Duchess Of Aquitaine Research Paper

Duchess of Aquitaine, Queen of France, Duchess of Normandy, and Queen of England; Eleanor of Aquitaine was arguably the most influential woman in history. After her father died in the early 1100s when she was fifteen, Eleanor became Duchess of Aquitaine, perhaps the most powerful Duchy in France at the time. She had been raised with almost no guidance after her mother died when she was a young child and because of this, she became very independent. After her father died, she immediately married Prince Louis of France at the King’s order. Soon after that the king died and she became Queen of France while still at age fifteen. Later she divorced Louis because she did not love him and married Henry, Duke of Normandy, who soon became King Henry II of England, making her a queen again. After she helped her five sons rebel against their father because he tried to change their land holdings, he imprisoned her for 15

One of the ways she established these was by holding “Courts of Love” which established how men should act around women and how they should treat women. Many of the people who took part in these actually took the rules to heart and began to practice them in their own courts. The rules made in the “Courts of Love” spread and became the standard after a time. “The name of the game was Courtly Love, its object to outlaw boorishness and to put women on a pedestal. It aimed to teach young men the art of making love in a refined and civilized way” (Brooks pg. 107). Some of these rules include holding the door for women and standing up when a woman enters the room. Eleanor ordered that the King Arthur stories, which had been a verbal history up to now, written. Before they were written though, she changed them. These changes were to the idea of chivalry and women. In the new King Arthur stories women were major characters and the chivalrous knights were fair to all and respected