I do suspect – but cannot prove through conventional research – that Alienor had a long-term affair with her vassal Geoffrey de Rancon. Finding Geoffrey at all in the historical record is difficult. There are numerous different and contradictory genealogies, not to say some far-fetched longevity in some of Alienor’s biographies that have the same Geoffrey around in the reign of Richard the Lionheart, when, given his earlier career, he would have been pushing a hundred! The Geoffrey de Rancon mentioned in Richard’s reign was obviously a son or grandson of the man known to Alienor.
Walter Map, one of the less reliable chroniclers with a tabloid journalist mentality, suggested that Alienor had an affair
with Geoffrey of Anjou when he was seneschal of Poitou. Whether Geoffrey ever held this title is dubious, and whether he would have found the time, place and suicidal bravado to romp with his overlord’s wife is also open to doubt. I had an epiphanic moment while researching when I came across Sidney Painter’s article ‘Castellans of the Plains of Poitou in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries’ published in Speculum
in 1956, where he discusses the career of various de Rancons in their position as important ducal castellans. I have a suspicion that this is the smoke that started the chroniclers’ fires
and they attached the scandal to the wrong Geoffrey. I also suspect that Alienor’s closeness to Geoffrey de Rancon was the cause of some of the scandal hinted at in Antioch. It certainly makes far more sense to me than Alienor and her uncle leaping into bed together at the drop of a hat. De Rancon up until that point had been a mainstay of the crusading army, but at Antioch was sent back home. Historians debate whether this is because he was in disgrace having nearly got the King killed during the crossing of Mount Cadmos (now called Mount Honaz in northern Turkey), or whether he had completed his stint and was needed back in Aquitaine. Perhaps there was another reason. It’s a point still open to conjecture – as is Alienor’s relationship with her uncle. My own take on the proceedings based on all aspects of my research and filtered through reasoning and imagination is that Alienor and Geoffrey de Rancon conducted a clandestine affair that has escaped the history books but might just be seen as a flicker in the shadows in the comments of certain chroniclers. Alienor and her uncle may have spent a lot of time together, but my belief is that they were formulating policy and even plotting against Louis rather than enjoying each other’s bodies. Certainly Alienor asked for an annulment and Louis was worried enough to leave Antioch at night, abducting his wife by force when she refused to leave of her own accord.
Alienor’s sister Petronella proved a conundrum. In the records she is sometimes referred to as Aelith and sometimes Petronella. I have used the latter as it is a name of southern France and perhaps linked to the cathedral of Saint-Pierre in Bordeaux. Petronella did indeed marry a man decades older than herself, and it appeared at the outset to be a love match. Chronicler John of Salisbury tells us she died circa 1151, but then she just may appear in a later pipe roll of Henry II in connection with Alienor. I have steered a middle course in the novel to explain her exit from the stage. I suspect that she may have had a lot in common with her maternal grandmother, the notorious ‘Dangerosa’ or ‘Dangereuse’. The latter was a nickname, and one has to wonder how she came by it!
Readers will not find Henry’s mistress Aelburgh in the historical record under that name. However, he did have a mistress called ‘Hikenai’ of whom the chroniclers were disparaging and who was the likely mother of his son Geoffrey. I take it that Hikenai was probably a garbling of ‘Hackney’, the term for a common riding horse, and derogatory, so I gave her the name that turned up in my Akashic Records research.
In The Summer Queen, I have given Alienor dark blond hair and blue eyes. This is based on my alternative research method of the Akashic Records, which I use to fill in the blanks and explore what happened in the past from a psychic perspective. You can find out more about them on my website. Using conventional resources, it is a fact that we don’t know what Alienor looked like. One modern historian tells us she had black hair, an olive complexion and a curvaceous figure that didn’t run to fat in old age! However, there is not a shred of evidence to prove this and is, I suspect, modern male wish fulfilment! Another historian gives her ‘sparkling black eyes’. Again, it’s pure fabrication. There has been the suggestion that a mural at Chinon depicts a crowned, auburn-haired Alienor riding a horse, but this is now thought to be unlikely; it probably depicts Henry’s children, including the Young King as the crowned figure. However, we do know Alienor had blond hair in her ancestry as one of the Dukes of Aquitaine was called William the Towhead, suggesting his hair was the colour of straw.
It has been quite a journey researching Alienor’s young womanhood from 1137 to 1154 and bringing her story to life. By turns I have been fascinated, frustrated, enlightened and uplifted. I have come to admire Alienor’s grit, dignity
and endurance in often distressing and trying times. Also her wit, intelligence and determination. On occasions I have been very angry on her behalf for what was done to her, and for all the lies and damned lies told about her down the centuries. However, drawing Alienor out from the shadows has been ultimately one of the most rewarding experiences of my writing career.
She was a woman of her time, but what a woman.
I am so looking forward to continuing the story of her marriage to Henry II and her life as Queen of England in The Winter Crown and The Autumn Throne.
Select Bibliography
In my opinion the most useful biographies are Ralph Turner’s and Jean Flori’s, and the Wheeler and Parsons series of articles provide an excellent summary of aspects of Alienor’s life.
Abbot Suger on the Abbey Church of St.-Denis and its Art Treasures, edited, translated and annotated by Erwin Panofsky, Princeton University Press, ISBN 0 691 003 14 9
Baldwin, John W., Paris, 1200, Stanford University Press, 2010, ISBN
978 0 8047 7207 5
Boyd, Douglas, Eleanor April Queen of Aquitaine, Sutton, 2004, ISBN 978 0750 932905
Eleanor of Aquitaine: Lord and Lady, edited by Bonnie Wheeler and John C. Parsons, Palgrave Macmillan, 2003, ISBN 978 0 230 60236 6
Flori, Jean, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Queen and Rebel, Edinburgh University Press,
2004
Gobry, Ivan, Louis VII 1137–1180, Pygmalion, 2002, ISBN 978 2 7564 0391 5
Grant, Lindy, Abbot Suger of St-Denis: Church and State in Early Twelfth-Century France, Longman, 1998, ISBN 0 582 051508
John of Salisbury’s Memoirs of the Papal Court, translated from the Latin with introduction and notes by Marjorie Chibnall D. Phil., Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1956
Kelly, Amy, Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Four Kings, 1950, ISBN 978 067424254 8
King, Alison, Akashic Records Consultant
Meade, Marion, Eleanor of Aquitaine: A Biography, Frederick Muller, 1978, ISBN 0 584 10347 6
Odo of Deuil, De Profectione Ludovici VII in Orientem, edited with an English translation by Virginia Gingerick Berry, Columbia University Press, 1947
Owen, D. R., Eleanor of Aquitaine: Queen and Legend, Blackwell, 1993,