transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:05] If you want a job done properly, get a woman to do it. That seems to me the unanswerable lesson of that wild ride, that wild period in Western European history, which was the late 12th and early 13th century. The era of the Angevin Empire, the era of the Lionheart, the Soft Sword, the road to Magna Carta, the era, we should call it, of Eleanor of Aquitaine. Kings loved her, men died for her. She re-drew the map of medieval Europe. She was the only woman to be crowned both Queen of France and England. She marched on the second crusade to the Holy Land. She led a coup against her own husband. Even the Pope feared her. Eleanor of Aquitaine was the beating heart. She was the matriarch of that most powerful and explosive families, the Plantagenets. Her wealth from Aquitaine bankrolled kings. Her patronage shaped courtly culture. And her children, what can we say about her children? Including Rich the Lionheart and King John. They ruled and they rebelled and they quarrelled and conquered and were defeated. She was twice a queen. She was mother of monarchs. She was the glue that held Europe's most unlikely empire together. Eleanor's story is the story of one of Europe's most dramatic periods. Now, to take us through it, I am joined by the Medieval Queen of History Hit, the historian, the host, the frankly online phenomenon, that is the Gone Medieval podcast host, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger. This is Dan Snow's History Hit and this is the story of one of history's most powerful and dysfunctional dynasties and the queen at the center of it all. And to tell us about it, we have the queen. And just to let you know, some of the stuff we chat about in this episode maybe isn't suitable for listening with kids. Enne Yarnagher, could you have a back on the podcast?

Speaker 2:
[02:20] Dan, you can't stop me.

Speaker 1:
[02:21] You and I have done a lot of work together, but when we talk about Eleanor of Aquitaine, I feel that's when you hit your flow, because I think there's an affinity there. She's your kind of spirit animal.

Speaker 2:
[02:31] She is. I mean, listen, I was literally named after the woman. I never had a choice in my destiny, anything that happened. And, you know, it's one of those things where I think once you're told from an early age, this is someone who is important in your naming. Of course, I was going to become obsessed with her. Of course, my mother was reading a book about her when she was pregnant with me.

Speaker 1:
[02:50] Really?

Speaker 2:
[02:50] Yeah, so I was getting it through, baby.

Speaker 1:
[02:54] Well, now we're going to get the benefit of that. Let's talk about her birth. From the beginning, was it clear she was someone's... There was a lot riding on it. She was an heiress.

Speaker 2:
[03:02] Yeah, absolutely. You know, she is born into one of the most important land-holding families in France. So Aquitaine at the time, it's essentially all of southwestern France.

Speaker 1:
[03:12] Okay, so Aquitaine is a glorious place. We are talking, what, so around Bordeaux, south and west, and then almost like a nice little reach out to the Alps as well, I've always found.

Speaker 2:
[03:21] That's right. It goes a little bit further east than you would think. And it goes a little bit further north than you would think. You know, when we tend to talk about it, we say, oh, southwestern France, but Poitiers, the capital, is actually really kind of central. And so, yeah, I mean, culturally it is southern, but now you wouldn't call Poitiers southern France, I don't think.

Speaker 1:
[03:41] Okay, and the kingdom of France is around Paris and just sort of roughly northeast France now.

Speaker 2:
[03:46] Exactly. And now this is an incredibly wealthy part of France. It's got incredibly important prestige. It is where Paris is. So she's born into this very particularized milieu. And it's also a little bit different from other places like up in northern France. They're a little bit more stodgy.

Speaker 1:
[04:01] Sure.

Speaker 2:
[04:01] They're a little bit more by the book. So she's born into a place where you also educate women. So people are really interested in bringing up this court culture and fostering it. So when she was born, she does have older brothers. She isn't meant to be the heiress, but they die in that way that children do in the Middle Ages. And her dad is just kind of like, oh, yeah, okay, great. Well, I guess it's you now. You'll be the heir. And there isn't even that much of discussion about it. It's just sort of like, yeah, of course, a woman can inherit.

Speaker 1:
[04:30] And let's quickly talk about France. We think of it as a state today. It has a kind of coherence we're really familiar with. It was part of France, but was her dad, was he effectively independent? Was he running his own show?

Speaker 2:
[04:43] Yeah, I mean, what we have to understand is that, you know, kingdoms, it's a lot looser in the Middle Ages than it is now. Yes, there is a king of France. He essentially rules Paris, which, like, do not get me wrong, that is a really nice spot. It is the biggest city in Europe. There's a ton of money in that racket, but you also have particular vassal states underneath you. And so that means that Eleanor's father is a vassal to the French king. And what happens is basically when you get a new king, you've got to go, you have to kneel before them, go like this. The king will take your hands in his and say, oh yeah, you're my vassal, great job. But what that means is that you have to kick some taxes up to the king. And if the king decides that he is going to go to war with someone, then you owe a certain number of troops. The king doesn't oversee the courts in your land. He doesn't get to necessarily push you around that much. Individual nobles are incredibly powerful. And this is something that will come up in a lot of places, including England, right? Like under Eleanor's garbage son, John, when he tries to push the envelope too far here in England and you get Magna Carta. Everybody understands that nobles across Europe have rather a lot of power in their own localities.

Speaker 1:
[05:54] So if you're living in Aquitaine, you've got a different language to French. You've got a different culture. You look up to the Duke of Aquitaine. The King of France is not a huge character in your life.

Speaker 2:
[06:04] You know, you kind of feel sorry for him because you're like, damn, that must suck.

Speaker 1:
[06:08] On paper, he's the king of everything.

Speaker 2:
[06:10] Yeah, but they've got a couple of nice palaces up there. And yeah, they do get to kind of dangle the, I'm the king over you. But that's essentially what they've got. You are down in Poitiers. You're hearing the best music that Europe has to offer. And you are living the life fundamentally.

Speaker 1:
[06:25] And if the King of France is like, I'm going to send an army in Aquitaine to go and arrest this guy, the Duke of Aquitaine just laughs.

Speaker 2:
[06:30] Oh, absolutely not. He's like, cute. That's real nice. You just wouldn't even have the ability to do that. You need to get the Duke onside.

Speaker 1:
[06:37] Okay. And that, I guess, brings us neatly to the point that the King of France is desperate to marry Eleanor.

Speaker 2:
[06:42] Yeah, god damn right.

Speaker 1:
[06:42] Because that brings Aquitaine in a real sense into that royal family, not just in that vague sense, but like, let's bond two people, the Prince of France, the heir to the throne of France, and Eleanor together. And then from then on, those lands will actually be part of that kind of royal French kingdom.

Speaker 2:
[06:58] Exactly. So, you know, when Eleanor's father dies, she becomes the hottest ticket in Europe. And basically the King locks that down immediately. He's like, oh, that's great. You're going to marry my son Louis. They're all named Louis. We're in a very deep Louis, Louis period of time, let's just say. And so it's basically within days. And there is a real danger here, because if you can kidnap Eleanor and marry her, then you get hold of all this land. So the French king is like, we're not playing that game. She's marrying my son. But one of the things that they do manage to negotiate here, which is quite interesting, is Eleanor is able to say, well, these are my lands until such time as I give birth to a son. And then my lands will pass to my son. And so as far as the king of France is concerned, she's like, oh, well, that's kind of fine.

Speaker 1:
[07:44] Because it will be my son as well.

Speaker 2:
[07:46] Yeah, exactly. So it'll be like, that's my grandson. That's great. It brings it under the auspices of the French crown eventually. But it doesn't quite work out like that for Eleanor and Louis.

Speaker 1:
[07:55] Okay.

Speaker 2:
[07:56] So in the first place, Eleanor kind of gets up to Paris and she's like, wow, you live like this? Like, this is crazy. Louis the Dauphin is by all accounts quite a boring guy.

Speaker 1:
[08:09] And what age are we at at the moment?

Speaker 2:
[08:10] We're teenagers.

Speaker 1:
[08:11] We're teenagers. Okay, so Louis is boring.

Speaker 2:
[08:13] He's boring.

Speaker 1:
[08:13] He's a little bit wet.

Speaker 2:
[08:14] Yeah. And he's like really religious. Like he really, really buys into it. You know, that's his whole thing. And it takes a long time for Eleanor to get pregnant. As a result of this, that might just be that she's quite young and these things are difficult. It might be that Louis is too busy praying. We don't exactly.

Speaker 1:
[08:32] There are a lot of days. If you're being strictly religious, there are a lot of days in which you're not supposed to have to do it.

Speaker 2:
[08:37] Yeah, exactly. So I would probably argue that it is just quite difficult to get pregnant if you are doing everything correctly. You're not allowed to be shagging on a Saturday, for example.

Speaker 1:
[08:46] No Saturdays?

Speaker 2:
[08:46] No Saturdays. No Sundays. No Wednesdays. No Fridays. Yeah. Well, Wednesday is a confession day.

Speaker 1:
[08:53] Is it?

Speaker 2:
[08:53] Yeah. So, you know, and even if you're not confessing, you can't be going and doing all that. Friday, again, confession day. Saturday, you're still going to be too turned on when you're in Mass on Sunday. Right.

Speaker 1:
[09:02] You're building up.

Speaker 2:
[09:03] Yeah. So, you got to, you know, basically, it's like Mondays or nothing.

Speaker 1:
[09:06] Mondays.

Speaker 2:
[09:06] So, you know, it's one of those, you know, not during Lent, not during Advent, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 1:
[09:10] So, no Advent either.

Speaker 2:
[09:11] No Advent. You're supposed to be thinking about the end of the world.

Speaker 1:
[09:13] Okay. So, it's difficult. So, they don't have, they have any kids?

Speaker 2:
[09:17] They do eventually have two daughters.

Speaker 1:
[09:19] Okay.

Speaker 2:
[09:19] You know, eventually, we prove that Eleanor can get pregnant, but the sons simply aren't forthcoming. But by this point in time, the marriage is incredibly rocky anyway. Louis is kind of an idiot. He's constantly getting in fights with the church. You know, he wants to put key figures in positions of power. He wants to choose bishops. The church is less keen on that.

Speaker 1:
[09:41] Just classic medieval stuff.

Speaker 2:
[09:42] Oh, God. You know, it's just the thing that is done at the time. So, Eleanor often has to intercede. She's got to go, like, do incredibly funny things with St. Bernard of Clairvaux, who is working for the church at the time. Like, she has to kind of go in and pretty cry in front of him, being like, my husband, he just doesn't listen to me, and I'm just a girl. She basically has to iron all these things out, which is classic Queen stuff.

Speaker 1:
[10:04] So, she's highly educated, and she's playing a part in the politics of France already. No question.

Speaker 2:
[10:08] Obviously, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[10:09] Right. So, she's an important political figure. Okay. Then, like all relationships, they test it by going on some rugged foreign travel.

Speaker 2:
[10:18] That is right. That's right.

Speaker 1:
[10:19] Tell me what happens.

Speaker 2:
[10:20] Well, they decide that they are going to go on crusade.

Speaker 1:
[10:22] Wow.

Speaker 2:
[10:23] Rather the done thing at the time. This is the Second Crusade. So, it turns out, stop me if you heard this one before, but it's really difficult to maintain taking over a part of the Middle East when you're not from there.

Speaker 1:
[10:34] Right.

Speaker 2:
[10:35] Okay. I know that sounds wild.

Speaker 1:
[10:37] The locals do not want you there.

Speaker 2:
[10:38] Yeah. It's funny that they didn't love a whole bunch of Normans coming and taking over.

Speaker 1:
[10:42] So, First Crusade is, against all the odds, very successful. They captured Jerusalem, they established these Crusader Christian kingdoms in what is now Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, that kind of area. And then it becomes the job of the Muslim neighbors to get rid of those guys.

Speaker 2:
[10:57] Exactly. And so, it turns out it's a lot easier to do that if you already live there and you don't have to have to everyone get on a boat and come on over. But Eleanor and Louis, they rise to the occasion, right? They rise to the call. The papacy is really keen on sending people over. And, you know, Louis is religious, right? Louis is a really religious guy. And he feels moved to take part of this.

Speaker 1:
[11:17] And why does Eleanor go?

Speaker 2:
[11:18] Well, you know, for Eleanor, this is also an opportunity to flex her own political muscles. Like partially, you kind of need to stay with your husband in order to get pregnant, quite famously. But also she leads her own army. So she leads her own contingent from Aquitaine. And so she's like, well, this is what I'm going to do. Yeah. Well, my husband's going over as the King of France. I'm going over as the Duchess of Aquitaine.

Speaker 1:
[11:39] Really? And she's very keen to carve out her own separate role. That's amazing.

Speaker 2:
[11:43] Yeah. It's really interesting at the time. And it was remarkable. People were very impressed by this. When Louis and Eleanor end up at the court of Constantinople, everyone goes gaga for Eleanor. They're like a wuga in the first place. They're like hot babe came over and they talk about her as being a new Amazonian queen. They love this. In Constantinople, they're like, this is exactly what I love to see. Fantastic work, Eleanor. What an incredible babe. And they talk about how smart she is and how she really seems to be the one with a vision of what to do. And that is probably not such a surprise because she's got an uncle over in the Holy Land. So she's got an uncle over in Antioch, and she's been in quite constant contact with him back and forth. So her idea is, well, I'm going to be bringing over the contingents of Aquitaine, and I'm going to be sort of upholding the legacy of my uncle, and we are going to get his lands back in this way over there. And that tends to put strain on the marriage. So Louis is pouting already, because at Constantinople, no one cares about Louis. They're like, yeah, also some guy, like a drip, right? Real wet blanket. And he gets kind of overly highfalutin ideas of what he's going to do, which is like surprise. A king thinks that he's capable of more than he is. Like, I can't imagine how that happened, right? But Eleanor is kind of like, let's go see my uncle Raymond. We're going to take back Antioch, and then we are going to assess the situation and see what can be accomplished. Louis is like, oh, we're retaking Jerusalem.

Speaker 1:
[13:15] Right, interesting.

Speaker 2:
[13:16] That's what we're doing. And it's just not feasible with what they have got going. But because of how sources work at the time and the way people feel about certain things, the failure of the Second Crusade is kind of blamed on Eleanor, because you know how women are.

Speaker 1:
[13:33] Okay.

Speaker 2:
[13:35] I mean, it's kind of bonkers at the end. Sometimes we think that the way that people talk about Eleanor leading an army is specifically to denigrate her and specifically to say that the reason this failed is that a woman was leading her. There are all these rumors about like, oh, well, the procession of the soldiers is slowed down because Eleanor has too much luggage.

Speaker 1:
[13:55] Okay.

Speaker 2:
[13:56] You know, like she brought, oh, you know, it has women be shopping, women be overpacking, you know, things like this. And so they're like, oh, yeah. And that slowed the baggage train down. When in reality, Louis is kind of like going out in front when Eleanor is like, hold up, hold up, hold up. We're trying to climb over some mountains here with a bunch of people. And essentially, the army gets routed. They're split into too many pieces and nobody knows what they're doing, right? Because this is always going to be the trouble with crusade. If you genuinely believe in your heart that you've been called by God and you are blessed by the oversight of the Lord, the idea that you could lose a battle is a little bit more difficult, right?

Speaker 1:
[14:31] Okay. And so the crusade is a disaster. We shouldn't be super surprised by that because there were about eight or nine crusades. And seven or eight of them were a disaster. That's right, that's right. So we shouldn't be too heartbroken to know they're here. But as ever, being part of a routed army, straggling across a brutal landscape, harried on all sides, it's going to make or break a relationship. And it definitely breaks that.

Speaker 2:
[14:50] Oh, it breaks them. They hate each other. And basically, at this point in time, Eleanor is like, I am done. We're going to get back to wherever it is we need to get to in Europe. And we are getting divorced. So she begins to write to the papacy and says, Wow, it's crazy because this guy is my cousin. And which he is. He's like her second cousin. But, you know, gosh, everyone who's royal or noble in Europe is a second cousin, third cousin. And this will go on for quite some time.

Speaker 1:
[15:19] So it's easy to get out closed.

Speaker 2:
[15:20] Yeah, exactly. And so the church doesn't love this because the church doesn't love divorce. But on the other hand, Eleanor is a force to be reckoned with. If she's sort of asked for this thing, then fine. There aren't any sons yet. So it's kind of easier to break them up at this point. And to a certain extent, the church is like, well, let's get Louie with someone more tractable. Let's get Louie together with someone that we feel we can have a little bit more control over. So the church says, yeah, fine. Your cousins, that's great. So they get back to Europe after quite some time. They are blown off course. They divorce. And the first thing that Eleanor has to do now is get hold of a new husband. Because there are multiple kidnapping attempts on her when she gets back. Because people are like, I will take the largest landholder in France. Thank you very much. I will forcibly marry her against her will. Yep. Don't care about that. But Eleanor's got a plan, right? And Eleanor's plan involves a young king named Henry.

Speaker 1:
[16:16] And this is a thunderbolt. This is one of the biggest blind sides in medieval history.

Speaker 2:
[16:21] It is absolutely wild because Henry is a teenager, right? And Eleanor is in her later 20s at this point in time.

Speaker 1:
[16:29] So Henry is a teenager. He is also the hated king of England.

Speaker 2:
[16:35] That is right. Well, Eleanor doesn't want to be not a queen. Come on. And also, you know, Eleanor hates her ex. And so it's like she kind of goes out of her way to find the person that would piss Louis off the most. And she knows Henry has the hots for her because they've met on several occasions before, you know, doing queenly, kingly things. And he was very clearly like a wuga at her. So, I mean, this is the equivalent of like the pinup you keep on your wall as a teenager saying, hey, you want to get married. It would be like if Sidney Sweeney asked a 16 year old boy to marry her now. Right. And so he's like, hell yeah. Let's get this done immediately. And they marry and there isn't really anything that anyone can do about it. Ironically, Henry and Eleanor are more closely related than Eleanor and Louis were. But, you know, Eleanor wants to do this. So it's kind of fun.

Speaker 1:
[17:25] So the woman who was Queen of France ditches her husband and marries the Queen of England. Astonishing. But even more astonishing, in doing so, she takes with her all of her own land to add it to those of her new English husband.

Speaker 2:
[17:38] Exactly. There were no sons. There were no sons in her marriage to Louis. And so all of those lands revert to her. Now Louis is fuming. He is absolutely fuming. But there's also nothing you can do because it's very difficult for us to kind of understand now. But what Henry controls and what Eleanor controls is like most of France.

Speaker 1:
[17:59] This is so important. This is a marriage, a love match, but also one of the biggest power hookups in history, right? Because England ends up with this vast empire. Eleanor and Henry end up with this vast empire. So talk me through the Plantagenet lands. Well, England and Wales we've got.

Speaker 2:
[18:12] Yeah, we've got England and Wales. So basically-

Speaker 1:
[18:15] Well, I say lots of Wales is independent, but there's little encroachments.

Speaker 2:
[18:18] Obviously the Welsh are not happy about it. There is some like ongoing tit for tat. But for the most part, the English are subjugating them at the very least.

Speaker 1:
[18:27] They are. And in fact, Henry would have argued he's over a lot of Scotland as well. But critically for this point, dukes of Normandy thanks their forebearer William the Concrete.

Speaker 2:
[18:35] And Normandy is really large at the time. It goes out onto the Brittany Peninsula. You know, we've got Calais. We certainly have Gironne. And for all intents and purposes, they are still quite Norman, the English. They're speaking French at home. They're like, English, who is she? I don't know.

Speaker 1:
[18:51] So this new power couple directly control a lot more of France, for example, than the King of France.

Speaker 2:
[18:57] Oh, God, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1:
[18:59] Who's her ex-husband?

Speaker 2:
[19:00] Which is absolutely bizarre. And then they also have a little bite out of Eastern Ireland as well. Which, you know, boo. But fundamentally, they've kind of taken over Dublin and the areas around there. So this is tons of land. You know, so you are the King of England, absolutely. Every single king, when they are putting down what their titles are on any document, it'll always say, Raxanglorum, the King of the English. And the second thing it always says is Dux Normanorum and the Duke of the Normans. And then now Henry can slap Dux Aquitanorum as well on there. And this is a huge amount of land. It's such a large amount of land that, as you've already mentioned, we now tend to refer to this as the Angevin Empire, because these are wildly disparate groups of people who speak different languages, have different cultures, really see the world in differing ways that are all controlled by one family. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[19:52] And long time listeners and viewers of this podcast will know that I am very nostalgic for the Angevin Empire.

Speaker 2:
[19:58] Me too!

Speaker 1:
[19:59] I would love to live in a country that's stretched from the wilds of the north all the way down to Larochelle Town, to the Pyrenees. We could just travel around. Anyway, I won't get stuck on.

Speaker 2:
[20:09] Listen, you know, the beer is great up north, the wine is great down south.

Speaker 1:
[20:13] You've got everything.

Speaker 2:
[20:14] The crack is altogether mighty, so it is. I think that we will all find. So, you know, you've got some of the best cultures in Europe hanging out and doing their thing.

Speaker 1:
[20:22] And this couple are now ruling over the Ottoman Empire. And also, another maybe a tough hit for their ex-husband. Eleanor has lots and lots of kids.

Speaker 2:
[20:30] So many kids.

Speaker 1:
[20:32] Lots of lusty sons.

Speaker 2:
[20:33] Oh my goodness. So it would... You know that Louis is absolutely fuming because basically the kids start coming thick and fast. She immediately, immediately has several sons. So we get three sons basically right off the bat. So she's got two daughters with Louis.

Speaker 1:
[20:49] So she's got these two daughters.

Speaker 2:
[20:50] And now, unfortunately, because of the way that divorce works in the Middle Ages, they stay with their father. You know, they are French princesses, to be fair. So obviously they are going to be brought up at the French court, most Frenchly. They do stay in good contact with their mother. They have a lot of letters written back and forth. And we do know that that is a relationship which is sustained. But they are never going to live with their mother at court again.

Speaker 1:
[21:13] Okay. And these sons, by the way, this is what the rest of this podcast is going to be about.

Speaker 2:
[21:16] Yeah. Oh, God. Oh, Lord. We have so many sons. So first of all, we get the young Henry because obviously...

Speaker 1:
[21:24] So the oldest one dies young.

Speaker 2:
[21:25] Yeah, we have William RIP always in our hearts. But then we get the young Henry who we call him the young Henry very specifically because when you control this much land, Henry, the king, is very keen to make sure that his son Henry is understood as the heir apparent to the kingdom. And also you've got to understand that Henry II is crowned king as a result of the ending of a period that we refer to as the Anarchy.

Speaker 1:
[21:52] Civil War.

Speaker 2:
[21:53] Yeah, exactly. So for him, the most important thing is that everybody understands what the line of succession is. So Henry, the young king, is crowned quite young while his father is still ruling the kingdom, technically, just so that everybody knows where this is going.

Speaker 1:
[22:07] He's like a pretend king. He's got a court and he's got it, but he doesn't actually rule in it. Famous guy.

Speaker 2:
[22:12] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[22:13] Hot, good at jousting tournaments.

Speaker 2:
[22:15] He is very much, I liken him to kind of like a rugby boy now, where like his thing is jousting. He's doing the circuit around Europe. Everybody loves him. Everyone loves it when the young king shows up. He's a real glamorous sort.

Speaker 1:
[22:28] Rides with a pretty strong crew, best buddies with William the Marshal.

Speaker 2:
[22:31] That is right. So he spends rather a lot of time with the French princes and these sorts of things. And so he's actually not bad at playing the political game with other people at his level. But his father is actually rather a good king. So he doesn't have a whole lot to do around the shot.

Speaker 1:
[22:48] There's not much space.

Speaker 2:
[22:49] Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1:
[22:50] Then we got Richard, surviving son number two.

Speaker 2:
[22:53] That's right.

Speaker 1:
[22:55] Nickname the Lionheart.

Speaker 2:
[22:58] One of our worst kings. But we don't need to come into that. We'll come into that. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[23:02] But kicks ass.

Speaker 2:
[23:03] Oh, yeah. And so he is very much a mama's boy. He is Eleanor's favorite by all accounts. And he is very specifically raised as though he's going to take over Aquitaine. So he is with his mother constantly. He is often down in Poitiers.

Speaker 1:
[23:19] She likes staying down there, does she?

Speaker 2:
[23:20] Yeah, she does. So she's back and forth, you know, and who could blame her? Who can blame her? So he is very much raised to understand that he is going to take over Aquitaine when the time comes. So he is very much raised in this particularized position.

Speaker 1:
[23:36] And that involves just fighting all the time because those nobles down there are wild.

Speaker 2:
[23:40] Oh, they are fracturous. And obviously, now that the French king is not married to Eleanor, there is rather a lot of attempting to bite into the land. So there's a lot of back and forth who owns what castles.

Speaker 1:
[23:52] Yeah, nobles switching sides. So while Henry is being glamorous, Richard's actually doing the job. He's rule. Okay. We also shouldn't remember they have daughters, all of whom make very advantageous marriages. People talk about Queen Victoria, grandmother of Europe. I mean, Eleanor is absolutely doing that in this.

Speaker 2:
[24:06] 100%. And by all accounts, all of her daughters are really on top of it. These are incredibly bright women who go on to be incredible rulers of their own demes.

Speaker 1:
[24:16] Holy Roman Empire.

Speaker 2:
[24:17] Oh, God. Yeah. They're marrying into Spain. They're marrying into the Holy Roman Empire. They are doing really great things, and they're all quite clever.

Speaker 1:
[24:25] So forget Victoria. This is the real grandmother of Europe.

Speaker 2:
[24:28] Absolutely. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[24:29] Okay. We get son Jeffrey here, who again is parceled out a little bit of this big empire as well.

Speaker 2:
[24:35] Yeah, absolutely. So Jeffrey is also being trained to understand that he is going to be more involved in like Normandy, for example. We have to understand that, yeah, primogeniture exists, this idea that like, you know, you inherit your father's lands, right? But also there's limitations to that. The Angevin Empire is a concept is incredibly new. You're not just going to hand it all to Henry. You're not just going to say, oh, here, go ahead and take it. They're like, to be fair, this is rather a lot of land to keep together.

Speaker 1:
[24:59] It's too unwieldy.

Speaker 2:
[24:59] Yeah. And you know, this way it's hoped that maybe your sons won't be at each other's throats. Here's your land, here's your land.

Speaker 1:
[25:05] Good luck with that.

Speaker 2:
[25:06] And fundamentally, you know, like Normandy, that's not bad, right? That's what we love to see it.

Speaker 1:
[25:11] And that includes, as you say, Brittany and stuff. Now, we come with enormous reluctance. We come to this young gentleman, John, John, Prince John.

Speaker 2:
[25:24] Yeah. Lackland.

Speaker 1:
[25:25] Lackland. Soft sword. Well, we'll get to soft sword. But he lacks land because he doesn't get anything in this big...

Speaker 2:
[25:31] No, he's too young. He's sort of come along a little bit too late. I mean, this is a son number four that they've got, and he's kid number eight. It's just like a whole handful of kids. So as a result, they don't really know what to do with him. Now, he's Henry's favorite. So which, you know, that's where the problem... This is where the problem lies. So he kind of goes around with his father all the time. And we've got the derogatory Lackland for him. But also one of the things that we know is that this causes a lot of tension with people because basically Henry will show up with little John in tow and he'll say, oh, oh, nice land you got here. Be a shame if someone's son inherited it. And so he's kind of constantly biting off smaller pieces of other people's lands to roll over to John and turn into something.

Speaker 1:
[26:18] And now if there was any justice in this world, which there is not, that is the end we would ever have heard of young Prince John, eighth kid, one of the old royal also rands. But sadly you'll be hearing a lot more about John as this conversation goes on. Because there is no justice in this world. The Empire is unwieldy, right? These sons, they rebel against that.

Speaker 2:
[26:40] Oh yeah, they absolutely do. And so by the time that John is born, Eleanor is done. Eleanor is done with having all these kids. This is kid number 10, let us keep in mind. And the marriage between Henry and Eleanor is now strange. They have got on for quite some time, but you know, Eleanor and Henry are no longer getting on in the way that they once did. And Eleanor is like, yeah, this is real cute. You'll find me in Poitiers, goodbye. Now, whether or not this is entirely amicable, we can only speculate at, we know that by this time Henry is taking up with several hot young things. So he has a very prominent girlfriend, Rosamund Clifford, who is a celebrated beauty. She kind of takes over as Henry's date to occasions in England. Eleanor doesn't seem to cut up about it. Eleanor is like, yeah, wow, that's wild. Anyway, you will find me in France. Goodbye. I do not really need to be sitting around in a soggy salad bowl all day. I could be off having a lovely time at my own court with my son and yeah, have a girlfriend. That's wild. Bye. Great. It wouldn't be the first time that English kings had very prominent mistresses. So that's fine. Then we have these revolts of the sons. Now we do tend to think that maybe Eleanor is involved with this. It could be that she doesn't like her husband very much, and who would blame her with that? I kind of tend to think that she's like, yeah, sure, roll the dice. Like, who cares, right? Henry, the young king, resents his father because he feels as though he has not been given enough to do, right? Richard's got stuff to do down in Aquitaine. Henry does have the tournament circuit, but he's like, it does seem to me that I should be doing some work if I'm going to end up being the king. We do have also Jeffrey, who was sort of like, yeah, sure, why not? Rebell against our father. That sounds fun. So they all get together and they begin an open rebellion against their father, which goes so, so.

Speaker 1:
[28:42] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[28:42] Let's just say that. So it causes a lot of strife, obviously. No one is quite sure whose side to be on. But Henry is fundamentally, he is a pretty good king.

Speaker 1:
[28:53] Yeah. And the life and the old dog.

Speaker 2:
[28:55] Yeah, exactly. So he manages to sort of trounce his sons. Also, as a part of this, Eleanor ends up getting kidnapped. I swear this woman has been kidnapped more than anyone in her life. Now, what happens next is that Eleanor gets brought back to England as a prisoner in some style. Let's just say that. She is still fundamentally the queen of England. You can't throw her in a jail. And so she gets taken to one of her very, very favorite castles, which is just outside of Salisbury Old Sarum. And they're basically like, you are under house arrest, right? Eleanor, not a huge fan of this. Obviously, she would rather be in Poitiers. Obviously, she would rather be doing her thing. And she loses the ability to regulate her own lands. But as part of this, Henry forgives the sons.

Speaker 1:
[29:44] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[29:45] And so this could be something that Eleanor negotiates, I would argue. You know, I don't think that she wanted to be taken captive at all whatsoever. But seeing how the cards have been laid out, I do think that she says, look, you've got me bang to rights. Yes, I was encouraging our sons to rebel against you, but you've got me. And so a great thing that you could do just for the stability of everything is you could just let the boys go. You've got me, blame it on me. And everybody loves to blame a woman, right? So basically Eleanor goes to jail and the boys kind of get on with their life. They will do some light rebelling.

Speaker 1:
[30:23] They will rebel again.

Speaker 2:
[30:24] Against their father continuously. And you know, their mom is locked off. And you got to understand if you're Richard, he doesn't like this. He loves his mom. He wants his mom back. And he really, really hates this. But for Henry, basically what Henry gets is more money. His dad is like, don't you love the tournaments? And he's like, oh, yeah, I do love tournaments. And his dad is like, well, what if I like doubled your tournament budget?

Speaker 1:
[30:47] That's all the glamour.

Speaker 2:
[30:48] Yeah. And Henry's like, oh, more money? You say like, well, I'll be off with the boys. Fine. Poor Jeffrey is kind of like the one who doesn't get a whole lot out of this. But what will end up happening is now a series of deaths in the way that there is. And it's all dysentery all the way down, which is no one ever talks about dysentery because it's really unpleasant. But on campaign against their father, first Henry dies.

Speaker 1:
[31:13] Henry the Young King dies.

Speaker 2:
[31:15] RIP to a real one. This is a really interesting sliding doors moment. I really wonder what it would have been like if he had managed to take over. But the dysentery will get you.

Speaker 1:
[31:26] Wash your hands, boys. Do it. And Henry V, he washed his hands. None of us would be in this mess.

Speaker 2:
[31:31] Exactly. So Henry first gets taken out. That leaves Jeffrey. Jeffrey is still rebelling against his father because Jeffrey is like, well, I don't see any reason to stop this. He gets dysentery. This is a really sad one because his father is on campaign against him in the French lands at this point in time and he writes to his dad and says, dad, I'm on my deathbed and I'm really sorry about all this and I just want us to get right before I die. Henry thinks it's like a trap and doesn't go to see his son and so Jeffrey dies. And I find that like really quite heart wrenching because we do have the correspondence where he's like, I just want to see my dad one more time.

Speaker 1:
[32:08] And this is the weird thing. This is not like a family of people who are rebelling each other but actually have no, there's a real humanity, like when they get back together after these bouts of rebellion, they seem really happy, don't they? Like it's a genuine family and yet they're going after each other, it's weird.

Speaker 2:
[32:23] I tell you what, like money messes people up, that's all I can say about it.

Speaker 1:
[32:26] Well, money more problems, lads.

Speaker 2:
[32:27] Yeah, and so at this point in time, that means that now the crown has passed to Richard, which nobody saw coming. At least of all him, he's not particularly interested in all of this.

Speaker 1:
[32:37] He wants to be crusading.

Speaker 2:
[32:38] Oh God, yeah, and this is basically, he's like, well, I guess that I am the heir apparent. And Henry almost immediately dies after this.

Speaker 1:
[32:46] Yes, we should say then Henry II dies whilst campaigning against Richard, by the way. And Henry dies a broken man.

Speaker 2:
[32:53] Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1:
[32:54] Everyone abandons it. It's so sad.

Speaker 2:
[32:56] It is really sad, and it is a really ignominious end to what I would argue is one of the best kings in England ever. So I mean, has his problems, interpersonal, but he does a great job of actually ruling England, which his sons, not so much.

Speaker 1:
[33:11] His forebears and his sons, not so much. So he dies abandoned by his courtiers, his son besieging him almost. Are they briefly reconciled right at the end?

Speaker 2:
[33:18] Yeah, I think it's very right at the end, basically. When Richard sees where the wind is blowing, he realizes his dad is going to die. There's kind of like a tearful, like, I love you, Papa. And he dies.

Speaker 1:
[33:29] So Richard is now unexpectedly king of the whole shooting match, the whole Orange of an Empire. The first thing he does is...

Speaker 2:
[33:36] Let his mom out of jail because he loves her so much. And it's hilarious. The story is that the first thing he does is say, let my mom go. And he sends people up, messengers. They're charging through the night on horses, on boats to get to Saurum. And they got there now. And I was like, hey, let myself out.

Speaker 1:
[33:52] Oh really?

Speaker 2:
[33:53] Yeah, because she a hundred percent was like, we all know where this is going. Henry's dead. You know Henry's dead. What you think that Richard isn't going to let me out. So she is able to walk free. Now what Richard decides to do is go on crusade. He's always wanted to go on crusade. He has grown up at his mother's knee, sort of hearing about this. And he is a real guys guy. He likes being on campaign.

Speaker 1:
[34:19] Well, so I've heard.

Speaker 2:
[34:20] You know, a bi king. Well, listen.

Speaker 1:
[34:23] They're the rumors.

Speaker 2:
[34:24] These are the rumors, right? So we know that he has some illegitimate children. So can't be disinterested in the ladies, but you know, he's not disinterested in the guys either. And you know, I simply love to see it. I love to see that, you know, he's just got some very close friends who he's always on campaign with. And you know, baby, help yourself. Treat yourself. This is absolutely fine with me. We like it, you know. So he decides that the thing that he's going to do is he's going to levy a big tax on England, which is called the Saladin tithe, because we are obviously off to fight Saladin over in the Middle East.

Speaker 1:
[34:57] The great Muslim warlord who's threatening all of the Christian castles left in the Holy Land.

Speaker 2:
[35:01] Which also, weirdly, the Christians love. It's the strangest thing. It's like they've got this real love-hate relationship with Saladin. They're like, oh, well, we really should be controlling the Holy Land. But they're like, oh, isn't it great? Very romantic figure, Saladin. So Richard is like, well, that's what this world needs is a guy to go over and sort this out. And I think that he has this real chivalric idea about grandiose men fighting each other on. And then he's like, well, the biggest land over in England should.

Speaker 1:
[35:29] I'm the champion of Christendom. He's the champion of Islam.

Speaker 2:
[35:32] So we're going to sort it all out once and for all. So basically he levies this huge tithe on England and it's like, sayonara, suckers, I'll never see you again. I mean, this man came to England like four times altogether. And mostly it was because his dad said so. And then to like get a bunch of money. And he did not speak English. He did not particularly care about it. He was really raised to understand himself as part of the French milieu.

Speaker 1:
[35:57] And that's why there's a gigantic stature of him outside the House of Parliament in London. It's a confusing one.

Speaker 2:
[36:03] It is a confusing one, but partially I think of what was going on here is one of the reasons he could go on crusade is because he knew that he could just sort of like leave his mum in charge.

Speaker 1:
[36:10] Okay.

Speaker 2:
[36:11] So he leaves a council of regents, which is like a lot of the worthies of England in charge, like varying bishops, bigger landowners. His mum is overseeing it. And he's like, well, Lord knows she knows how to rule the kingdom, so that's fine.

Speaker 1:
[36:25] So I can just quickly, is this unusual in medieval history, or are there other examples of powerful women born at the right time in the right place for sure, being regents, exercising actual political power in their own right?

Speaker 2:
[36:37] Oh, absolutely. So, you know, it's not super unusual. We tend to think of it as unusual, but it happens. So for example, now granted, we did have the anarchy about it, but fundamentally Richard's grandmother, Matilda, was arguably Queen of England. She had been the Holy Roman Empress. There is this understanding that you can leave women in charge.

Speaker 1:
[36:55] And William the Conqueror left his wife to run the show. Henry I's wife used to do lots of stuff.

Speaker 2:
[37:00] This is why you marry other royals and nobles, is because they are trained to understand how kingdoms are run and people need to go on maybe not necessarily crusade, but men are often awake.

Speaker 1:
[37:11] They're very busy.

Speaker 2:
[37:12] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[37:12] So, you know, hunting with the boys upcountry.

Speaker 2:
[37:14] Ah, like they're doing a lot of things. And so they move around a lot and someone has to do the work around here. So is it weird to ask your mom to do it? Yeah. But he basically ends up going over to the Middle East again. Spoiler alert, third crusade.

Speaker 1:
[37:31] Look, whole other series of podcasts have been done here. Third crusade.

Speaker 2:
[37:35] Not so much. Doesn't go particularly well. He ends up getting married sort of as he's on his way over because his mom is like, listen, I understand that you're not particularly interested in being the King of England, but you are. And we're going to need some kids out of you. So here's your wife. And he's like, wow, that's crazy anyway. Bye. Like I'm off to the Holy Land. On his way back, on his way back, he wins a few battles.

Speaker 1:
[37:57] He establishes he boosts his reputation. Yeah, he doesn't succeed in what he didn't retake Jerusalem. He didn't know.

Speaker 2:
[38:03] And there are some rumors. OK, there's some rumors in the Holy Land. Right. So now Jerusalem has never retaken. But everyone is like, it is so obvious that we are going to take a retake Jerusalem. We should elect a new king of Jerusalem. And Richard's like, yeah, we should do that. And they're like, oh, honey, we weren't talking about you. So there is some pouting on Richard's part about the fact that there is a new king of Jerusalem that is not him. Then the king of Jerusalem is mysteriously killed by an assassin. And I mean an OG assassin. I mean a Hashashin, who is schooled by the old man in the mountain and had like comes down and kills him. And Richard's like, that's crazy. Wow. Anyway, I got to go. And everyone is like, Richard killed this guy, right? And like, and it is believed by the French and the Holy Roman imperial representatives in the Holy Land that Richard hired an assassin. We cannot say for sure who killed who. I'm going to be real with you. But on the ground, individuals blamed Richard for this. And Richard was like, well, I got to go. And then also the timings are suspicious, right? So Richard then takes off. Richard on the way home is then kidnapped by one of the dukes of the Holy Roman Empire. Now, there was some bad blood between them when Richard went over, because, for example, they squabbled. Yeah. When Richard showed up, Homie had control of a castle and was like flying his own flag. And Richard was like, you're not a king. You shouldn't fly your... Take your flag down. And then they were like, oh, don't take my flag down.

Speaker 1:
[39:42] It is actually pathetic.

Speaker 2:
[39:43] Yeah. It is like a slap fight between rich boys and it's pathetic. He then kidnaps Richard and is like, you're responsible for several things. And Richard is like, how dare you? How dare you? But everyone kind of hates Richard. Eventually, the Pope doesn't think that you should go around kidnapping the King of England. Pope does excommunicate his kidnapper. But then Richard is given over to the Holy Roman Emperor. And the Holy Roman Emperor is like, Eleanor, come get your trash son. And they levy an absolutely insane ransom. And Eleanor has got to go around all of the lands to get this money together, which she does. It's crazy. It's like 10,000 pounds.

Speaker 1:
[40:22] Which is a lot.

Speaker 2:
[40:23] It's like saying like 100 billion dollars, right? It's crazy stuff. So Eleanor manages to do it. She has to go around, beg, borrow and steal, levy all kinds of taxes. She gets the money together and she gets Richard out. And I think that this is really one of the most interesting parts of their relationship. Because A, we see what Eleanor is willing to do for her children. We also see what Eleanor is capable of. Even in these circumstances when Richard is at his lowest possible ebb, people are still willing to bet on this family. They're still willing to say, OK, yeah, like go get your son. Even when people don't like him. And, you know, the Holy Roman Empire is very happy to have quite a lot of money as a result of this. And very tellingly, when he lets Richard out, he writes letters to his underlings saying, The devil is loose. Look to yourself for safety. And so this is an indication of what Richard is capable of. He is very much seen as someone who is a worthy adversary and someone who might come and mess with you. And he celebrates getting out by immediately messing with all the other roots.

Speaker 1:
[41:33] And the King of France has been nibbling away at their lands, and Richard goes on the tear, reconquers, he basically has to reconquer his mom and dad's big empire.

Speaker 2:
[41:41] And does it.

Speaker 1:
[41:41] He does it. His mom helping, they manage to do it. And then Richard, besieging some useless little backwater.

Speaker 2:
[41:49] Oh, tiny little castle. And he gets caught by a 14-year-old with a crossbow.

Speaker 1:
[41:54] Boom, right in the shoulder.

Speaker 2:
[41:55] And to Richard's credit, Richard was like, fair play, I've been shot by a 14-year-old and I'm dying, because basically he dies of sexism.

Speaker 1:
[42:03] Hidiously slow death.

Speaker 2:
[42:04] It's really slow. It's horrible. And one of the things that Richard says is leave that little 14-year-old alone. Like fair play. Do they leave the little 14-year-old alone? They do not. They kill him horribly. But actually, I think it really says something about Richard. I like that anecdote.

Speaker 1:
[42:16] No, that was good.

Speaker 2:
[42:17] And I think it's like a little chapeau moment where he kind of says, don't do that. But anyway, he's dead one way or another.

Speaker 1:
[42:24] And now we face a terrible decision. So the grandies get together. Talk to me about Eleanor's role here. We should say, by the way, at this point, that Jeffrey is brother is dead. So in fact, all the brothers are now dead.

Speaker 2:
[42:35] We got no brothers.

Speaker 1:
[42:36] There's no brothers left.

Speaker 2:
[42:36] We're out of brothers except.

Speaker 1:
[42:38] Except John.

Speaker 2:
[42:40] This guy.

Speaker 1:
[42:41] We're in the dregs of the Plantagenet family now. But Jeffrey has had a son called Arthur, hasn't he?

Speaker 2:
[42:46] He has.

Speaker 1:
[42:47] So there's a nephew.

Speaker 2:
[42:48] So in theory, really, Arthur should be the king. If what we're doing is straight succession, prima genitor, oldest son, and then their kids get it. But the ground is super shaky here. Eleanor, again, incredibly canny, understands what has happened before. This is part of what the problem was with the succession underneath the anarchy. Right? It's like, well, who's going to rule what? Having a tiny child as the king, when everything has been in flux, Richard has just had to go and reconquer a bunch of the territory in France, doesn't look great. So instead, they decide to roll the dice and put John, who is an adult, on the third. Like, this is what's going for him. He's an adult.

Speaker 1:
[43:39] He has his mom and dad's blood in his veins. He's an adult and he can breathe.

Speaker 2:
[43:43] Yes.

Speaker 1:
[43:44] That's really it.

Speaker 2:
[43:46] And I think that this is an important point though, because people tend to think that there is one way that people become kings in the Middle Ages. And it's just kind of, yeah, straight prima genitor. You follow this line down. That's just not how things work. Decisions are being made all the time in terms of who can rule when and why. And if you accept that and just go with it, it explains a lot more later on.

Speaker 1:
[44:11] And is Eleanor now at all the states from when she's critical in this, right?

Speaker 2:
[44:14] Oh, God, yes. Because Eleanor is also kind of thinking, well, I don't know how much more life I've got in me. She's constantly trying to retire. She is constantly trying to go away to the convent that she wishes to retire to and kind of like being like pulled back in. So she's really frustrated by this. And I think one of the things that goes on here is that Eleanor doesn't necessarily trust Arthur's mother to be the Queen Regent. And Eleanor says, well, you know, I can have a little bit more influence over John. John is an adult. Let's just roll the dice and see what we can do here. Maybe I can go back into retirement a little bit more. She doesn't want to be in London doing all these things. She's old. You know, she's been a mother of 10 for God's sake. She just wants to have like a well-earned retirement doing what it is she wants to do. So for her, John looks a little bit more stable. Again, this is a sliding doors moment. Who knows?

Speaker 1:
[45:08] And then as with every succession, it's an opportunity for people to rebel, to steal some land, and to cause some trouble. She ends up holding a castle against forces loyal to her grandson, Arthur, has got some rebel nobles to back him, because there's always a homo-demo.

Speaker 2:
[45:25] Of course, of course.

Speaker 1:
[45:26] There's a siege going on, and she's in charge of this siege. And she's how old? I mean, this is crazy.

Speaker 2:
[45:30] And this is the thing, is that this woman should be pretending to be a nun right now. And since she's having to do all this, she's having to hold castles. She's having to write letters trying to garner support from other people. Her useless son, John, is being useless. It really is coming down to her to negotiate. And thank God it was, because, you know, John, completely useless, can't keep a single thing together. But this just goes to show how fracturous things are and why she stayed involved as long as she did, because you just simply cannot trust John with anything.

Speaker 1:
[46:04] Including the safety of his nephew Arthur. So eventually this rebellion pieces out. John gets custody of his nephew, this kid Arthur. And, you know, people talk about Richard III, but people should be talking about John among his many crimes. What happens to little Arthur?

Speaker 2:
[46:18] Well, nothing good is the answer. Something. Something. Death. Some things happen. And, you know, it is again one of these things where it's like, oh, wow, that's crazy. That kid's dead now. You know, side eye. Now, exactly what happened, it's difficult to say, but also, like, let us be so real here. Now, to be fair, children die all the time. Children die all the time in the Middle Ages. Adults die all the time in the Middle Ages.

Speaker 1:
[46:42] Royal princes in the custody of their uncles die.

Speaker 2:
[46:45] A lot. It's crazy how much royal princes die in the custody of their uncles. It's funny how that happens.

Speaker 1:
[46:51] So Arthur dead, possibly starved to death. We don't know.

Speaker 2:
[46:54] Yeah, it's not good. At the very least, what I tend to say is at the very least, I would call it murder through neglect. That's what I would say.

Speaker 1:
[47:02] Okay. So John comes to the throne through murder, through neglect. But Eleanor has managed in these dying years, she has managed to pass on that unweal the empire to another son. So it's she and her husband have run it. It's gone through Richard. She's now managed to get it to the hands of John. And at that point, sadly for the empire and everybody else, she checks out.

Speaker 2:
[47:25] Yeah, she does. She manages eventually to get back to her convent. She's been managing things for so long, like, you know, basically still overseeing every single one of her grandchildren, getting advantageous marriages. She gets kidnapped for a million more times, like in the process of doing it. And then she's like, I am done. It's none time. And then she almost immediately croaks, which makes me really sad because I really wish that she had had the retirement she wanted at Frontier. Like, I really wish that she'd had a great couple of years where she could just relax and feel as though her work here was done. But her sons were so garbage.

Speaker 1:
[47:59] So she dies in 1204 and it just after a few months in retirement.

Speaker 2:
[48:02] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[48:03] And interestingly, the empire falls apart within a few years of her death. Is that unrelated?

Speaker 2:
[48:09] No, 100%. It takes a force of will like hers, I would say, to keep that much land together. It's an absolute ton of land and it isn't traditionally associated. There isn't anything like a network of people who are overseeing these lands underneath the auspices of the King of England, which is what we see over in the Holy Roman Empire. So you have an emperor who rules everything, but the King of Bohemia is doing his thing, the Duke of Bavaria is doing his thing, and everybody knows who they kick up to. This is something that takes a force of will and an incredibly active, clever family to keep together. And you can say anything you want about Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, but these are two incredibly intelligent people with a real force of will, and they were able to keep this going. But even then, they weren't able to keep it going without infighting, without some scrapping back and forth. So it's just a lot of land to keep together, and especially it's a lot of land to keep together if you're not very bright.

Speaker 1:
[49:11] Yeah, and this is an important point, is that you don't just call an army together, everyone just goes, yes, so I'm right here. Individual barons need individual motivation. You can gather a massive army if everyone likes you, all of your underlings, but John will call and they just won't turn up. Oh, I'm so sorry, we had a few bridges blown out.

Speaker 2:
[49:28] They're like, oh wow, oh gosh, yeah. Oh yeah, I didn't get your letter for seven months, which is also a viable thing that you can say in the Middle Ages. You know, when Eleanor comes calling, people just say, oh, Eleanor, great, yeah, fantastic. Yeah, you don't want to piss her off. When it's John, you actually do want to piss him off. You don't like that guy, nobody likes that guy.

Speaker 1:
[49:48] And so John will be defeated in military campaigns, well, frankly, every military campaign in the rest of his short life.

Speaker 2:
[49:54] This man cannot buy a win. It's ridiculous.

Speaker 1:
[49:57] And France conquers Normandy, the ancestral heartlands of this family.

Speaker 2:
[50:02] Which is really, that one hurts. That really hurts. You know, they think of themselves as being Norman. And so for them, that is kind of like an existential problem. And it's something that we will see kings of England over and over again, attempting to get this back.

Speaker 1:
[50:19] And when John dies, just over a decade after his mum, his empire, so large, is now a little slice of the East Midlands of England.

Speaker 2:
[50:30] It's so sad.

Speaker 1:
[50:30] And he dies of dysentery, of course.

Speaker 2:
[50:32] Yes, it's a familial hobby. They love to die of dysentery, these guys.

Speaker 1:
[50:36] And that is the end of this big trans channel. As you say, lots and lots of their descendants will try and reconquer it, and there will be an ebb and flood. But this honor of an empire is a brief moment. And really, it is Eleanor's empire in some ways, isn't it? She makes that empire possible, and she holds it together.

Speaker 2:
[50:51] Absolutely. She is the glue that is able to bring this huge portion of France under the control of the Crown. And it's her political nous that really allows her to do that. She understands not just how French people work, but how people in Aquitaine work. She has really close connections with her northern family in France, her mother's family and the people who were kind of local around there. So she understands how to play people off against each other. She is very involved in English politics. She understands what makes the varying nobles their tick. And she can talk to Normans as well. So she's this real player who can move between worlds. And one of the issues with having a lot of sons, good, healthy sons, is they were all kind of brought up to understand that they only had to do one thing. And John was brought up to understand that he was going to have to do, question mark? Like, who knows? So, I mean, to an extent, it isn't surprising that he was such a bad king because he was not really brought up to be one. He never had the education to do that. So it's a story that would differ if these men had managed to live. And I do think that they were doing the right thing. I do think that understanding you have this many sons and someone's going to have to have land, it was smart to kind of try to parcel things off. But who would know that you were only left with the runt of the litter.

Speaker 1:
[52:19] Left with the worst one. Well, Eleanor, as I was expecting, that was a royal tour de force about your namesake. Thank you very much for coming to the podcast.

Speaker 2:
[52:27] Thank you so much. I will never, ever tire of talking about this woman.

Speaker 1:
[52:32] Thanks so much for listening, folks. Eleanor, what a phenomenon. So lucky to have her in the history of family. Don't forget to hit follow for more episodes of the podcast every week. If you want more deep dives into this wild period of history, I've got a couple of excellent recommendations. If I do say so myself in the show notes, we've linked to our episode on Richard Lionheart, but also William the Marshal, which is possibly my favorite podcast I've ever done. I never thought I'd say that about the medieval period, but there we go. I'm an 18th century traitor. He's the greatest knight who ever lived. That's a fact. If you believe the biography commissioned by his sons, but I do, so there we go. He's the key person to get your head around it if you understand the Plantagenet period. You've got to check out that episode. Thank you very much for doing so. See you next time.