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A review by sherwoodreads
The Two Eleanors of Henry III: The Lives of Eleanor of Provence and Eleanor de Montfort by Darren Baker
Biographies of medieval people, particularly of women, are going to be the equivalent of the long-focus lens: all the machinery can at least bring the target into view, but necessarily a bit flattened.
Baker works hard to tease out from behind their men the two Eleanors (one the sister, and one the wife, of Henry III--the seldom-mentioned, long-reigned son of the infamous King John), but as there is scarce material about women of the time, it's a monumental task of detective work, perhaps prompting the author to make somewhat novelistic-sounding guesses as to thoughts and actions. I actually liked these--they were fairly well labeled as such (unlike too many biographers of Jane Austen, who can't seem to resist telling us what was in her head via her fiction), and they helped to bring the lives of these people better into focus.
I appreciated Baker's efforts to convey a sense of the time: this was the generation after the Magna Carta. Henry had to negotiate his way between traditional views of kingship and what his father had agreed to with the barons, who came together for those first Parliaments.
This was still the time of crusades, and Baker gives a little attention to the thinking behind these (disastrous) ventures that had some complex motivations, and cultural outcomes. He also conveys an idea of medieval kingship as well as thinking, through details such as Henry's and Eleanor's habit of feeding hundreds of poor people a day--thousands, after some big event, in order to assure that these people's prayers would have extra impact on temporal events. Such actions helped shape the evolving idea of what kings were, and what they could do.
But the fact remains that there is scant primary evidence about these interesting women. We know that both Eleanors had spouses who remained faithful their entire lives. We catch sight of them in snatches through pregnancies and deliveries and children through the festivals, rituals, and some letters. We can see that they were friends until friendship was impossible when Simon de Montfort turned against Henry and embarked on disastrous and bloody civil war.
Baker does a good job of winnowing truth from contemporary chroniclers, who made no bones about their agendas: when men wrote about women, even queens, it was always to instruct, and the lesson was invariably that good queens are submissive, faithful, and fruitful, and bad queens are bad wives and try to encroach on male prerogatives.
Excellent notes provide intriguing nuggets of information for the history detectives among us, along with a very strong bibliography.
I read this in snips over months; it was easy to put down, but always a pleasure to pick up again. I'd recommend it for readers curious about a seldom-visited period.
Copy provided by NetGalley
Baker works hard to tease out from behind their men the two Eleanors (one the sister, and one the wife, of Henry III--the seldom-mentioned, long-reigned son of the infamous King John), but as there is scarce material about women of the time, it's a monumental task of detective work, perhaps prompting the author to make somewhat novelistic-sounding guesses as to thoughts and actions. I actually liked these--they were fairly well labeled as such (unlike too many biographers of Jane Austen, who can't seem to resist telling us what was in her head via her fiction), and they helped to bring the lives of these people better into focus.
I appreciated Baker's efforts to convey a sense of the time: this was the generation after the Magna Carta. Henry had to negotiate his way between traditional views of kingship and what his father had agreed to with the barons, who came together for those first Parliaments.
This was still the time of crusades, and Baker gives a little attention to the thinking behind these (disastrous) ventures that had some complex motivations, and cultural outcomes. He also conveys an idea of medieval kingship as well as thinking, through details such as Henry's and Eleanor's habit of feeding hundreds of poor people a day--thousands, after some big event, in order to assure that these people's prayers would have extra impact on temporal events. Such actions helped shape the evolving idea of what kings were, and what they could do.
But the fact remains that there is scant primary evidence about these interesting women. We know that both Eleanors had spouses who remained faithful their entire lives. We catch sight of them in snatches through pregnancies and deliveries and children through the festivals, rituals, and some letters. We can see that they were friends until friendship was impossible when Simon de Montfort turned against Henry and embarked on disastrous and bloody civil war.
Baker does a good job of winnowing truth from contemporary chroniclers, who made no bones about their agendas: when men wrote about women, even queens, it was always to instruct, and the lesson was invariably that good queens are submissive, faithful, and fruitful, and bad queens are bad wives and try to encroach on male prerogatives.
Excellent notes provide intriguing nuggets of information for the history detectives among us, along with a very strong bibliography.
I read this in snips over months; it was easy to put down, but always a pleasure to pick up again. I'd recommend it for readers curious about a seldom-visited period.
Copy provided by NetGalley