- [Matthew] Spring, 1173, Aquitaine,
Henry's sons are in revolt,
gone to Paris to ally with Eleanor's ex-husband, Louis,
and his son, Philip,
and Eleanor is on the road.
Her goal is unclear.
She hasn't rebelled against her husband
but also hasn't condemned her three rebel sons
or raised troops for Henry to use.
Rumor has it, she may be headed for Paris herself.
And court gossip even swirls
that she instigated this whole standoff
as part of a dark plot.
So Henry's soldiers capture her on the road
and take her back to him.
She will now be her husband's captive,
as well as his queen,
insurance that Aquitaine will not revolt
and a hostage to try to bring her sons
to the negotiating table.
Eleanor, the most powerful woman in Europe,
will be a prisoner for the next 16 years.
(upbeat music)
Thanks so much to Brilliant
for helping us tell today's historical tale.
Eleanor of Aquitaine, powerful and savvy,
has always attracted a lot of stories.
And one of the big ones is that,
she was some sort of dark mastermind,
secretly convincing her sons to rebel.
However, that's not accurate.
Now, don't get us wrong,
Eleanor wasn't above using her kids as chess pieces.
That was actually kind of her whole thing.
But by most accounts,
she wasn't even around when young Henry finally snapped
and decided to challenge his father.
If she had been pulling the strings,
Henry probably would've divorced her
and kept her in worse conditions.
But as had been the case with her divorce from Louis,
court figures found Eleanor a convenient scapegoat
to blame the rebellion on
rather than Henry deciding to make his son co-ruler
but then giving him no actual power.
For a decade, Eleanor was removed from the political board,
unable to see her children
and confined in luxurious solitude at English castles.
While she was allowed to appear at Christmas courts,
otherwise she watched from the sidelines
as her family tore itself apart.
To put it simply, while Eleanor was imprisoned,
her sons raised rebellions and fought their father,
surrendered, went back to crush
the rebellions they'd caused, then fought each other.
Though was kind of par for the course for Henry's family.
In fact, Henry's bloodline, the Plantagenets,
were so known for their anger issues and infighting
that one of their nicknames was the Devil's Brood.
According to legend, they were descended from a marriage
between a French noble and the literal daughter of Satan.
But I digress.
So what did Eleanor think about this familial civil war?
Well, like so many things with her,
the documents don't tell us directly,
and we have to read between the lines.
And for Rob's part,
he thinks this is where Eleanor entered the final phase
of her life.
The first phase had been about protecting her own power
as Lord of Aquitaine.
The second was about founding the Angevin Empire
with her marriage to Henry
and securing its future through producing children.
But now her great work was to keep
this red haired Devil's Brood from tearing apart
what she and Henry had built,
a task that would encompass the rest of her life.
See, she was essentially living
out her own political ambitions through her sons
and building Angevin power through her daughter's marriages.
This third and final phase began in 1183
when Eleanor had a dream where she saw her son, Henry,
wearing two crowns one atop the other,
the crown of eternal life above that of his earthly power.
Soon, she got the news that he had died of dysentery
while campaigning against Richard.
This dream haunted Eleanor,
especially since one of Henry's deathbed acts was to beg
the king to release her.
Richard was now the heir presumptive,
and that was a problem
because King Henry thought Richard would be too powerful
if he was both heir to England and Duke of Aquitaine.
So as a condition of becoming heir,
he ordered Richard to give up Aquitaine
to his no longer landless brother, John.
See, while most of the family considered John irresponsible
and duplicitous, he had never joined his brothers
in rebellion and therefore had become Henry's favorite.
Oh, yeah, Richard refused.
As a compromise, Henry wield Eleanor out of captivity
so Richard could formally hand Aquitaine back to her,
letting Eleanor reenter politics in a limited capacity.
Oh, and John, as you can imagine,
just loved being passed up again.
Eleanor was still a captive and kept within Henry's sight.
However, her movement became less restricted.
But that missing decade had also changed her family.
Her children were now adults.
And apart from helping negotiate the marriage
of two of her daughters to the King of Sicily
and the King of Castile,
she really had no part in their lives,
a thing that only became more tragic.
Since three years after losing Henry,
Geoffrey also died in a freak jousting accident.
And in June 1189, her eldest daughter, Matilda,
Duchess of Saxony, also passed away.
In her life, Eleanor had been so lucky as a mother.
Only 1 of her 10 children, 8 with Henry,
had died before adulthood.
Plus she herself had survived again and again
the lethality of medieval pregnancy and childbirth.
But now that lucky streak seemingly ended,
and the next death changed everything.
Days after Matilda's death, Richard, again in revolt,
this time alongside Louis's son, King Philip II of France,
defeated Henry in battle.
And having been sick for many years spent campaigning,
Henry then confirmed Richard as his heir
and withdrew to his capital at Chinon.
And there, the man who had been Eleanor's husband,
lover, and jailer finally died.
Richard's first act as king was to send word
across the channel that his mother was to be freed
and treated as acting on his behalf in all things.
Eleanor emerged from her imprisonment more powerful
than she'd ever been.
While not officially regent,
it was understood that she acted for Richard
and that her word was his.
As her first act, this dowager queen,
formally imprisoned by her husband,
toured England to release Henry's other political prisoners,
a personal gesture to win back loyalty for Richard
and separate him from his father.
Her next task was to make Henry's final arrangements.
And in what has been read as a symbolic gesture,
she had his body sent to an abbey in Aquitaine on her lands.
There, in a building run by women,
she put him in a tomb slightly lower
than the one she later built for herself.
She literally buried him.
And when Richard returned to England in September of 1189,
it was Eleanor who arranged his coronation.
But as soon as he was crowned,
he started preparing to leave.
See, two years earlier,
Richard heard that Saladin had taken Jerusalem
and swore to join the third crusade.
Now, Eleanor was dubious about this idea,
having been on crusade herself
and knowing how dangerous it could be.
Richard should be securing his throne
by fixing the damages the war had brought,
as well as marrying and producing heirs.
But Richard didn't really care about England
apart from taxing it to fund wars.
So instead, he liquidated the treasury,
raised a special tax to fund his crusade,
then just left for years.
Now, you can hear more about Richard's adventures
in our Saladin Series.
But from Eleanor's perspective,
he basically left her to sort out the mess,
including his marriage.
For 20 years, Richard had been betrothed
to King Philip's half sister, Alys,
the daughter of Eleanor's ex-husband, Louis,
by his second wife.
But Richard and Philip's alliance was rickety.
And for years, Richard's father had made Alys his mistress
so she wasn't suitable,
which made it basically a deal breaker.
Eleanor instead proposed Berengaria of Navarre,
whose Spanish province protected Aquitaine's southern border
and where the culture was similar to Aquitaine.
But Richard was already headed out to the Holy Land,
meaning Berengaria had to be delivered to him en route
for the marriage to take place.
So Eleanor had to cross the Pyrenees into Spain,
pick Berengaria up, travel back across the mountains,
overland through Europe, across the Alps,
and board a ship to meet Richard in Sicily.
Keep in mind, she was almost 70.
Whew, that finally done.
She returned to England and found the place in chaos.
Richard's council of regents had fell to infighting.
And who was there to take advantage?
John, the untrustworthy baby of the family.
He'd taken London and set up a rival court there,
claiming that he'd saved England from corrupt
and incompetent regents
and that he was the natural successor,
considering Richard was unmarried, had no children,
and let's be honest, was probably dead by now.
But when word of Richard's marriage filtered back
via Eleanor and returning knights,
John's brief appearance of legitimacy faded.
And incredibly, the family just sort of smoothed it over.
I mean, you know John, right?
Ah, I'm sure he won't cause any more trouble,
except he would.
Because in 1192, word reached England
that Richard the Lionheart, hero of the crusade,
had secured the coastal Crusader States from Saladin
and was headed back home, but then vanished.
The King of England just disappeared from the map.
John, claiming his brother was dead
and that he was the rightful king,
took a ship for France,
and entered an alliance with King Philip,
leaving Eleanor to find and rescue one son
while protecting his crown from the other.
Woo, yikes, that's some familial math
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