Eleanor of Aquitaine died on the 1st of April 1204, 819 years ago.
She was said to be the most beautiful woman in Europe. I call Her a Woman For Freedom because of her wonderful effort in what she did to get her reproductive rights. (NB I define reproductive rights as the right to reproduce not the twisted modern perversion of that phrase where reproductive rights are considered the right to abortion i.e. the right not to reproduce.)
Eleanor was Queen Of France from 1137 to 1152 as the wife of King Louis VII. The fifteen years of marriage with Louis did not produce a son. She allegedly said of that marriage: “I thought I was wed to a king; now I find I am wed to a monk.”
Eleanor had the strength to get Louis to agree to an amicable enough annulment of that marriage.
Eleanor immediately married Henry Duke of Normandy and the couple went on to become King and Queen from 1154 to 1189, very tempestuously towards the end. Her husband the King, Henry II, imprisoned her in 1173 for supporting her son also called Henry in a revolt against his dad.
Eleanor must have been feisty. My gut tells me that sometimes her maternal passions knew no bounds. The phrase “By the wrath of God, queen of England.” is attributed to her.
What A Woman.
She had to be free!
This all happened in the Middle Ages before the Renaissance allegedly enlightened people.
What was more enlightened? What was more free?
The Middle Ages’ Jostling of Kings and Queens and Princes for Power.
Or what my grandfather Professor A. C. Fox criticised in his book “Man, Society and God” as the subsequent era where people did not really know where they stood with respect to each other and with respect to God.
Big questions.
Geoff Fox, April 1st, 2023, Terra Nullius
FREEDOM, DEMOKRASI AND CIVILISED HUMANITY 