI, Holy Roman Emperor. 

During Richard's absence, royal authority in England was represented
by a Council of Regency in conjunction with a succession of chief justiciars
—William de Longchamp (1190–1191), Walter de Coutances (1191–1193),
and finally Hubert Walter. 

Although Eleanor held no formal office in England during this period,
she arrived in England in the company of Coutances in June 1191,
 and for the remainder of Richard's absence, she exercised a
considerable degree of influence over the affairs of England as well
as the conduct of Prince John. 

Eleanor played a key role in raising the ransom demanded from England
by Henry VI and in the negotiations with the Holy Roman Emperor
that eventually secured Richard's release. Evidence of the influence
she wielded can also be found within the numerous letters she wrote
to Pope Celestine III regarding Richard's captivity. Her letter dated
1193, presents her strong expressions of personal suffering as a result
of Richard's captivity and informs the Pope that in her grief she is
"wasted away by sorrow".

Eleanor survived Richard and lived well into the reign of her
youngest son, King John. In 1199, under the terms of a truce between
King Philip II and King John, it was agreed that Philip's 12-year-old
heir-apparent Louis would be married to one of John's nieces, daughters
of his sister Eleanor of England, queen of Castile. John instructed his
mother to travel to Castile to select one of the princesses. Now 77,
Eleanor set out from Poitiers. Just outside Poitiers she was
ambushed and held captive by Hugh IX of Lusignan, whose
lands had been sold to Henry II by his forebears. Eleanor secured
her freedom by agreeing to his demands. She continued south,
crossed the Pyrenees, and travelled through the kingdoms of
Navarre and Castile, arriving in Castile before the end of January 1200.

Eleanor's daughter, Queen Eleanor of Castile, had two remaining
unmarried daughters, Urraca and Blanche. Eleanor selected the younger
daughter, Blanche. She stayed for two months at the Castilian court, then
late in March journeyed with granddaughter Blanche back across the
Pyrenees. She celebrated Easter in Bordeaux, where the famous
warrior Mercadier came to her court. It was decided that he would
escort the queen and princess north.  

Illness & Death

Eleanor was again unwell in early 1201. When war broke out between
John and Philip, Eleanor declared her support for John and set out
from Fontevraud to her capital Poitiers to prevent her grandson Arthur
I, Duke of Brittany, posthumous son of Eleanor's son Geoffrey and John's
rival for the English throne, from taking control. Arthur learned of her
whereabouts and besieged her in the castle of Mirebeau. As soon as John
heard of this, he marched south, overcame the besiegers, and captured
the 15-year-old Arthur, and probably his sister Eleanor, Fair Maid of
Brittany, whom Eleanor had raised with Richard. Eleanor then returned
to Fontevraud where she took the veil as a nun.

Eleanor died in 1204 and was entombed in Fontevraud Abbey next
to her husband Henry and her son Richard. Her tomb effigy shows
her reading a Bible and is decorated with representations of magnificent
jewellery; such effigies were rare, and Eleanor's is one of the finest of the
few that survive from this period. 

However, during the French Revolution the abbey of Fontevraud was
sacked and the tombs were disturbed and vandalised - consequently the
bones of Eleanor, Henry, Richard, Joana and Isabella of Angoulême
were exhumed and scattered, never to be recovered.

In films, books and dramas 

Henry and Eleanor are the main characters in James Goldman's 1966 play
The Lion in Winter, which was made into a film in 1968 starring Peter
O'Toole as Henry and Katharine Hepburn in the role of Eleanor,
for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress and the
BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role and was nominated
for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Drama.

📚 Jean Plaidy's novel The Courts of Love, fifth in the 'Queens
of England' series, is a fictionalised autobiography of Eleanor of Aquitaine.

Norah Lofts wrote a fictionalized biography of her, entitled in
various editions Queen in Waiting or Eleanor the Queen, and
including some romanticized episodes—starting off with the
young Eleanor planning to elope with a young knight, who is killed
out of hand by her guardian, in order to facilitate her marriage
to the King's son.

The character Queen Elinor appears in William Shakespeare's
The Life and Death of King John, with other members of the family.
On television, she has been portrayed in this play by Una Venning in the
BBC Sunday Night Theatre version (1952) and by Mary Morris in
the BBC Shakespeare version (1984).

Eleanor features in the novel Via Crucis (1899) by F. Marion Crawford.

Eleanor serves as an important allegorical figure in Ezra Pound's
early Cantos.

In Sharon Kay Penman's Plantagenet novels, she figures prominently in
When Christ and His Saints Slept, Time and Chance, and Devil's Brood,
and also appears in Lionheart and A King's Ransom, both of which
focus on the reign of her son, Richard, as king of England. Eleanor
also appears briefly in the first novel of Penman's Welsh trilogy,
Here Be Dragons. In Penman's historical mysteries, Eleanor, as Richard's
regent, sends squire Justin de Quincy on various missions, often an
investigation of a situation involving Prince John. The four published
mysteries are the Queen's Man, Cruel as the Grave, Dragon's Lair,
and Prince of Darkness.

Eleanor is the subject of A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver,
a children's novel by E.L. Konigsburg.

Historical fiction author Elizabeth Chadwick wrote a three-volume
series about Eleanor: The Summer Queen (2013),
The Winter Crown (2014) and The Autumn Throne (2016).

In The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, Howard Pyle, retelling
the ballad Robin Hood and Queen Katherine, made the queen
Queen Eleanor to fit historically with the rest of the work.

She has also been introduced in The Royal Diaries series in the
book "Crown Jewel of Aquitaine" by Kristiana Gregory.

She is a supporting character in Matrix by Lauren Groff.

Her life was portrayed on BBC Radio 4 in the drama series
Eleanor Rising, with Rose Basista as Eleanor and Joel MacCormack
as King Louis. The first series of five 15-minute episodes was broadcast
in November 2020 and the second series in April 2021.

Music 

🎶 Eleanor and Rosamund Clifford, as well as Henry II and Rosamund's
father, appear in Gaetano Donizetti's opera Rosmonda d'Inghilterra
(libretto by Felice Romani), which was premiered in Florence, at
the Teatro Pergola, in 1834.

Eleanor of Aquitaine is thought to be the queen of England mentioned
in the poem "Were diu werlt alle min," used as the tenth movement of
Carl Orff's famous cantata, Carmina Burana.

Flower and Hawk is a monodrama for soprano and orchestra, written
by American composer, Carlisle Floyd that premiered in 1972, in
which the soprano (Eleanor of Aquitaine) relives past memories of her
time as queen, and at the end of the monodrama, hears the bells that
toll for Henry II's death, and in turn, her freedom.

Queen Elanor's Confession, or Queen Eleanor's Confession, is Child
ballad 156. Although the figures are intended as Eleanor of Aquitaine,
Henry II of England, and William Marshall, the story is an entire invention.