r/todayilearned • u/Designer_Reference_2 • 1d ago
TIL that after putting down a military revolt led by three of his sons, King Henry II of England forgave them instantly but imprisoned his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine for sixteen years since she had taken the side of her children in the conflict
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleanor_of_Aquitaine820
u/Rich-Koala-2593 1d ago edited 17h ago
Henry II was a truly great king, perhaps the most brilliant in English history, but he was also a control freak and his inability to manage his family ultimately led to his defeat at the hands of his son Richard the Lionheart and death shortly afterwards. One of Richard’s first actions as king was to send the legendary knight William Marshal to England with instructions that his beloved mother should be freed immediately.
Speaking of William Marshal, as always he had stayed loyal to his king during the conflict and unhorsed Richard in personal combat only for Richard to reward William for his actions as he valued loyalty and wanted men like that around him. William Marshal was probably witness to more Plantagenet temper tantrums than anyone else, he was basically the royal babysitter for three generations.
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u/EmergencySushi 1d ago
I first learned about William Marshal in a TIL in this very sub, a few months ago. The guy’s story is incredible. Really cool customer.
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u/jurassic2010 21h ago
If he was so good, why didn''t he help the Sheriff of Nottinghan to arrest the criminal Robin Hood? Nobody cared about the poor billionares?
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u/EmergencySushi 20h ago
He tried, but he got confused with the boat going from the White Cliffs straight to Sycamore Gap.
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u/FrankieTheD 22h ago
Looked into him, dude was leading cavalry charges into his 70s?? What a bad ass
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u/Gimme_Your_Wallet 22h ago edited 17h ago
Henry II was also a massive whoremonger, gave Eleanor an STD and developed massive hemorrhoids later in life due to constant horse riding. Source: the bio of Eleanor "April Queen"
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u/karmagirl314 18h ago edited 17h ago
The massive hemorrhoids sounds like something your wife would make up and tell everyone after she caught you cheating.
Henry cheated as much as most other English kings. He also revolutionized the justice system in England, ending “trial by ordeal” ie drowning women to find out if they were witches, and instead introducing standardized common law, jury trials, created writs (like bite-sized pieces of law that commoners could purchase to simplify a legal question, they were the first real means of an accused person or victim could use to defend themselves before defense attorneys were a thing) and lastly he implemented assizes, which were traveling courts overseen by judges that answered to the king, not to the local baron or whomever. He even tried to get the Catholic Church to start abiding by the law, but that led to a whole thing with lots of stabbing and whipping and hair shirts.
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u/Gimme_Your_Wallet 17h ago
Naw he had to use special seats for the latter years of his life. He also limped a lot bc he fell from a horse and the broken femur never healed right.
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u/tunakassirolle 2h ago
He deserved them for what he did to Alys of Vexin.
And for a ton of other women too but poor Alys
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u/SecretGardenSpider 17h ago
Richard the Lionheart probably didn’t cause his dad’s infected hemorrhoids.
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u/RiddlingVenus0 5m ago
If I could only time travel once, I’d go back to the time of King Henry II just so I could suck on those royal infected hemorrhoids.
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u/depredador93 23h ago
What gets left out of the TIL is that once Henry died, Eleanor essentially ran the show. She was regent for Richard while he was on crusade and then again for John. 16 years of house arrest and she still outlived and outmaneuvered most of them
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u/Razzmatazz856 21h ago
She was regent for Richard while he was on crusade and then again for John. 16 years of house arrest and she still outlived and outmaneuvered most of them
Considering King John's rule was a giant shit show that ended Capetian control of Normandy, that's not a super accomplishment.
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u/CroneDownUnder 12h ago
She kept John's reign disciplined while she lived. It was after she died that he threw it all away.
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u/Long-Tap6120 19h ago
It's interesting the Louis King of France and the Henry King of England were igloo brother's in law due to them both marrying Eleanor and having 10 children between them with her.
Political archrivals and hole brothers lol you couldn't make it up
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u/Dog-Witch 11h ago
Well yeah she was sitting at home while they were out fuckin around on horses and doing crusades, that's gonna take a toll.
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u/wem1985 5h ago
She went on the second crusade.
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u/Dog-Witch 4h ago
Says the marriage was annulled afterwards, note to self: don't bring the Mrs on crusade
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u/Viktor_Laszlo 22h ago
After 15 years of marriage to the king of France, she had 2 daughters. When their marriage was annulled and she married Henry II, she had 5 sons.
I remember reading in a chronicle somewhere that she somehow did this on purpose to spite her French husband, which is hilarious to me.
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u/tunakassirolle 22h ago
She and Henry also had 3 daughters for a grand total of 8 living kids, which is definitely pretty impressive considering she didn’t get started on round 2 until she was 29.
I think it’s safe to say that Henry and Eleanor were just a bit more enthusiastic about the whole thing wink wink
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u/swazal 21h ago
Good Lord, she had
eightten kids back when one could likely kill you or die in two years … she deserves the Aquitaine!37
u/tunakassirolle 20h ago
And outlived all but two of them when she finally passed at the ripe old age of 80! Which is like 900 in medieval years lol
Absolutely worthy of the Aquitaine! The OG Boss Bitch 👑
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u/ShelleyTambo 4h ago edited 2h ago
Her first husband had intended to be a priest until his older brother died and was a bit too pious to be enthusiastic that way.
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u/tunakassirolle 2h ago
Me: Oh I didn’t know he had an older brother. I wonder how he died.
Wikipedia: He was killed in a boar hunt.
Me: oh yeah that tracks, medieval times and all.
Wikipedia: Yeah, the boar jumped out from behind this giant pile of poop and tripped his horse, launching Philip into the air and when he landed he broke all of his bones and he died the next day in unimaginable agony.
Me: :O
Wikipedia: Here’s an illuminated manuscript that depicts the event.
Me: oh rad
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_of_France_(1116%E2%80%931131)?wprov=sfti1#
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u/hottertime 23h ago
Great movie "Lion in the Winter" Kathryn Hepburn and Peter O'Toole.
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u/kevnmartin 23h ago
Fantastic cast all the way around, Anthony Hopkins, Timothy Dalton and Nigel Stock as William Marshall.
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u/swazal 1d ago edited 1d ago
“Of course he has a knife. We all have knives. It’s 1183 and we’re barbarians.”
https://youtu.be/Pqz3gkrmBbo (Lion in Winter trailer)
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u/tunakassirolle 23h ago
I’m really fond of Eleanor’s monologue where she reminisces about wearing gold chains on her titties and riding bare chested into Jerusalem. Get it girl.
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u/Overall-Bullfrog5433 1d ago
I have seen that movie a few dozen times and it is a favorite of mine always. But that one line always strikes me so false. I don’t think anyone thinks of their own time as backward and barbaric. It sounds like it now but not at the time.
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u/Cadaverous_Particles 23h ago
Prior to the Renaissance, most Europeans thought of their knowledge and culture as a pale shadow of the Era of Plato and Aristotle. They didn't have faith in their own brains and believed that the knowledge, science and engineering of the past was superior.
As an example, they trusted the writings of Galen, over evidence that they had seen with their own eyes, for 1200 years. The modern scientific revolution was a profoundly important event that changed the worldview from "we will always know less than our ancestors" to "every generation will have more knowledge than the one before".
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u/Specialist_Fish_2582 22h ago
Even more tragic when a lot of Galen's writings are "Why are these charlatans just making things up and ignoring the evidence of their eyes?!" He was big on experimentation and repeatable results, to the benefit of science if not his local stray dog population (it was taboo to dissect dead human bodies at the time).
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u/Emergency_Mine_4455 13h ago
Honestly, if Galen had been able to operate in Alexandria (where dissecting bodies was NOT taboo due to the longstanding religious practice of mummification), medicine might have progressed so much faster.
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u/TastyRamenNoodles 23h ago
Wow! I just watched the film for the first time last week. Katharine Hepburn, Peter O’Toole, a very young Anthony Hopkins, and Timothy Dalton looked like he was 16.
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u/Zakath_ 1d ago
There's actually a series of fantasy books based on the life of Henry and his sons, Knight's Ransom is the first one. They're good, not great, but I did enjoy them a bit more once I realized who they were inspired by. The main character there is based on William Marshal.
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u/Rich-Koala-2593 1d ago
The more I read about William Marshal, the more I realize he was truly the main character.
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u/EsquilaxM 23h ago
Oh cool. I see in the premise of book 1 the parallels with Marshall. Turns out the series is set in the same world as his previous series. I hope I check them out sometime (my backlog is huuuge)
Edit: wait is this series a prequel to the first?
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u/Astrium6 23h ago
The princes try to coup you and you just have to think,
“I would have done the same at their age.”
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u/howescj82 17h ago
IIRC she held Aquitaine PERSONALLY and brought it to the marriage so if she was working against him then keeping her under his thumb meant keeping Aquitaine.
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u/theartfulcodger 22h ago edited 50m ago
The brilliant movie The Lion In Winter (Peter O’Toole, Katherine Hepburn) is about their surprisingly wistful, tender and affectionate relationship during this period. Also appearing is a very young (and slimy) Anthony Hopkins. Won 3 Oscars.
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u/faceintheblue 4h ago edited 56m ago
Watch The Lion in Winter starring Katherine Hepburn, Peter O'Toole, Anthony Hopkins (in his film debut), and Timothy Dalton (in his film debut!), among others.
Henry II celebrates Christmas with his sons, the new King of France, and his wife Eleanor, who he lets out of prison for the holidays. Everyone is plotting against everyone else, and everyone gets a scene-stealing monologue. It is movie of titans!
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u/HuoLongHeavy 5h ago
Eleanor essentially took the bullet because she ran basically everything while the men of her family were the face. And this bullet was less prison, and more she got to live in a castle for 16 years. Because that's what royalty got.
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u/Sniperkitten42 23h ago
Cheaper than another divorce.
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u/Creticus 22h ago
Henry's control of Aquitaine rested on his marriage to Eleanor, so that wouldn't have been worth it.
I've read an argument that him treating Aquitaine as a permanent subordinate part of his empire was what prompted Eleanor to back her sons in their rebellion.
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u/GarconMeansBoyGeorge 23h ago
I don’t think they were divorcing yet. we had to get through 5 more Henries first
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u/tunakassirolle 23h ago edited 23h ago
Ackshually! ☝️🤓 Eleanor of Aquitaine got an annulment from her first husband (Louis VII, King of France) in order to marry (the slightly younger and definitely hotter) Henry II.
This was funny because she had to get a special dispensation from Da Pope, and her grounds for annulment were that she and Louis were third cousins* so they shouldn’t have married in the first place.
Which just makes her marriage to cousin to the third degree* Henry II that much funnier.
*Edit: I looked it up. Eleanor and Louis were third cousins once removed, while she and Henry were cousins to the third degree and related via two different ancestors.
**Louis VII was cool with this because at the time Eleanor was only popping out girls and Henry II was just some backwater nobody. He ended up pulling a Henry VIII and had like 3 more wives before finally getting his heir. Whoops.
I just love the Plantagenets you guys they are so wacky
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u/Joy2b 22h ago
Was this the same pope who had to give a specially blessed bed as a delayed wedding gift, because the pious groom hadn’t supplied an heir, and would not agree to sex around holy days?
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u/tunakassirolle 21h ago edited 21h ago
Oh my god let me google that!!
(Seriously if yall aren’t reading the Wikipedia pages for these guys you are missing out they are bananas lol)
Edit: It was!! But it was actually Eugene III’s attempt at marriage counseling for Louis and Eleanor, and supposedly their second daughter was conceived in the special Pope bed. But geeze how embarrassing for the Literal Pope to have to tell you to bang your wife AND provide the actual bed too big yikes
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u/GarconMeansBoyGeorge 23h ago
I learned something and I appreciate that. But still it wasn’t the English king getting divorced.
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u/tunakassirolle 22h ago
Nope, but their son King John (of England) did get an annulment from his marriage to Isabella of Gloucester so he could marry the twelve year old Isabella of Angoulême. Which, if you remember Prince John from any Robin Hood stories, is pretty on brand for the guy 😬
But that was the last time an English king got divorced until Henry VIII, so I learned something today too!
History is cool :D
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u/dualCalibur 23h ago
Da Pope? Is r/nfcnorthmemewar leaking?
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u/tunakassirolle 23h ago
Lmao good catch!! To clarify: this was a normal run of the mill European Pope, not the Wordle-loving Chicago Pope traveling back in time handing out annulments for funzies. That was my bad 😆
Edit: I looked it up and this particular pope was Eugene III. Can’t believe someone voluntarily changed their name to Eugene but there ya go lol
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u/yepiyep 10h ago
The mother of Richard lion heart who barely spent two years in the country.
I highly recommend listening to the you're dead to me podcast episode about Eleanor (Aliénor) of Aquitaine.
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u/Lord0fHats 6h ago
It makes sense when you consider that England was paradoxically not that important to the Kings of England who were also the rulers of half of France. Through Eleanor the family owned Aquitaine in Southern France, while their line inherited Normandy and Anjou and close relatives ruled Britany and owned the main family fealty. Henry, Richard, and John were Kings via England, but they ruled half of France, and their French lands were far far more important to their wealth and power than England and under regular threat due to the inconvenience that the Kings of England were also French lords who owed fealty to the King of France, which made the whole situation a firecracker.
Contextually, it's not shocking at all that Richard spent little time in England and didn't even speak English. England wasn't actually that important for him aside from the chair and the hat.
The only reason John and the Kings after him actually spent more time in England was because they fucked up, lost half of France, and had to live there because it was the only place left XD Then they kind of go half of France back a century later and then they fucked it up again England Kings have a really bad track record at holding lands in France XD
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u/roirraWedorehT 2h ago
"The Lion in Winter" (1968?) is excellent and includes among many of those well known, Anthony Hopkins and Nigel Terry (King Arthur from Excalibur) as two of the sons.
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u/lifesnofunwithadhd 9h ago
The boys are king material, that's a good thing to have. The wife, not so much.
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u/Gruselschloss 1d ago
"for sixteen years" in this case means "until Henry II died." She wasn't in a dungeon - functionally house arrest, as I understand it, and subject to Henry's whims about where she was housed. Once he died, she went on to serve as regent alongside the next two kings (i.e., her sons).