1 The mystery girl at Fontevraud: Eleanor or Blanche?
2 Queen of France, aged fifteen: Eleanor’s hidden head in Bordeaux Cathedral.
3 The proud pagan queen: Eleanor in her early twenties at Chartres Cathedral.
4 Eleanor, Henry’s prisoner, aged fifty-two.
5 The tragic head at Fontevraud: Eleanor aged seventy-eight.
6 The ill-matched couple: Eleanor and Louis in the Portail Royal at Chartres.
7 The golden Virgin of Beaulieu, paragon of twelfth-century feminine virtue.
8 Louis on his wedding day: Eleanor’s ‘I married a monk’ says it all.
9 Geoffroi de Lauroux savouring his political triumph at the royal wedding in Bordeaux.
10 Polychrome enamel funeral plaque of Henry’s father, Geoffrey the Fair.
11 Eleanor’s state apartments in the Maubergeonne Tower at Poitiers.
12 The magnificent audience hall built by Eleanor and Henry for the court in Poitiers. The doorway on the left at the head of steps leads to Eleanor’s apartments.
13 The richly carved porch of Poitiers Cathedral, built under Henry’s and Eleanor’s patronage.
14 Eleanor’s décor: these twelfth-century floor tiles from Aquitaine resemble those the queen commissioned for the palace of Clarendon.
15 Altar cross in Limoges enamel from La Sauve Majeure, given to the abbey by Eleanor or Richard.
16 The contemporary fresco in St Radegonde chapel, Chinon depicting the end of rebellion in 1174. Henry leads away Eleanor, his prisoner; Joanna pleads for peace between her parents.
17 Henry triumphant.
18 Eleanor hands the gyrfalcon, emblem of Aquitaine, to Richard.
19 Eleanor’s sons desert her: Richard takes the falcon, and Geoffrey copies his father’s gesture, meaning, ‘I obey you’.
20 Chinon Castle. The Tour du Moulin, probably Eleanor’s first prison, is on the far left.
21 The ruins of Châlus Castle, with its circular keep on right, from where the fatal crossbow bolt was fired.
22 Aerial view of Old Sarum, where Eleanor was locked up for the best part of fifteen years. The castle ruins are in centre; the foundations of the first cathedral are visible within the outer fortifications.
23 Killed by greed: the Lionheart’s effigy at Fontevraud.
24 England’s first virgin queen? Berengaria’s effigy at L’Epau, the abbey she founded near Le Mans.
25 Effigy at Fontevraud of Isabella of Angoulême, the sensual young bride by whom King John was obsessed and whom the chroniclers castigated as ‘an animal’.
26 Eleanor’s son John, outmatched by Philip Augustus: effigy in Worcester Cathedral.
27 At rest in Cistercian simplicity: the Plantagenet effigies at Fontevraud Abbey.
28 Testimonial to a sad life: the nuns’ kitchen at Fontevraud, built with Joanna’s bequest.
29 Together in death as so rarely in life: the effigies of Eleanor and Henry at Fontevraud.