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Eleanor of Castile
00:41:07
Eleanor of Castile married King Edward I of England as part of a political deal to affirm English sovereignty over Gascony.
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- [00:01]
Eleanor Yonega
Thanks for listening to Gone Medieval. You can get all history hit podcasts ad free, early access and bonus episodes. Head over to historyhit.com subscribe or you can sign up on Apple Podcasts with just one click.
- [00:17]
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- [00:43]
Danielle Cybulski
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- [00:46]
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- [01:23]
Eleanor Yonega
Hello and welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit. I'm Eleanor Yonega and in today's episode we'll be talking talking about Eleanor of Castile, the Queen of England and Countess of Ponthieu. Varying degrees of power for women and what happens when royal marriages actually end in love. I'm delighted to be joined today by my friend and colleague, the incredible Danielle Cybulski. Danielle is the author of several medieval history books, including her latest, Chivalry and Medieval Manners for a Modern World. She's also the host of the Medieval podcast and basically an all round phenom of a medievalist. Danielle, thank you so much for being here.
- [02:01]
Danielle Cybulski
It is my pleasure to be here. Always happy to see you Eleanor, Wonderful to see you.
- [02:05]
Eleanor Yonega
This is just an excuse to hang out with friends really, if we're being honest, but. So I think that English speaking audiences will be most familiar with Eleanor of Castile as a result of her funerary monuments. Right, the Eleanor crosses. But the thing about it is she is so much more than just a dead wife and I think that's what we really want to talk about today.
- [02:27]
Danielle Cybulski
Yeah, absolutely. I think that you can't have a queen like Eleanor of Castile without getting into who they were as an actual person instead of just as you say, like a body under the ground. This was a Spanish princess and she brought a whole bunch of learning and really encouragement for her husband, who, as you say, became her love match.
- [02:47]
Eleanor Yonega
So she's Spanish? Yes, she's raised in Castile. Right. Tell us a little bit about that.
- [02:53]
Danielle Cybulski
So she is raising Castile, as you say. And this might seem like a weird connection for an English king, right, for an English prince to marry, but it's actually not. When you think about the time before Edward I came to the throne, the time before his father Henry III came to the throne, a lot of what is now France was actually owned by the English through the marriage of Eleanor of Aquitine and Henry ii. So a lot of England spilled over into what's now France. And then it was lost. It was famously lost, much of it by King John, which is why no one really remembers him very well. But part that they still owned was Gascony. And this is a really rich region. It is a wine drinking region, it's wine producing region. And this was really important for the English to hold onto. And it borders with Castile and a couple of other Spanish kingdoms. But Castile is what we're really thinking about today. So on the other side of the mountain pass, you have Castile. And so it's important for the English to hold on to Gascony, which is a really slippery place to hold onto because it is all these warring nobles who are trying to get themselves more powerful. So this made sense as a place for a prince to marry into because it could make the borders safer. So Castile is a place where there is a really great king on the throne. His name is Ferdinand. He became Saint Ferdinand, which gives you an idea of how rich and powerful and wonderful he was for the cause at least of his own country. He was really involved in the Reconquista. So while Eleonora of Castile is growing up, her dad is actively going out and he's pursuing the Reconquista and he's taking more territory and he's holding it well. And this is stuff that she is learning, especially because her mom is going on these Reconquista campaigns with her dad. And so her mom is a countess in her own right of Ponthieu. And so they are going together as a power couple and conquering territory and holding it safely. So this is what she's learning as she's growing up. And her dad does die when she's about 10 and her brother Alfonso becomes the king of Castile. And so this is her background, she's growing up in a place where there is all sorts of culture happening. If you know anything about medieval Iberia, you know, is a rich place of culture. There is Muslim influence, there's Jewish influence, there is all this learning, there is all this fruit, there is all this gardening happening. And so this is where she's growing up. And then just before she turns 13, she ends up being married to an English prince. But, yeah, this is her background in Castile.
- [05:25]
Eleanor Yonega
I think it's quite interesting too, because all of these really important people that she's related to, like Alfonso X, he's a big deal for people like me who are quite interested in magic manuscripts. And Alfonso starts this amazing scriptorium where he's translating texts from all over the Mediterranean. And so Eleanor is brought up in this culture where it's like learning is the thing where you try to get Arabic texts in and you translate them. In all of these, you know, various complex literary things are happening. But she's also got another connection to England, doesn't she, before she gets married off? Because she's the great granddaughter of Eleanor of Aquitaine.
- [06:07]
Danielle Cybulski
Yes, she's related to Eleanor of Aquitaine because one of her relatives came and married a king of Castile as well, Eleanor of England. And so this is her namesake, right, which is two Eleanor's back.
- [06:20]
Eleanor Yonega
And this is a complex one, because sometimes you have to be like, wait, do you mean Eleanor of England, the Queen of Castile, or do you mean Eleanor of Castile, the Queen of England? You know, which is a fun one. But so there is this kind of like, understanding that England is a place, I guess, for Castilians at this point in time, you know, And I think that that's worth mentioning, right, Because I think here in the English speaking world, we have a tendency to think that England is the center of everything. And it's like, well, I don't know if you're Castil and there's rather a lot going on, there's a lot of money, but.
- [06:51]
Danielle Cybulski
And that really emphasized the connection between England, Castile and Gascony as well, because through Eleanor of England, there was this claim to Gascony by the Castilians. So again, this is another reason to keep the Castilian sweet, because you want to keep Gascony in the hands of the English.
- [07:06]
Eleanor Yonega
Oh, so there you go. That's what it all comes down to. You know, these princesses down in Castile start looking really good when it seems like their brother might take Gascony from you, right?
- [07:15]
Danielle Cybulski
Yeah, 100%.
- [07:16]
Eleanor Yonega
Okay, so here's Eleanor she gets married off at 13. What is the first thing that happens? Is this, like, straight on a boat to England at Edward's side?
- [07:27]
Danielle Cybulski
That's a good question. No, it's not straight on a boat to England. Henry is off doing his thing, but Edward. So Prince Edward, who will later become King Edward in Longshanks, he hangs out in Gascony for a while, and this is where Eleanor hangs out with him. And they hang out to the point at which it seems she becomes pregnant. So they're already pretty tight. And I think this is not necessarily a consummation for the sake of it, because that's not something that tended to be done too much in that when girls were this young, it was dangerous for them to have children. And so often they didn't consummate a marriage that quickly. But at the same time, Henry wasn't keeping a close eye on this because he was away, and his son and his new bride were in Gascony in their own household. So if it is a love match, things will happen sometimes. But they seem to have had either a stillbirth or a miscarriage. And then, famously, Henry has them separated after that.
- [08:27]
Eleanor Yonega
Dad shows up.
- [08:28]
Danielle Cybulski
Yeah. So dad sends Edward off to Ireland and says, eleanor is going to stay in England with us. And is this because they had already started having kids, or is it because he really needed Edward in Ireland? I think that this is something that could have gone both ways at the same time. But they are separated for a little while, and then they will rejoin each other in England just as things are getting spicy there.
- [08:52]
Eleanor Yonega
Right. I think that's really interesting because I'm constantly trying to tell people, you know, really medieval people don't get married early.
- [08:59]
Danielle Cybulski
Okay.
- [09:00]
Eleanor Yonega
You just think that they get married early because you hear about medieval kings and queens who do, and nobody actually consummates their marriage. And here comes Eleanor to just undo all of my hard work in that area.
- [09:12]
Danielle Cybulski
I know. But it is unusual, though. You're absolutely right in that it usually doesn't happen that early. And in fact, when it does happen, people make note of it. Right. Like Margaret Beaufort is having a baby at 13, and people are scandalized. They're like, wait, no, you're supposed to hold off. And so whether or not this is Henry's idea to keep them away from each other, because you can't ruin this alliance that you've made by having this princess die in childbirth. So it might have had something to do with that.
- [09:39]
Eleanor Yonega
Okay. So Eleanor then is whisked off to England, and totally new context what's the reception to this Castilian princess when she shows up in town?
- [09:50]
Danielle Cybulski
Well, everyone is looking at her sideways because in part of her mother in law. So her mother in law is another Eleanor, Eleanor of Provence.
- [09:58]
Eleanor Yonega
It's a great name. It's a very good name. More Eleanors.
- [10:02]
Danielle Cybulski
I know. It's a great name, isn't it? This one is probably not going to make you as proud in that she made everyone upset because she married all of her relatives into the aristocracy, the English aristocracy, as much as she could. And so even though England had a lot of claim to a lot of France, it was still a little bit suspicious that this queen has come in and married all of her relatives into places of power. And it's funny because Edward's dad, Henry iii and his son, Edward II both have the same problem where they just have favorites. They have favorites and it causes problems, like big problems with the aristocracy. So when you have a king who's married to somebody who's already having sort of a foreign influence everywhere, to bring in another foreign princess is gonna make people look at her sideways. And it doesn't seem to me, from the little that I know of her, because she's a mysterious, shadowy figure. I think Sarah Cockroach calls her the shadow queen. It's hard to know whether she's the type who would ingratiate herself right away. But here she comes from Spain, she's brought her Spanish retinue with her. And I think the English are looking at her like, oh, this could go badly. We don't know.
- [11:11]
Eleanor Yonega
Right, right. The context that she's coming into as well, you know, here she is with her retinue and they're very fancy people. Right. And they're all speaking Spanish and French. I don't think that Eleanor ever learned English. You know, she's being real French with it, which, to be fair, this is par for the course at the time. No one really expects the queen to learn English. Come on. But she shows up and her father in law is almost immediately bundled up in the second Barons War. Right. So there's this context where we are in a fight about favorites and what it means, Right?
- [11:45]
Danielle Cybulski
Yep. And so when you think about this as well, there's a thing that has plagued Henry's reign and most kings reigns and that they don't have a lot of money. So to bring in a new princess and had to support her, the taxpayers money, like this is also not the best. But yeah, she has to be somebody who is not making waves at this time because of all that political climate that's happening.
- [12:07]
Eleanor Yonega
So we have this war kickoff, right? Which, you know, great. You bring your fancy Spanish princess home. She just wants to read books and.
- [12:14]
Danielle Cybulski
I don't know, make gardens.
- [12:16]
Eleanor Yonega
Yeah, make gardens, right. This is what she wants to do. And it's like, no, immediately civil war, because everyone's kind of tired of her father in law's stuff. But Eleanor gets pretty involved in the second Baron's war, right? Like she's brokering some action here.
- [12:31]
Danielle Cybulski
Yeah. So it's funny because it seems that these two teenagers get together. So Eleanor and Edward get together and they both have big ideas. They want to rule a step. They want to do it better than at least his parents, if not her dad, who is a saint. So they want to do it better. And so you see this push and pull where Edward's always trying to do things on his own, and he'll run off and do something rash, and then his dad will have to rein him in, or whether or not that's the right thing, because Henry's often doing the wrong thing. But during the Barons War, yeah. Edward starts to come into his own power a little bit more, and he starts to lead battles and stuff. And he's always putting Eleanor close to where he could reach her so he could come back and have, like, weekends.
- [13:13]
Eleanor Yonega
Oh, God bless.
- [13:14]
Danielle Cybulski
So she's very much part of his life and his plan. And I think that other people have said that she probably has a great influence on him because of the way she's seen her dad do the reconquista, right. Take over places and fortify them. So Edward's trying to do this, but he's hamstring, hamstrung by his dad. At the same time. He is able to do things like install Eleanor, famously, in Windsor Castle. And he tells her to keep it, keep it for me. And she does. And she fortifies it as much as she can. She is said to have tried to bring some archers from her county of Ponthieu. Whether that is something that happened or not, she is holding the castle. She is holding prisoners. And she doesn't actually release it until Edward and Henry are both in captivity and they send her safe passage to Westminster. And they send her something that says, okay, it's all right, you can give up the castle now, but she's not gonna do it before then. She's gonna hold out as long as she can.
- [14:11]
Eleanor Yonega
See? And this is quite interesting because it shows us how involved women really can be. You know, even with a really famously careless father in Law, like Henry iii. You know, he's looking at this teenager, she's a teenager. And he's like, no, I trust you with Windsor. What a really interesting and powerful woman must this have been? You know, I can barely let my teenage cousins look after the flat. Actually, I take that back. I love you, teenage cousins. You're all great.
- [14:36]
Danielle Cybulski
Yeah. So she's either in her late teens or early twenties, but either way, she's way young for this. And it seems that she's ready for it in that she's had this education. And one of the things that you've mentioned is that her education in Castile is extensive and she has her own scriptarium when she's a queen. And one of the things that it seems that she's read is Vegetia's the De Re Militari. And the reason that we think, or I think that she read this herself is that later on, when Edward. She and Edward both go on crusade, she has this translated for him. And this is a really important military text. It is the foundational military text in the Middle Ages. It was written closer to antiquity, like in antiquity, and it talks about Greek and Roman strategy. But everyone who is in Nebattle has read it. And I think that maybe she's read it as well, because she puts a little comment in it when she has it translated for Edward that says this is exactly what he did in the Barons War. So he's on it. So she may have read Spaghettius later, but it's very possible that she's read it earlier. So she's probably had at least the learning from watching her dad, from watching her brother, and maybe actually reading military texts. And she might have more of a background in this than most queens. Like definitely more than Eleanor Provence, who is like more of a fashionista.
- [15:57]
Eleanor Yonega
Right.
- [15:57]
Danielle Cybulski
This woman seems to have had a background that has her ready for something like this. But as you say, it's not unusual in a lot of ways for women to hold a fort for their husbands. So this wouldn't have been like completely out of step, but it is a big deal.
- [16:12]
Eleanor Yonega
I think that's such an interesting thing to remember. That battle, I suppose, is more than just the actual guys with swords hacking at each other. Right. You know, there are people who are doing the strategy, there's people who are reading texts and kind of like trying to apply these things. Especially a woman like Eleanor, a Spanish woman, who very famously is quite into chess as well. She gets text translated, trying to improve her chess game, trying to learn about how to hold A fort, things like this. And I mean, I think that this is quite interesting because on the one hand you have this kind of like, well, she's not quite Amazonian because I'm not saying she's riding into battle, but you've got this really quite fearsome woman who can hold down a castle when she's a teenager. But then on the other, when her father in law eventually dies and Edward takes the frome, one of the things that starts happening is that she starts doing the thing we expect from Queens more specifically, which is just having so many babies.
- [17:09]
Danielle Cybulski
Yes.
- [17:10]
Eleanor Yonega
It's incredible, right?
- [17:12]
Danielle Cybulski
Yeah. So she is pregnant most of the time. She had something like 16 children. That's a lot.
- [17:19]
Eleanor Yonega
That's so many children.
- [17:21]
Danielle Cybulski
That's a lot. Yeah. And to add it to that, she's pregnant and she's on the road much of the time when she's pregnant. She's on the road almost her entire time married to Edward and she's pregnant a lot of that time, which is not easy for anybody. And she's also very sharp. She's reading, she's writing books, correspondence, all that stuff. She's having books written. I shouldn't say that she's actually writing books, but she's writing correspondence all the time to do with her business. And it's hard to do that when you're pregnant as well. So yeah, she's on top of it. And then the other thing I think we need to remember is that even though she had something like 16 children, she also had miscarriages and most of her babies died. Most of her children died. So this is something that is going to have an impact on her psychologically and physically. So it's something to remember when you see her as a businesswoman in a lot of ways, an intellectual woman in a lot of ways. You also have to remember that emotional side where she is having babies all the time and she's losing them too.
- [18:22]
Eleanor Yonega
And that's the thing. Right. I suppose it's one thing to look at her business dealings or her work in war and say, oh, here's this really brusque woman. You might be brusque too if you were like both pregnant and mourning three children at the same time, I suppose. But she does manage to actually get a few kids to stick from this period. Right. Their son John is born in 1266, you got Henry in 1268, another Eleanor 1269. But then they go on crusade. Right. It's like, here's all these babies and it's like, woof. Off we go to the Holy Land.
- [18:51]
Danielle Cybulski
Yeah. So they go off to the Holy Land. And I think part of this is to get out from underneath the parents.
- [18:58]
Eleanor Yonega
Yeah.
- [18:59]
Danielle Cybulski
It's hard to live with your parents when you have your own household and you're older and, you know, you're in your 20s, getting into your 30s, you don't want to live with your parents. So they go off to have a crusade. And it doesn't go great in terms of crusades, like, when you think about what their objective was, which is to take Jerusalem, like, that didn't happen at all. But they were up against one of the most formidable people who was in charge in the Middle east at the time, which is Bay bars. So they were really up against it. They didn't really accomplish much, but they still managed to cover themselves with glory while they were there. Just being there was enough. Edward, he won a couple of skirmishes, not big ones, but, you know, it's enough for him to look really great and for them to, when they come back, to come back as heroes.
- [19:44]
Eleanor Yonega
It's quite funny, right? Because I suppose the Eighth Crusade, not one that gets talked about very much. Right. And indeed, actually, the stories that people often tell, some of them revolve around Eleanor. Right. Because it's like, this is a not particularly impressive crusade. Nothing much gets done. But what does get done is this attempt on Edward's life, Right. Like someone goes in and stabs him.
- [20:08]
Danielle Cybulski
That's right, yeah. And it's one of these frustrating moments where you're like, just tell us what happened. Like, I'd like to see the footage, but you can't see it. It's just related stories. And some of them are happening when people write them down, they're much later, but it seems that Edward was stabbed in the arm. And the best story is that it was a poisoned blade. And then Eleanor, like, throws herself on Edward and starts to suck the poison out. And she's doing this for a night and a day, getting the poison out of her husband. It probably didn't really happen like that.
- [20:38]
Eleanor Yonega
You don't say.
- [20:41]
Danielle Cybulski
It's a good story, though.
- [20:42]
Eleanor Yonega
It's a great story. I love it.
- [20:44]
Danielle Cybulski
But there may have been poison involved in that. He seems to have been stabbed. And there's another account that says it started to go bad. The wound started to go gangrenous, and he had to cut part of his arm to get the poison out, like, to get the gangrene out. So, I mean, sepsis. Does that count as poison? I don't think she sucked it out.
- [21:02]
Eleanor Yonega
I've yet to see an example of gangrene being sucked out of someone, but I could be wrong. Right in to the show, if you have any.
- [21:09]
Danielle Cybulski
Yeah, exactly. So it seems to have been cut out of his arm, which is bad enough without poison, but he made a full recovery as it turned out.
- [21:18]
Eleanor Yonega
I mean, I suppose to this great story. I mean, it's a great story, isn't it? The poison sucking story. It's probably linked to the fact that this is a legendarily happy couple. You have this rare instance of a king and queen who get on, who travel together of 16 kids. Something's going right.
- [21:37]
Danielle Cybulski
Yeah. I really think that they were cut from the same cloth in that they had the same goals for this rulership. And one of the things that is interesting in the push pull of the fact that their marriage was so happy means that she was never really away from him, which means it's really hard to trace what she's doing. Right. Because if you have the household records that are from one household instead of two, then you have to extrapolate from that what's she doing. And we don't have all that much correspondence from this period in general. Right. It's hard to keep letters, especially when people are scraping them off and reusing the parchment. But it seems that they were together so much that it's even hard to see where he ends and she begins. There are jokes you can make about that in 16 children, but also the fact that they are just so philosophically aligned where she is really supporting his project as a king and he is supporting her role as a queen and doing things like building up her property portfolio. But yeah, the 16 children really speak for themselves, I think, when it comes to the happiness of the marriage, because they could have been away from each other all the time. When he was away in Gasket, he turned it, put out fires there. When he was in Ireland, they were away from each other. When he went on crusade, she didn't need to go, but she did.
- [22:53]
Eleanor Yonega
And it's on the way back that they find that they are suddenly the king and queen on their way back from this little crusading adventure.
- [23:01]
Danielle Cybulski
Yeah. So they find out on the way back that Henry has died and pretty much been buried like it's all happened without them. But they were expecting that, everybody was expecting that. A lot of contingency plans are put in place for that because Henry was getting up there. And also a crusade is a long business. Even if you're there and back, it is a long way. So they didn't come back super quickly. They didn't rush back. I think Henry died in something like 1272, and they didn't have their coronation until 1274. So they took their time coming back, which speaks to a really easy transition of power and a lot of contingency plans put in place.
- [23:39]
Eleanor Yonega
That's such a good point because I think we're almost trained to think, oh, yeah, it's really easy, you know, your eldest son will take the throne and these things all happen. But there was a time there, especially kind of looking back in the 12th century, 13th century England, and easy transition of power doesn't really spring to mind. So say what you will about Edward's dad, but he's really kind of like clamped down on all of that, I would say.
- [24:02]
Danielle Cybulski
And I think that people were committed to the idea of an easy transition of power. When there's been this huge civil war that's happening, everyone's like, let's just make something easy.
- [24:11]
Eleanor Yonega
I cannot have another civil war. Please stand down, Barons, you know. Yeah.
- [24:27]
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- [28:14]
Eleanor Yonega
So okay, they return back. We've got this coronation in 1274. What is going on with Eleanor at this point? So she's gonna sit down in theory and start ruling. What does that look like?
- [28:28]
Danielle Cybulski
It's quiet. It's quiet in terms of the records because she's sitting and she's sitting two Edwards right? And she's not doing a lot in terms of like grand gestures. But what she is doing is making alliances and arrangements for marriages, for cousins and other relations in a way that is quiet, not like her mother in law. And she's acquiring property. She is gathering property. And what's interesting about this is she does it like a monopoly baron in that she likes to get manors and properties that are close to each other so it's easier for her to manage them. So she's always keeping her eyes on properties for ones that are close to ones that she already owns. And if she makes a trade with someone, she might hold the property in reserve and get rid of it so that she could get the closer one. And this really reminds me of those squares in Monopoly. Right. All the ones that are the same color. I think she would be amazing at that. I think she would be cutthroat. I wouldn't want to play it with her. But yeah, she was really invested in getting all this property. And one of the ways she's doing this is by buying up debt. And she's doing this by buying up Jewish debt, especially. So this can look good on her in some ways. And that she is relieving people from indebtedness to the Jews, which is not what Christians want to be at this time. But then she doesn't make it easy for people to get their property back, the property that they've pledged for these debts. She's usually like, and I will take that, thank you very much. So she is building her property portfolio in ways that are kind of unseemly. The Archbishop of Canterbury is like, listen, this is not strictly great for your soul. Maybe don't do that because you're taking advantage of people who are in indebted to Jews, which is not Christian of you. She basically ignores that. But she's not really his super friend anyway, so it doesn't bother all that much. But yeah, she's taking on debts and she's taking on property and not everyone loves her for this, especially because she doesn't seem to be all that concerned with the ways in which she gets her rent. I think she's good about plausible deniability.
- [30:39]
Eleanor Yonega
Yeah. And the Archbishop of Canterbury, this is John Peckham, has this to say about it.
- [30:46]
A rumor is waxing strong throughout the kingdom and has generated much scandal. It is said that the illustrious lady queen whom you serve is occupying many manors, lands and other possessions of nobles and has made them her own property. Lands which the Jews have extorted with usury from Christians under the protection of the royal court.
- [31:11]
Kind of harsh evaluation of, you know, on the one hand, possibly a shrewd businesswoman. On the other, it is kind of seen as being kind of exploitative. Right. There is an idea of that being the case. It's not just like, oh, well, she's the queen, she gets to do whatever she wants, is it?
- [31:29]
Danielle Cybulski
No, it's not. And she seems to have hired people to take this on for her that are slightly unscrupulous and like I said, she seems to keep a distance from it. But she seems to me like the type of person who, if you put a sad puppy commercial in front of her, she will cry and she will do something about it. She will donate to charity. But in the meantime, if that person is not in front of her, that puppy's not in front of her, she's a bit like, let them eat cake. She doesn't seem to really get invested in people unless the case is right in front of her. That's the impression that I have. But the other thing to remember about this too is that Edward famously was invested in getting back all the properties that his dad had given away, so that two of them are interested in getting back as many properties as they can to fund the monarchy and in Edward's case, to restore the rightness that his dad had messed up by giving things away to favorites.
- [32:23]
Eleanor Yonega
Yeah, I mean, I suppose that another way to look at this too is like, sure, is she accumulating a bunch of land? Yes. But she's being expressly told, hey, we're looking at you like a foreign too fancy woman who's going to come over here and spend all of this money for the wrong reasons. And so another way of looking at this is she's just kind of assuring that she's going to have the cash that she needs without having to go to her husband or go to the government all the time and say, hey, can I have some money for. I don't know. Well, yeah, I guess this is a good thing to talk about.
- [32:56]
Danielle Cybulski
What she's doing with the money, she's holding onto it and she's spending it on things like the job of a queen. Right. She's giving alms to people. She's not spending it on dresses. I think this is important and I think this is one of the things that makes her, if not beloved, at least tolerated, because she's not spending it on herself in terms of making herself look fancy. She is spending it on books and she is spending it on gardens. And again, these are things that you could get angry with her about. But she's also beautifying castles that are going to stay in the English royal house for a while, unless her husband ends up giving them someone else. So she's decorating with gardens especially. She likes to plant things. She likes water gardens. She's creating. I think there's a king's bathhouse at Leeds Castle in Kent where there is running water, seems to have had hot water, perhaps. And this is the type of stuff that she misses from Castile. Like, there's a lot of bathing happening in Spain, not as much happening in England. So she's investing in the properties themselves. Right. So she might take a manor from here or there and take that money and beautify a castle. But her husband also needs a lot of money because he's always fighting somebody. It's gonna be the Welsh next, right?
- [34:15]
Eleanor Yonega
Yeah. And she's over in Wales with him, Right. You know, having babies. Here goes Edward over to Wales. And here goes Eleanor alongside having a baby. She's constantly having babies, this woman. I don't know how she ever got any sleep, because either she's having a baby or planting a garden or starting a scriptorium. And it's quite interesting, actually. You know, some of the books that come out of Eleanor's scriptorium are really famous. There's things like the Deuce Apocalypse, the Alphonso Psalter, we think maybe the Trinity Apocalypse. So these are like big, fancy, beautiful, gorgeous books that are considered now like an ornament to the country, to the British Library. These are really, really important things that she's kind of translating. And so, yeah, you could say, why are you putting so much gold leaf in a book, Eleanor? But, hey, I'll tell you what, 700 years later, I get hyped to look at these books, right? These are really incredible things.
- [35:11]
Danielle Cybulski
I mean, they're presents for royalty, right? So they are famously presents for royalty in that they have images in them that related to the family or related to their political struggles. So I think it's the Deuce Apocalypse that has, like, Simon de Montfort, who is, like, in hell or at least being thrown down. So she's got little jokes like, these are for the family, and she's invested in making the family look good. So not in the way that Henry did, where it was all about, like, pomp and circumstance, but having these objects that show majesty. And then she's invested in books. She loves books. So this is where she's going to put her money and effort.
- [35:45]
Eleanor Yonega
Gosh, she's just, you know, I really take after her, literally. I'm partially named after her. So, you know, I've got a soft spot. I'm a joint venture. I'm Eleanor of Castile and Eleanor of Aquitaine.
- [35:55]
Danielle Cybulski
I mean, the best of all worlds.
- [35:58]
Eleanor Yonega
That's right. So there's all this incredible activity. You've got gardens, you've got books, you've got 16 pregnancies, you've got campaigns. But we, again, tend to talk about her and talk about her death instead of that. Right. But there's a pretty good reason for that, I would argue.
- [36:17]
Danielle Cybulski
Yeah, there is a good reason for that. And that is the Fact that when she died, her husband he grieved her enormously, which is one of the contradictions of Edward as well. Mark Morris pulled out that quote about him and made it the title of his book, A Great and Terrible King, because he is both great and terrible at the same time. And so he is the hammer of the Scots. But he's also so sentimental that he built these 12 Eleanor crosses which are not just like a wooden stake in the like they're two, three stories high. Beautiful bits of architecture that are left behind. The places where her body stopped on the way back to London. So they were on progress because they were always on progress.
- [37:00]
Susanna Lipscomb
I'm Professor Susannah Lipscomb and on Not Just the Tudors from History Hit we do admittedly cover quite a lot of Tudors, from the rise of Henry VII to the death of Henry viii, from Anne Boleyn to her daughter Elizabeth I. But we also do lots that's not Tudors, murderers, mistresses, pirates and witches. Clues in the title really. So follow not just the Tudors from History Hit Wherever you get your podcasts.
- [37:30]
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- [38:03]
Danielle Cybulski
And then she ended up dying near Lincoln, which was not planned. I mean no one plans to die, I hope, but this was not where they expected to stay. And then they took a slow journey back to London before she was buried and they built these Eleanor crosses afterwards to memorialize her. And these were a massive amount of expense and talent. And they are there to remind everyone of who she was. It is always propaganda when you have a monument, right? So they're making her look good. But one of the things I didn't realize until reading Sarah Coggerle's book is that these places where they stopped, they're not insignificant. It seems like a weird journey back to London, but they are places where she had properties. So they are places where she was going to be beloved. And so they are appropriate places for these monuments. But yeah, these monuments lasted for hundreds of years. They were very conspicuous. And of course this is one of the places where intentionally you'd read about the person who has just passed away so you'd be Reading it in visual cues. But this is what medieval people did, looking at churches and stuff. So you'd be reading this to see, oh, she was a great queen. She was a very kind queen and all of the things that Edward wants her to be remembered for. If the Archbishop of Canterbury was creating these monuments, they might be different.
- [39:25]
Eleanor Yonega
Yeah, Right.
- [39:27]
Danielle Cybulski
But this was a way of remembering her in the way that a queen should be remembered, whether it had a lot to do with her personality or not.
- [39:34]
Eleanor Yonega
And I think it's cute because it's a lot like, for example, all of Victoria's monuments to Albert that we see all over. You can't move in London without an Albert something. There's a statue of him constantly, or a hall or an arch. You know, there's just Albert things everywhere. And this is kind of the medieval equivalent of that. And there's this cute little story that I like about Edward where he would have this little ritual every Easter Monday where Eleanor's ladies would come arrest him in his bed and be like, hey, we're arresting you. And you can't go see your wife because, you know you're not allowed to have sex during Lent. And so Easter Monday, it's like, go for it. And then he would have to pay them off and be like, hahaha. And then they would all take him off very ceremoniously to her bedroom. And like, the year she died, he did it again, had all, like, the ladies come and it was like, oh, my hot wife. Oh, it's really sweet. Right? Like, yeah, there's this letter that he wrote to the Abbot of Cluny after her death. And he says of his wife, whom living, we dearly cherished and whom dead, we cannot cease to love. And I'm like, aw, Edward, you're kind of a monster. But he's a wife guy.
- [40:47]
Danielle Cybulski
He is. He was very thoughtful. If he had to be away, he would send her medicine, he would send her venison to make sure she was strong in her pregnancies or after her pregnancies. Yeah. He really seemed to care about her a lot. He was very thoughtful, which is, again, not who the Scottish saw in him, but it's who his wife saw in him. It's beautiful. And so, to put it in context, so she died in November, and Easter is months and months later. He, in fact, went into a bit of a seclusion after she died because he was always on the move. And then he just. Just stopped for a little while. So, I mean, it's always important to remember these are People that usually don't see that kind of grief for a queen, it is unusual. It is noteworthy, for sure.
- [41:33]
Eleanor Yonega
Yeah. Especially a queen who spends a lot of her time alive kind of making enemies. Right. But this is the interesting thing about the power of propaganda, about when you have something like the Eleanor crosses, it can really change things around. So instead of being like your landlady. Right. You know, I don't know that too many people would be wailing in the streets when their landlady died, ordinarily. But if you put these things up, it creates this story and it creates a way of talking about her as an individual, as a person, as a loved one that I think is incredibly powerful.
- [42:07]
Danielle Cybulski
Yeah, exactly. And Edward, I think his grief was genuine, but I also think he was very good at propaganda in general. Like doing things in Wales, like, I'm burying King Arthur, so he's not coming back. He was good at that. He was good at making a show for people to see that was going to influence how they would understand him or his campaigns or anything like that. So even though I think his grief was genuine, this was a very appropriate way of making him sympathetic. Even when he was doing things that maybe people didn't like. Like he just expelled the Jews from England, and maybe that made him popular in some quarters, but not other ones. But then it's very hard to take aim at somebody who's grieving like this. So it managed to work for him. If we are gonna allow a bit of cynicism to creep in here.
- [42:54]
Eleanor Yonega
Absolutely. Well, I mean, I think that this is such an interesting one because in a way, it allows us this peek behind the veil. Right. We get this really unprecedented look at a royal love story and a way of looking at kings and queens as people, not just, I don't know, agents of history, but on another. That's what they want. Right. I'm constantly going on and talking about how most kings and queens are really terrible, actually. And it's such an incredible sleight of hand because this is the story that we tell about Eleanor now. When we talk about her, it's like, oh, it was a love match. That's the first thing that kind of like rolls off the tongue. I'm certainly guilty of that. But she's this incredibly complex, quite fearsome woman on so many levels. And we just go, oh, romance. Because Edward's really clever. It's an amazing piece of propaganda.
- [43:44]
Danielle Cybulski
Yeah. And this is one of the things like, where do you find her? You try and look in the spaces. So what happens after she dies. Well, Edward is not the same father that he was beforehand in that Eleanor was, like, really invested in making sure her sons were educated, for example. And you see Edward II's education falls off the rails. It's not the same as it would have been beforehand. I mean, Edward dismisses her scriptorium. He gets rid of a lot of the tapestries that he doesn't necessarily need anymore, because that's weird in Spanish to have a carpet on the floor and the walls. That's weird. So this influence that she had over him, maybe a steadying one and maybe one that made him a better parent, it's gone all of a sudden. So you have to look for her in those spaces, which is unlike many other queens. But I think it really speaks to how simpatico they were, whether if we're just talking about the love story or two really smart political oper raiders trying to build up a kingdom that had been in pieces before they took over.
- [44:47]
Eleanor Yonega
And I suppose that's really the story of Eleanor, as she is a complex woman who manages, actually to drive home some real new innovations in a place that you wouldn't necessarily expect.
- [45:01]
Danielle Cybulski
Yeah. What is this? Running water for a bath. That's amazing.
- [45:05]
Eleanor Yonega
I know, right? I like what sticks. You know, people are like, oh, the running water for a bath. We really like that. Carpet. Carpets.
- [45:11]
Danielle Cybulski
Yeah, carpets.
- [45:12]
Eleanor Yonega
We're going to wait till Victoria to really bring carpets back.
- [45:14]
Danielle Cybulski
This is a time before vacuums, right? It's a lot of trouble.
- [45:17]
Eleanor Yonega
Yeah, yeah. If I had didn't have a Hoover, I wouldn't want to do it.
- [45:22]
Danielle Cybulski
It's a big carpet to take out and try and beat with sticks.
- [45:25]
Eleanor Yonega
Yeah, I know, it's terrible. We're sitting here, I'm like Eleanor of Castile, fearsome businesswoman, political player, carpet maven.
- [45:36]
Danielle Cybulski
Uh oh. This is what happens when Eleanor and I get together. Right.
- [45:40]
Eleanor Yonega
I guess we'll leave it there on thoughts of carpet. But I want to thank you all so much for listening, and thank you, Danielle, for joining me. This has been gone Medieval by history hit. And if you've liked what you heard, don't forget to rate review, follow the podcast, and please tell your friends about it. If you're looking for more medieval goodness in your life, you can subscribe to our Medieval Monday newsletter by following the link in the show notes below. And if you fancy suggesting an episode, you can drop us an email. Gone medievalistoryhit.com Otherwise, I'll be back again next Tuesday for another episode, and my co host, Matt Lewis, will be back on Friday. Until next time.
- [46:31]
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