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Oh to be a Queen: Representations of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Isabella of Angoulême, Two Scandalous Queens, in Popular Fiction

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Memorialising Premodern Monarchs

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Abstract

The depiction of queens in historical fiction is a popular format, bringing often familiar figures to a new audience and providing an insight into a fictionalised historical setting. The representations of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Isabella of Angoulême, both queens of England in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, will be examined here. This chapter focuses on two specific themes: the queens and sexual scandal, and the queens and their family lives, and analyses why these topics continue to draw and be of interest to consumers of historical fiction. It addresses the merging of historical interpretations and historical fiction and investigates why certain aspects of royal lives continue to be utilised for entertainment.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Anne O’Brien, Devil’s Consort (Surrey: MIRA Books, 2011), 124.

  2. 2.

    See Jerome de Groot, The Historical Novel (Abingdon: Routledge, 2009); Janice North, Karl C. Alvestad, and Elena Woodacre, eds., Premodern Rulers and Postmodern Viewers. Gender, Sex, and Power in Popular Culture (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).

  3. 3.

    George R. R. Martin, A Song of Ice and Fire (London: Harper Collins, 1991–present); David Nutter, Alan Taylor, Alex Graves, et al, dir., Game of Thrones (California: Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, 2012–2019), DVD; Zita Eva Rohr and Lisa Benz, eds., Queenship and the Women of Westeros. Female Agency and Advice in Game of Thrones and A Song of Ice and Fire (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020).

  4. 4.

    For example, there is an unfortunate common thread that by and large, white women tend to write white women for white women, with little consideration to expanding their character base to be representational and more inclusive.

  5. 5.

    See Mira Assaf Kafantaris, Royal Marriage, Foreign Queens, and Constructions of Race in the Early Modern Period (forthcoming); Priya Atwal, Royals and Rebels. The Rise and Fall of the Sikh Empire (London: Hurst Publishers, 2020); Elena Woodacre, ed., A Companion to Global Queenship (Leeds: Arc Humanities, 2018); Elena Woodacre, Lucinda H. S. Dean, Chris Jones, Russell E. Martin, and Zita Eva Rohr, eds., The Routledge History of Monarchy (London: Routledge, 2019), for more discussion of diverse societies in the medieval period and as part of the growing corpus on non-white queenship.

  6. 6.

    Carey Fleiner, “‘She Is My Eleanor:’ The Character of Isabella of Angoulême on Film—A Medieval Queen in Modern Media,” in Premodern Rulers and Postmodern Viewers, 91–110.

  7. 7.

    Elizabeth Chadwick, The Summer Queen (London: Sphere, 2013); Elizabeth Chadwick, The Winter Crown (London: Sphere, 2014); Elizabeth Chadwick, The Winter Crown (London: Sphere, 2014); O’Brien, Devil’s Consort; Lisa Hilton, The Stolen Queen (London: Corvus, 2015); Erica Lainé, Isabella of Angoulême. The Tangled Queen Part I (Bristol: SilverWood Books, 2015); Erica Lainé, The Tangled Queen Part 2 (Bristol: SilverWood Books, 2018); Erica Lainé, The Tangled Queen Part 3 (Bristol: SilverWood Books, 2018).

  8. 8.

    De Groot, Novel, 68.

  9. 9.

    Elizabeth Chadwick, “The Summer Queen Behind the Scenes,” 3 June 2013, http://livingthehistoryelizabethchadwick.blogspot.com/2013/06/tomorrow-ill-be-starting-series-of.html, accessed 10 April 2021.

  10. 10.

    Chadwick, The Summer Queen, 100.

  11. 11.

    Marie Hivergneaux, “Queen Eleanor and Aquitaine, 1137–1189,” in Eleanor of Aquitaine: Lord and Lady, eds. Bonnie Wheeler and John Carmi Parsons (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 62.

  12. 12.

    Hivergneaux, “Eleanor,” 62.

  13. 13.

    Hivergneaux, “Eleanor,” 55–76; Gabrielle Storey, “Co-Rulership, Co-operation and Competition: Queenship in the Angevin Domains, 1135–1230,” (PhD Diss., University of Winchester, 2020), chapter 3.

  14. 14.

    The title of Devil’s Consort is undoubtedly due to the alleged descent of the Plantagenets from the devil: Evans, Inventing Eleanor, 31; Gerald of Wales, De principis instructione in Giraldi Cambrensis Opera, ed. George F. Warner (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1891), 301, 309.

  15. 15.

    O’Brien, Devil’s Consort, 265.

  16. 16.

    For further discussion of exceptionalism, see Heather J. Tanner, ed., Medieval Elite Women and the Exercise of Power, 1100–1400. Moving Beyond the Exceptionalist Debate (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019).

  17. 17.

    Sarah Hanley, “Configuring the Authority of Queens in the French Monarchy, 1600s–1840s,” Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques 32.2 (2006): 456.

  18. 18.

    William of Newburgh, History of English Affairs Book I, ed. and trans. P. G. Walsh and M. J. Kennedy (Warminster: Aris and Phillips, 1998), 128–129.

  19. 19.

    Alison Weir, The Captive Queen (London: Arrow, 2010); Jean Plaidy, The Courts of Love (London: Robert Hale, 1987); Sharon Kay Penman, When Christ and His Saints Slept (London: Michael Joseph, 1994); Sharon Kay Penman, Time and Chance (London: Michael Joseph, 2002); Sharon Kay Penman, Devil’s Brood (London: Michael Joseph, 2008).

  20. 20.

    Fleiner, “Eleanor,” 91–110.

  21. 21.

    Jean Plaidy, The Prince of Darkness (London: Robert Hale, 1978); Rachel Bard, Isabella: Queen Without a Conscience (Bloomington: Trafford Publishing, 2006); Susanna Kearsley, The Splendour Falls (London: Corgi, 1995).

  22. 22.

    Amy Kelly, Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Four Kings (London: Harvard University Press, 1950); Marion Meade, Eleanor of Aquitaine. A Biography (London: Phoenix Press, 1977); Ralph V. Turner, Eleanor of Aquitaine (London: Yale University Press, 2011); Jean Flori, Eleanor of Aquitaine. Queen and Rebel, trans. Olive Classe (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007); Bonnie Wheeler and John Carmi Parsons, eds. Eleanor of Aquitaine: Lord and Lady (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002). See also Regine Pernoud, Aliénor d’Aquitaine (Paris: Éditions Albin Michel, 1965); Jean Markale, La vie, la légende, l’influence d’Aliénor Comtesse de Poitou, Duchesse d’Aquitaine, Reine de France, puis d’Angleterre, Dame des Troubadours et des Bardes bretons (Paris: Payot, 1979); William W. Kibler, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Patron and Politician (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1976); Martin Aurell, “Aliénor d’Aquitaine (1224–1203) et ses historiens: la destruction d’un mythe?” in Guerre, pouvoir et noblesse au Moyen Age: Mélanges en l’honneur de Philippe Contamine, eds. Jacques Paviot and Jacques Verger (Paris: Presses de l’Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 2000), 43–49; Hivergneaux, “Eleanor,” 55–76. The most recent popular biography of Eleanor by Sara Cockerill is also worthy of mention here for its rigorous research and attention to detail, see Sara Cockerill, Eleanor of Aquitaine. Queen of France and England, Mother of Empires (Stroud: Amberley Publishing, 2019).

  23. 23.

    Nicholas Vincent, “Isabella of Angoulême: John’s Jezebel,” in King John: New Interpretations, ed. Stephen D. Church (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1999), 165–219; Louise J. Wilkinson, “Maternal Abandonment and Surrogate Caregivers: Isabella of Angoulême and Her Children by King John,” in Virtuous or Villainess? The Image of the Royal Mother From the Early Medieval to the Early Modern Era, eds. Carey Fleiner and Elena Woodacre (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 101–124; Gabriel Biancotto, Robert Favreau, and Piotr Skubiszewski, eds. Isabelle d’Angoulême: Comtesse-reine et son temps. Actes du colloque tenu à Lusignan du 8 au 10 novembre 1996 (Poitiers: Université de Poitiers, 1999). Isabella’s life, although not her representation in popular fiction, will be examined in Sally Spong’s forthcoming thesis: Sally Spong, “Isabella of Gloucester and Isabella of Angoulême: Female Lordship, Queenship, Power, and Authority 1189–1220,” (PhD diss., University of East Anglia, forthcoming).

  24. 24.

    Katherine Weikert, “Feminism, Fiction, and the Empress Matilda.” in Premodern Rulers and Postmodern Viewers, 69–90, especially 77.

  25. 25.

    De Groot, Novel, 70.

  26. 26.

    Pauline Stafford, Queen Emma & Queen Edith, Queenship and Women’s Power in Eleventh-Century England (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1997); Marjorie Chibnall, The Empress Matilda, Queen Consort, Queen Mother and Lady of the English (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1993, 1991); Joan Wallach Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis” The American Historical Review 91.5 (1986): 1067, 1070–1071.

  27. 27.

    Ralph V. Turner, “Eleanor of Aquitaine, Twelfth-Century Chroniclers and her ‘Black Legend’,” Nottingham Medieval Studies 52 (2008): 17–42; Michael R. Evans, Inventing Eleanor, The Medieval and Post-Medieval Image of Eleanor of Aquitaine (London: Bloomsbury, 2014). See also Michael R. Evans, “A Remarkable Woman? Popular Historians and the Image of Eleanor of Aquitaine,” in Studies in Medievalism XVIII: Defining Medievalism(s) II (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2009), ed. Karl Fugelso, 244–264.

  28. 28.

    See further discussion below for Map and Devizes’ comments.

  29. 29.

    Vincent, “Isabella,” 165–219.

  30. 30.

    “que quasi duodenis videbatur,” Ralph of Coggeshall, Radulphi de Coggeshall Chronicon Anglicanum, De Expugatione Terræ Sanctæ Libellus, Thomas Agnellus de Morte et Sepultura Henrici Regis Angliæ Junioris, Gesta Fulconis Filii Warini, Excerpta Ex Otiis Imperialibus Gervasii Tileburiensis, ed. Joseph Stevenson (London: Longman & Co.; Trübner & Co.; Parker & Co.; Macmillan & Co.; A & C. Black; A. Thom, 1875), 103.

  31. 31.

    Henric Bagerius and Christine Ekholst, “For Better or For Worse: Royal marital sexuality as political critique in late medieval Europe,” in The Routledge History of Monarchy, 648.

  32. 32.

    Roger of Wendover, Roger of Wendover’s Flowers of History Comprising The History of England From the Descent of the Saxons to A. D. 1235, Formerly Ascribed to Matthew Paris, trans. and ed. John Allen Giles. 2 vols. (London: George Bell & Sons, 1892), ii, 207.

  33. 33.

    Matthew Paris, Matthæi Parisiensis, Monachi Sancti Albani, Chronica Majora, ed. Henry Richards Luard. 7 vols. (London: Longman & Co., 1872–1880), ii, 563.

  34. 34.

    Vincent, “Isabella of Angoulême,” 185–193; Gabrielle Storey, “Co-Rulership, Co-operation and Competition: Queenship in the Angevin Domains, 1135–1230,” (PhD Diss., University of Winchester, 2020), chapter 5.

  35. 35.

    April Harper, “Bodies and Sexuality,” in A Cultural History of Women in the Middle Ages, ed. Kim M. Phillips (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), 45.

  36. 36.

    Harper, “Bodies,” 47–49.

  37. 37.

    Chadwick, The Summer Queen, 268.

  38. 38.

    Chadwick, The Summer Queen, 288–291.

  39. 39.

    O’Brien, Devil’s Consort, 321.

  40. 40.

    Paul Marchegay, “Chartes de Fontevraud concernant l’Aunis et La Rochelle,” Bibliothèque de l’École des chartes 19 (1858): 132–179 and 321–347; Hivergneaux, “Eleanor,” 55–76; Calendar of Documents preserved in France, Illustrative of the History of Great Britain and Ireland, I, 918–1206, trans. and ed. James Horace Round (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1899), nos. 1107 and 1108.

  41. 41.

    See Evans, Eleanor, 19–44.

  42. 42.

    O’Brien, Devil’s Consort, 369.

  43. 43.

    John of Salisbury, The Historia Pontificalis of John of Salisbury, trans. and ed. Marjorie Chibnall (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1986), 52.

  44. 44.

    Evans, Eleanor, 22–24.

  45. 45.

    Walter Map, De Nugis Curialium. Courtiers Trifles, trans. and ed. M. R. James (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1983), 475–477.

  46. 46.

    O’Brien, Devil’s Consort, 242–243.

  47. 47.

    Lainé, The Tangled Queen Part 1, 17–26.

  48. 48.

    Hilton, The Stolen Queen.

  49. 49.

    Lainé, The Tangled Queen Part 1, 88.

  50. 50.

    For Isabella’s fight for her dower lands, see Isabel of Angoulême, “Letter from Isabel of Angoulême to Henry III (1218–1219),” Epistolae: Medieval Women’s Latin Letters, accessed 18 November 2020, epistolae.ctl.columbia.edu/letter/2416.html; Isabel of Angoulême, “Letter from Isabel of Angoulême to Henry III (1220),” Epistolae: Medieval Women’s Latin Letters, accessed 18 November 2020, epistolae.ctl.columbia.edu/letter/457.html; Vincent, Isabella of Angoulême, 184–190, 208–211.

  51. 51.

    Hilton, The Stolen Queen, 21, 304.

  52. 52.

    Hilton, The Stolen Queen, 89–90.

  53. 53.

    “Sponsam habet sibi exosam et ipsum odientem, incestam, maleeficam, et adulteram,” Paris, Chronica Majora, ii, 563.

  54. 54.

    Hilton, The Stolen Queen, 154, 158.

  55. 55.

    Hilton, The Stolen Queen, 162.

  56. 56.

    Hilton, The Stolen Queen, 174–178.

  57. 57.

    Hilton, The Stolen Queen, 211.

  58. 58.

    For discussion of the rebellion, see Turner, Eleanor, 205–230 for context and the events of 1173–1174.

  59. 59.

    Chadwick, The Winter Crown, 48–49.

  60. 60.

    For discussion of Matilda and Eleanor’s relationship, see Gabrielle Storey, “Co-Operation, Co-Rulership and Competition: Queenship in the Angevin Domains, 1135–1230,” (University of Winchester: PhD thesis, 2020), chapter 5.

  61. 61.

    For more on medieval childhood, see Philippe Ariès, Centuries of Childhood, A Social History of Family Life, trans. Robert Baldick (New York: Vintage Books, 1962); and conversely Shulamith Shahar, Childhood in the Middle Ages, trans. Chaya Galai (London: Routledge, 1992).

  62. 62.

    Chadwick, The Autumn Throne, 19–20, 29, 37, 39.

  63. 63.

    Chadwick, The Autumn Throne, 174–178.

  64. 64.

    Hivergneaux, “Eleanor,” 71; Marchegay, “Chartes,” 330–331.

  65. 65.

    Lainé, The Tangled Queen Part 2, 98.

  66. 66.

    Wilkinson, “Abandonment,” 101–124.

  67. 67.

    Lainé, The Tangled Queen Part 3, 117, 120–122.

  68. 68.

    Lainé, The Tangled Queen Part 3, 185–187.

  69. 69.

    Wilkinson, “Abandonment,” 114.

  70. 70.

    Ruth Mazo Karras, Sexuality in the Middle Ages. Doing Unto Others, 2nd ed. (Abingdon: Routledge, 2012), 76.

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Storey, G. (2022). Oh to be a Queen: Representations of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Isabella of Angoulême, Two Scandalous Queens, in Popular Fiction. In: Storey, G. (eds) Memorialising Premodern Monarchs. Queenship and Power. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84130-0_12

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84130-0_12

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-84129-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-84130-0

  • eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)

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