As I always do, I went looking into Medieval history for a strong female character – and found Eleanor of Aquitaine. Wife to two kings, mother to two more. She lived for eighty years and dominated two different countries in her time.

Historical figures like Eleanor of Aquitaine are the reason why writers choose to go into historical fiction writing – I am thinking about working on a series about her from the earliest days of her marriage to Louis at the age of 15 to the end of her life – it’s a fascinating story.

Eleanor was, as the heir apparent to Aquitaine, the richest and most powerful woman in Europe by the time she was fifteen, at the time of her father’s death. It was unsurprising that Louis VI’s reaction to becoming her guardian upon her father William X’s death was to marry her to his son Louis who was soon to become Louis VII.

When Eleanor and Louis were married, the couple were enthroned as duke and duchess of Aquitaine. It was agreed that the duchy 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. This condition of the marriage shows the relative power of Eleanor’s status as Duchess of Aquitaine. 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.

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. Possessing a high-spirited nature, Eleanor was not popular with the staid northerners once she came to live in Paris with her husband; according to sources, Louis’s mother thought her flighty and a bad influence. Eleanor’s conduct was repeatedly criticized by church elders, particularly Bernard of Clairvaux and Abbot Suger, as indecorous. However, the king was madly in love with his beautiful and worldly bride, and granted her every whim, even though her behavior baffled and vexed him. Much money went into making the austere Cité Palace in Paris more comfortable for Eleanor’s sake. The closeness of her relationship to Raymond, Prince of Antioch during the Second Crusade, did apparently lead to rumors in the court that Eleanor was having an affair with her uncle.

My portrayal of Eleanor of Aquitaine, Queen of France, takes advantage of every negative rumor and fit of pique that has come down to us from history. In all honesty, I believe that Eleanor was an intelligent, strong-willed woman who was far too powerful for the comfort of a court watching her captivate their demure and pious king. No doubt the source of the rumors during her lifetime has much more to do with misogyny and classic patriarchal expectations that a powerful Queen did not meet than anything else.

Elevating Raymond to both the Queen’s lover and the head of a harem of seductive ladies in waiting simply allows me to provide more characters involved in hot and steamy sex that might not have been possible in the actual era itself. I happily admit I have to do whatever is necessary in that regard. This Eleanor is meant to be a work of fiction, and I must admit up front that I am far more fascinated by the political animal that she certainly must have been to have survived eighty years and two marriages to monarchs than anything else.