1

The Backdrop

On 1 November 1254, a fifteen-year-old boy was married to a twelve-year-old girl in the elegant Normanesque abbey of Las Huelgas in the northern Spanish town of Burgos. The couple had been formally engaged for some months but they had met for the first time only a matter of days before the wedding. Both were unsupported by their parents at this major event; the bride’s father was dead and her mother had recently fled the country, while the groom’s parents had chosen not to accompany him, and would only see the new couple for the first time over a year later. Such a wedding hardly seems auspicious. But this unpromising start was the beginning of perhaps the most successful royal marriage in England’s history, for the bride was Eleanor of Castile and the groom was the future Edward I. As he became one of England’s greatest and most successful kings, his wife was never far from his side and his devotion to her has become a byword, reinforced by the multiplicity of touching images of her he raised to commemorate her death, some thirty-six years into their marriage.

Yet though by those images and her splendid tomb – hailed as one of the masterpieces of the Decorated style – she is perhaps the most visible of the medieval queens of England, the opposite is the case when it come to the facts about Eleanor of Castile. She leaves almost no trace in the main records. In the process of reconstructing her life I have frequently felt that she hides away among the shadows of history. So elusive is she that there has never been a full biography of her life and there are no easy answers to the obvious questions: Who was she? Why was a Castilian princess married to an English prince? Did she influence Edward at all politically? And why was that marriage such a huge success?

To answer these questions it is necessary to take a step away from the facts one can know for sure about Eleanor. There are almost no verifiable facts about Eleanor’s childhood, for example, and yet her story cannot possibly be said to start on the day she married Edward. At nearly thirteen years old she had a wealth of experience and knowledge already available to her, which must have coloured who she was. What is more, the fact that she was the daughter of one of Spain’s greatest kings, an international hero and a future saint, is by no means irrelevant to the reason why the marriage came about, or to the assumptions about the role of a king which she will have brought to the marriage and communicated to her husband.

So where does one start? Even commencing at Eleanor’s birth will not answer, for three reasons. The first is that the question as to why an English prince was marrying a Castilian princess cannot be answered without looking much earlier; although the marriage of Eleanor and Edward has come down to us as a great royal love match, the truth is that it was in all senses an arranged marriage, which existed only because it was politically the most suitable match available on both sides. The reasons which made it so appropriate derive principally from family and political factors, some of which reach back a full century before the wedding. Therefore the match itself is incomprehensible without some grounding in that backdrop.

Secondly, the importance of family to royal and noble individuals in this era must not be underestimated. Family was what fundamentally made you what and who you were. Family was what brought the privileges of rank and wealth, when the opposite was all too visible every day. Duty to family was a central part of the education and indoctrination of noble children – and particularly girls, who would be used as human links in a chain binding different family interests together, and who would be expected to bear an active role in promoting the relationship which their marriage was to facilitate. As Henry III put it, in the context of negotiations for Edward’s marriage to Eleanor, ‘friendship between princes can be obtained in no more fitting manner than by the link of conjugal troth’. In the interests of family, complex relationships developed through generations; and frequently women were the prime movers in the business of maintaining or supplementing historical family ties.

For Eleanor herself, the careful husbandry of family interests later formed a very significant part of the business of her life. Like most royal and noble women of this era, she appreciated the value of noble blood and alliance and would carry in her head the ancestry of her own family and those surrounding it – unto the third and fourth generations. She would then deploy this knowledge in forming alliances for children, friends and dependents. One illustration of this sphere of knowledge is the way in which papal dispensations would permit marriage ‘within the fourth degree of consanguinity’, i.e. with anyone who had a common ancestor four or more generations ago. Thus a common great-great-grandparent was permissible, but a common relative more recent than that was not – unless special dispensation was obtained. The number of ramifications which a family tree can gain in the intervening period can be imagined; particularly with second marriages, which were common if a first spouse died, a not infrequent occurrence given to the dangers of childbirth and battle. Yet in the world in which Eleanor moved, people, and particularly women, would be expected to know precisely such details. Ultimately one of Eleanor’s great achievements was to surround her immediate family with supporters from her wider family, and to do so in a way which avoided negative comment from interested parties. The subtlety of the job that she did in interweaving her family into England’s aristocracy cannot be appreciated without some perspective on the broader family ties that she brought with her.¹

Finally, the fact that Eleanor is a woman who makes few positive appearances in the records means that direct evidence of her qualities and interests is very incomplete. We cannot unearth those facets of her without looking at the context and probabilities.

Therefore this chapter has to cover some broader family background, following Eleanor’s family through four generations. This sets the stage for the political rationale for the marriage, as well as for Eleanor’s own place in the world. It also begins the process, which the next two chapters will complete, of gathering such material as there is about the family backgrounds and early experiences for each of Eleanor and Edward. By looking in this chapter and the succeeding ones, at the family backgrounds of each and their upbringing, it is possible to form some views about the events and interests which affected each and moulded them into the two young people who stood at the altar in November 1254.

This is a story which can best be told broadly as the story of five weddings spanning four generations. At either end stand the marriage of Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine, which is the blood link between Eleanor and Edward, and the wedding of Eleanor’s father, Ferdinand of Castile, to her mother, Jeanne of Ponthieu. In between lie on Ferdinand’s side that of Alfonso VIII of Castile and Eleanor of England and of their daughter Berengaria of Castile to Alfonso IX of León; on Jeanne’s side there is the marriage of her mother Marie of Ponthieu to Simon of Dammartin (the relationships discussed are illustrated in Family Tree 1: Five Weddings at p. 4). Each wedding forms part of the context for the marriage of Edward and Eleanor, and each has relevance to Eleanor’s later life and interests.

In political terms, the first marriage is key. It is possibly the most famous of all medieval marriages: that of Henry, Count of Anjou, the future King of England and Duke of Normandy, and the greatest heiress of her generation, Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine and Countess of Poitou in her own right. It is key in one sense because it provides the blood link which existed between Eleanor and Edward – both were direct descendants of this marriage. But in political terms this marriage created the situation in which an Anglo-Castilian alliance made sense. It is therefore actually an understatement to say that the course of events leading to the marriage of Eleanor and Edward can be traced back to this event. In fact it is vitally necessary to go back to this date to put the later marriage into any form of context.

The Anjou–Aquitaine marriage took place a little over a century before that of Eleanor and Edward, on Whit Sunday, 18 May 1152. It was effectively an elopement, coming only eight weeks after the annulment of Eleanor’s marriage to King Louis VII of France. It had two other hallmarks of an elopement: it was celebrated in a somewhat perfunctory style, the chroniclers disapprovingly describing it as having taken place without the ceremony that befitted their rank; and it took place without the consent, which should have been obtained, of the parties’ mutual overlord – the same King Louis.

The reason no consent was sought and the marriage was rushed on was not raw romance; the protagonists had probably only met once before the wedding, albeit that some commentators considered that Henry made a noticeably good impression on the queen. It was because it changed the balance of power in Europe at a stroke. What is particularly ironic, given that the reasoning behind the annulment was Eleanor’s failure to provide Louis with an heir, was that the notable fruitfulness of the marriage ensured that it continued to do so for future generations.²

Two major political effects were created. The first was in making the English power block the primary cause for concern for French monarchs for generations to come. The marriage made the succession of Henry to the throne of England virtually a certainty and therefore linked (either at the time or for the future) England, Normandy and the Norman possessions in northern France, Anjou, Poitou and Gascony. Prior to the marriage England’s status had fallen low, with the civil wars that had followed in the wake of the death of Henry I without a direct male heir. This marriage ensured that England ceased to be perceived as of little concern; instead it became a major power. What is more, the English Plantagenet power block was, in terms of territory, far greater than that of France, and it hampered the French king’s traditional means of maintaining power by fostering dissension between his powerful vassals. From this moment on it would therefore be imperative for French kings to look at all times to means of destabilising the Plantagenet empire and chipping pieces of territory or influence away from it as they could.

The second political effect was one within the Plantagenet empire itself, and it reflected the disadvantages that came with this massive empire. Henry’s lands stretched from the north of England, west to Ireland and then south to the middle of France. Eleanor’s lands then stretched from the middle of France to the Spanish border. It followed that there were many neighbouring interests involved in such an empire, all of whom would have their own axes to grind – and most of whom would be inclined to take advantage of any weaknesses or lengthy absences. Although Henry moved fast – often faster than his enemies anticipated – the sheer distances involved, as well as the economics of warfare, meant that the iron fist alone could not provide an adequate safeguard. A journey to Gascony would take weeks – and longer if the weather in the Channel was unfavourable. Hence, as regards the southern reaches of the empire, the Plantagenet approach was to maintain the position as much as possible by alliances; principally by marriage alliances. Each generation of Plantagenet princes which followed Henry’s marriage to Eleanor would duly make a marriage alliance with a power near to the borders of Gascony. Edward’s match with Eleanor was simply the latest example of the policy. Thus Richard I had married Berengaria of Navarre, John married Isabelle of Angoulême and Henry III Eleanor of Provence.³

The first of these southern marriage alliances, and one of the most significant politically, was the second marriage, which forms the background to Eleanor of Castile’s story. This was the marriage of Eleanor of Aquitaine’s daughter and namesake Eleanor of England to Alfonso VIII of Castile. The idea of this marriage was to bring Castile, the dominant power in the Iberian peninsula, into harmony with the Angevin interests and avoid the need for too much attention to the southern border, since Henry had much with which to concern himself elsewhere. Conceptually the plan was sound, and on one level at least the alliance was a great success. This was the personal level: the marriage was famously harmonious, with Eleanor actively ruling alongside her husband, who actually specified in his will that she was to rule alongside their son in the event of his own death. In the event, Eleanor of England died only twenty-eight days after Alfonso in 1214, and was buried at his side. Their graves were and still are in the Abbey de Las Huelgas, in Burgos, where, just over forty years later, Edward and Eleanor of Castile were to renew the alliance between England and Castile.⁴

On a political level, however, the marriage may be said to have been less idyllic. This is because the most important single issue, which later drove the marriage of Eleanor of Castile and Edward I, is the Castilian claim to Gascony which arose from the earlier Anglo-Castilian marriage. While the marriage of Eleanor of England and Alfonso was performed to secure the Gascon frontier, Alfonso was too canny a politician and too ambitious a monarch not to capitalise on his advantages. During the lifetime of Eleanor of Aquitaine he held his fire. Her control over her own patrimony was always significant, and her relationship with her daughter and son-in-law was apparently very good – she stayed with them for a long visit in 1201 and helped arrange the marriages of their daughters. But following her death in 1204 King John of England was troubled elsewhere by French advances on Anjou and Normandy, and this was too good an opportunity to miss. Alfonso launched an invasion of Gascony, citing a claim to Gascony which derived from Eleanor’s dowry – the validity of which claim is still debated.⁵

However valid or tenuous the claim, the invasion was a fact and although it was ultimately abandoned, this was not formally done until 1208; in the intervening four years Alfonso had at times actually held most of Gascony except Bayonne and Bordeaux and had issued charters styling himself ‘Lord of Gascony’. As a result the claim raised by Alfonso was very much in play between the two countries and was not formally relinquished until Eleanor of Castile’s marriage nearly fifty years later. As the English Crown progressively lost the vast bulk of its French lands under John and failed to regain them under the decidedly un-martial Henry III, the importance to England of the remaining territory, Gascony, increased – and so did the question as to the English throne’s title in the area.⁶

The marriage of Eleanor of England and Alfonso is also important in the influence which the achievements of their reign had over Alfonso’s effective successor, Eleanor’s father, Ferdinand III. Those achievements therefore form the background to the situation and culture in which Eleanor was brought up, which is considered further in the next chapter. Principal among these were three factors: the resumption of the fight against the Muslim invaders (the Almohads), the centralisation of Spanish power in Castile and a cultural and intellectual renaissance.

So far as the fight against the Islamic invaders was concerned, most of the Iberian peninsula had fallen under Islamic control in the ninth and tenth centuries and a powerful and sophisticated caliphate had developed around the town of Cordoba. The process of winning back the land (which the Muslims had called Al-Andalus and which gradually became called Andalucia by the Spanish peoples) had begun then, and was to continue until 1492, when Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon conquered Granada, the last outpost of the Muslim invaders. In Al-Andalus, Iberian attempts at reconquest were initially held in check by Yusuf ibn Tashfin of the Almoravids and later by the Almohads; both Berber dynasties originally based in North Africa.

But toward the end of the century the Iberian nations had fought back against the invaders, to the extent that the peninsula was now roughly divided into the Almohads in the south and west with the Iberian nations of Portugal, León and Castile in the north (reading from west to east) and Aragon in the north-east. Until the middle of the twelfth century León and Castile had been one kingdom, with León the dominant element, but the countries split after the death of Alfonso VII, with much resultant feuding. It was Alfonso VIII who began the process which was to push the Almohads back and who also put Castile in pole position as the dominant country in the peninsula.

The process was not entirely a smooth one: Alfonso suffered a great defeat with his own army in 1195 at Al-Arcos, when he attempted a gallant but hopeless attack against a numerically vastly superior force. Reputedly the foundation of Las Huelgas abbey, where Eleanor and Edward were to marry, can be traced back to the Al-Arcos defeat; according to some accounts, Eleanor of England persuaded Alfonso to found the new monastery to make up for any default in religious duty which might have accounted for the result of the battle. In fact, while it seems likely that she was indeed the driving force behind the foundation of the abbey and its constitution as a female institution, the date of foundation of the abbey, 1187, suggests that the link to Al-Arcos is a mere romantic story. More practically, after the defeat Alfonso ensured that the fight against the Almohads received support from the papacy, who, crucially, designated the work of reconquest a Crusade. With this support, Alfonso was then able to form a coalition of his neighbouring Christian princes: Sancho VII (‘the Strong’) of Navarre, Alfonso II of Portugal and Peter II of Aragon. It was this coalition, assisted by miscellaneous foreign Crusaders, which Alfonso led to victory in the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212.⁷

That battle was a bloody and decisive encounter. After some disagreements among the members of the Christian coalition, Alfonso managed to cross the mountain range that defended the Almohad camp, sneaking through the Despeñaperros Pass – guided by a shepherd boy, according to Spanish folklore. Some accounts suggest that the Christian coalition caught the Moorish army completely by surprise, but more reliable ones indicate that it was a much closer-run thing. Differing accounts predictably give credit to different members of the coalition for the ultimate success of the battle, with at least some offering that accolade to Alfonso for a critical charge at the head of his reserves. But in any event the battle was a complete victory for the coalition, with the Almohads suffering immense casualties: figures between 70,000 and 200,000 were reported at the time. The battle was a victory of such significance that in Spanish history Alfonso VIII, as well as being called ‘the Noble’, is described as ‘El de Las Navas’ (He of Las Navas). It is credited as marking the effective end of the power of the Almohads in the Iberian peninsula. But, as important, it put the central part of the peninsula into Castile’s control, thereby creating a platform for Spanish union.⁸

Alfonso VIII was also the first of the martial kings of Castile to foster the idea of Castile as a centre of culture and learning. He was the founder in 1208–9 of the first Spanish university, the studium generale of Palencia, where Italian and French teachers taught theology, canon law and the arts. While this institution did not survive him, it is hugely significant to the wider world of learning in that during in its existence it provided the training ground for St Dominic, who studied there for ten years. Palencia can thus claim credit for the origin of the Dominican Order, which flourished in Spain from shortly after its inception and became very influential at the Castilian court as well as overseas – with Eleanor of Castile later being one of its greatest patrons in England.

Culturally in this period the court was also considerably influenced by Eleanor of England, who, like her sisters, encouraged the poets and troubadours familiar to Eleanor of Aquitaine’s Poitevin culture, with the Castilian court becoming a recognised haven for such artists. In all probability she was also involved in fostering some knowledge of Arthurian literature. A copy of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae is likely to have accompanied her to Castile on her marriage and there was certainly an Occitan Arthurian romance, Jaufré, written at the contemporary court of Alfonso II of Aragon. The Arthurian tradition seems to have continued into Eleanor of Castile’s own generation; her eldest brother, Alfonso X, refers to Arthur, Merlin and Tristan in his own Galician-Portuguese poems, indicating a considerable familiarity with Arthurian romances. Eleanor of England also introduced to Castile the veneration of her family’s own martyr St Thomas Becket, endowing an altar in his memory at the cathedral of Toledo.⁹

Alfonso’s reign also saw a move towards cohesion in the states in the peninsula. Politically and militarily the Kingdom of León was very much the odd man out, while Castile drew closer to Aragon, particularly with the military alliance which resulted in the victory at Navas de Tolosa. However, dynastically, closer union with León was brought about by marriage ties, specifically the third of the five weddings in this chapter. As we shall see below, Alfonso’s eldest daughter, Berengaria, reluctantly married Alfonso IX of León and thus became both the means of uniting the Castilian and Leónese thrones and the grandmother of Eleanor of Castile. Two other daughters, Urraca and Leonor, married the heirs to the kings of Portugal and Aragon. Finally, further strengthening the prestige of Castile over that of the other Iberian nations, Alfonso and Eleanor’s most famous daughter, Blanche, married Louis VIII of France. She became the mother of St Louis (Louis IX) of France and an iconic regent of that nation in his troubled minority and later in his absence on Crusade. Some historians consider that she deserves to be counted as a monarch of France in her own right.¹⁰

The third wedding – the marriage of Berengaria of Castile and Alfonso of León – is significant in Eleanor’s story for three reasons. First, it shows the circumstances which moulded Eleanor’s remarkable father. Secondly, it shows the woman who was undoubtedly held up to young Eleanor as her role model: Berengaria ‘the Great’. And thirdly, it sheds light on Castilian princesses’ expectations as regards property.

The marriage was not a great success and ended in divorce. Alfonso IX, a Leónese nationalist, was deeply hostile to any link with Castile; indeed, he had even allied with the Almohads, and plundered the border fortresses of Castile after Alfonso VIII’s defeat at Al-Arcos. He was only brought to contemplate the marriage under heavy pressure from the papacy, which in 1196 excommunicated him and placed his entire kingdom under papal interdiction, with indulgences being offered to any Leónese citizens who took up arms against him. This sanction was prompted by two defaults: his raids on the righteous Castile, and his incestuous marriage. The marriage, which Alfonso had refused to abandon even after it was annulled by the Pope, was to his first cousin Teresa of Portugal and had been entered into in furtherance of his anti-Castile stance. It resulted in two daughters and a son.¹¹

Nor was Berengaria keen on the match, but she was persuaded by Eleanor of England that it was her duty as the only realistic means of securing peace – or at least its semblance – in the form of peaceful borders. This was to be achieved via the requirement for Alfonso of León to tender strategic border forts as part of Berengaria’s dower. It is important to note that, at marriage, Castilian and Leónese queens and noblewomen traditionally received a dower or arras from their husband’s property which was assigned to them for life. This approach, derived from the Visigothic legal tradition, is a very different one to that which operated in England at this point. In England the concept of dowry, or gift from bride’s family to that of the groom at the time of the marriage, was certainly well known, if not ubiquitous; and any dower, or provision for the wife by the husband’s family, was suspensory and did not come into effect until after the husband’s death. In Castile, by way of contrast, dowry was rare, and dower operated from the time of marriage. Thus in receiving these properties as dower, Berengaria would actually effectively own them and have power over them at once, providing Castile with the security it sought.¹²

The marriage, which took place in 1197, resulted in five surviving children: two boys and three girls, the eldest son being Eleanor’s father, Ferdinand, later Ferdinand III of Castile and León. While with the benefit of hindsight the match was therefore successful, it was at the time more or less disastrous. In the first place, this marriage to Berengaria was also within the forbidden degrees of consanguinity and again performed without a dispensation, which was seen as contumelious behaviour by the papacy. So Alfonso of León, instead of being reconciled with the papacy, was placed under a personal interdict for the rest of his life.

Even more seriously, the absence of a dispensation meant that the marriage was annulled by the Pope, leaving no clearly legitimate heir to the throne. This decision was campaigned against by joint Castilian–Leónese delegations for some time, but the Pope was immoveable, despite his predisposition towards Castile for its attempts against the Almohads. Berengaria initially stayed with Alfonso in defiance of the Pope, perhaps because she herself was not initially excommunicated, being somewhat laughably regarded by the papacy as a mere pawn in the hands of her menfolk. However, at some point her personal involvement became clear and she too was excommunicated. Most seriously, the Pope expressly declared that any children she would bear to Alfonso would be illegitimate and would have no right to inherit anything of their father’s. So, in late 1203, Berengaria left Alfonso and returned to Castile – pregnant with her last child by him. As soon as Berengaria had left, Alfonso promptly returned to his first wife and the two countries were up in arms against each other again within months. In 1212, Alfonso of León still refused to join Castile against the Almohads unless Berengaria’s dower lands, still being controlled by her, were first restored. This was not done and the Leónese army therefore missed out on the glory of Las Navas de Tolosa.¹³

So Eleanor’s father, Ferdinand, should never have been King of Castile or León at all. So far as Castile was concerned there was at least one heir ahead of him throughout his childhood. As for León, not only had he been declared illegitimate and unable to inherit by the Pope, but until 1214 he had an older brother by his father’s first marriage; and his own father was adamant that he should not inherit. However, owing to three quirks of fate, by the time he was eighteen Ferdinand was, despite the questions over his legitimacy, the acknowledged King of Castile and also the obvious heir to León. The first quirk of fate came in 1211 when Fernando, the eldest son of Alfonso VIII and Eleanor of England, died on campaign just before Las Navas de Tolosa – with the result that the crown passed on Alfonso VIII’s death in 1214 to Berengaria’s ten-year-old brother Henry I of Castile. Then, in the summer of 1241, Ferdinand’s older half-brother Fernando of León died. Thirdly, Henry of Castile then died prematurely in 1217, bizarrely enough from a tile falling on his head, shortly before he was due to marry his cousin Sancha of León.¹⁴

In Castile the direct heir was, of course, Berengaria, not Ferdinand. She had been a prominent figure in Castile since the death of her parents, leading the mourning for her father when her mother was unable to do so by reason of her own grief, and acting as the guardian of the young king despite strong opposition from the prominent de Lara family. But on Henry’s death Berengaria formally renounced her rights of inheritance in her son’s favour and Ferdinand became king. However, Berengaria, notionally a nun at Las Huelgas since 1204, did not retire from the scene. Far from it; she advised and assisted Ferdinand throughout his reign until her death, standing in for him in his absences on campaign, and acting as an effective quartermaster in assembling men and materiel for his needs, particularly in relation to the campaign for Cordoba. Indeed, she was technically co-ruler with him, issuing decrees in her own name. Although less celebrated than her sister Blanche, she was in effect one of the most powerful women in Europe.¹⁵

Thus, in 1219, it was on his mother’s advice that Ferdinand contracted his first marriage with Beatriz (or Elizabeth) of Hohenstaufen, the possessor of one of the most fabulous pedigrees in Europe, being a granddaughter of Emperor Frederick II and also of the Byzantine Emperor. The reasoning behind this match is a little mysterious and has been much debated. One strong possibility is that the masterful Berengaria had in mind the fact that Beatriz would bid fair to be a submissive wife – her mother, Irene Angelina, was famously described as ‘the rose without a thorn, the dove without gall’. The couple went on to have ten children, including Eleanor’s half-brother, the future Alfonso X ‘el Sabio’, a name variously translated as ‘the Wise’ and ‘the Learned’. The latter, as will become apparent, is the more accurate designation.¹⁶

Meanwhile, the relationship with León remained fractious. Alfonso IX wanted to avoid the union of the two countries that would follow if Ferdinand inherited. Therefore in 1224 he invited the famous warrior John of Brienne to marry his daughter Sancha and inherit the Leónese throne. Brienne was a French aristocrat from a relatively well-connected but not overly wealthy family. He had gained celebrity status similar to that accorded to the great English knight William Marshal by virtue of his prowess in tournaments and in actual war, assisted to some extent by his personal charms. His impressive stature is well attested – he was said to tower above other men and to have the physique of Hercules – and to this he apparently added considerable good looks. This winning combination had made him an obvious candidate when King Philip of France was asked to nominate a husband for the young Queen Marie of Jerusalem, and later attracted the young Princess Rita of Armenia, who anticipated having to fight her half-sister for her crown. To add still further to his attractions he had, since the death of his second wife, distinguished himself on Crusade. He would therefore have made a truly formidable candidate to oppose Ferdinand. However, Berengaria was not so easily defeated. She intercepted John on his way to León and, with support from her sister Blanche, who could promise great benefits in terms of French goodwill for his whole family, persuaded him that the better course was to marry her daughter Berengaria instead, thereby making him an ally, rather than a threat. This was effectively Alfonso’s final throw; although he willed León to the still unmarried Sancha on his death in 1230, he knew that his dream of an independent León was over.¹⁷

After the very early years of his reign, when some domestic disaffection had to be overcome following Henry’s turbulent minority, Ferdinand III remained on campaign almost non-stop throughout his first marriage and acted in partnership with his father Alfonso, despite the continuing issue about the future of León. This partnership led to key victories in the south at Cáceres in 1227 and Mérida and Badajoz in 1230, opening the road for a future reconquest of Seville. However, the victory at Badajoz was Alfonso’s last. He died in September 1230, doubtless aware that, despite his best attempts, Ferdinand would assume the leadership of the reconquest on behalf of both Castile and León.

And indeed, despite some continued resistance to the idea of a united León and Castile, Sancha was easily set aside by Berengaria and Ferdinand following Alfonso’s death. Berengaria negotiated a treaty, known as the ‘Treaty of the Mothers’, with Teresa of Portugal whereby Teresa’s daughters recognised Ferdinand’s rights as King of León in exchange for a very comfortable allowance. Ferdinand then returned to campaigning with huge success, capturing the town of Úbeda in 1233 and keeping up the pressure against the Almohads on a broad front. Finally, in 1236, he took Cordoba itself.¹⁸

Meanwhile, however, Queen Beatriz had died in late 1235. Her death brings us to the final marriage in our chain, which was Ferdinand’s second marriage, in August 1237, to Eleanor’s mother, Jeanne of Dammartin, later Countess of Ponthieu.

The match seems highly implausible – Ferdinand was a great and successful king, whose first wife had been of the highest imperial descent, whereas Jeanne of Dammartin was only the heiress to a small county in north-eastern France, which was of no interest to the Kingdom of Castile. However, under the surface there were good dynastic, political and personal reasons to consider the marriage suitable.

Dynastically, for example, Jeanne was actually of royal descent – through her maternal grandmother she carried the bloodlines of the royal houses of both Castile and France. That grandmother was the notorious Alys of France, the daughter of Louis VII and Constance of Castile, who had been the cause of one of the longest-running international incidents of the late twelfth century. In 1169 it had been agreed between her father and King Henry II of England that Alys should be betrothed to Henry’s son Richard (later to find immortality as ‘the Lionheart’). Aged just nine, she was therefore sent to England to be raised at court. Alys grew up, but no marriage took place and it was widely reported that her father-in-law elect Henry had taken her as his mistress – and even that she had borne him a child. While the reports, usually doubted by modern historians, may have been fuelled by political considerations, the failure to proceed with the marriage became an international scandal. Nonetheless she remained unmarried and in Henry’s care until his death in July 1189. Her fiancé, Richard, had now succeeded to the throne and finally terminated their engagement in Messina in March 1191, according to some accounts on the grounds that she had borne a child by his father. Alys was probably entirely innocent, but her reputation was ruined – her own immortality is in Churchill’s much-quoted summary that ‘except for her looks, the tales were none too good’.¹⁹

The unfortunate Alys was finally sent back to France, aged thirty-five, in 1195 and was speedily disposed of by her brother. On 20 August of that same year he married her to the teenaged William III Talvas, Count of Ponthieu, who was doubtless brought to agree to the match in large part on account of the dowry she brought – the county of Vexin. This county had long been an issue between France and the Plantagenets, since the two counties of Ponthieu and Vexin form a useful strategic block. Philip therefore probably had it in mind that, since Alys was eighteen years older than her husband, the marriage would be childless and Philip would thus gain control of Ponthieu, a small but strategically important county. If he did, the plan misfired. Alys and William had one child, a daughter named Marie, born sometime before 1199.²⁰

The marriage of Marie, half-royal and heiress to two strategically important counties, was arranged while she was still young, in 1208. It forms the fourth marriage in our chain because it would provide the political impetus for the marriage between Eleanor’s parents. The groom was the thirty-year-old Simon of Dammartin. His claim to fame and to such a distinguished marriage rested entirely on the fact that he was the younger brother of a remarkable man called Renaud of Dammartin, who likely figured as a tragic hero of romance in tales told to Eleanor as a child.

Up until 1190, the family of Dammartin had a proud heritage but held only a fairly small county near Paris. Their daughters married other members of the minor northern French nobility – de Tries, de Saint-Omers, de Gourneys and (significantly for our story) de Fiennes. But in that year the family began a rapid ascent to influence and power by virtue of Renaud of Dammartin’s exercise of one of the less distinguished traditions of the era – the abduction and forced marriage of an heiress. The heiress in question was one Ida of Boulogne, the sole surviving granddaughter of King Stephen and Matilda of Boulogne and hence the heiress to both the Norman county of Mortain and the county of Boulogne. Ida was a massive matrimonial prize – and also chronically unlucky in the matter of husbands. By 1186, when she was twenty-six, she had already lost three husbands. It appears that she thereafter had plans to marry her own choice: Arnold II of Guines. However, at this point Renaud of Dammartin intervened. He sought Ida openly, but when her uncle refused to consent to the match, the intrepid Renaud simply abducted Ida and carried her off to Lorraine. Ida seems to have been reconciled to the match, to the extent of reportedly colluding in Renaud’s later imprisonment of Arnold of Guines. They had one child, who in due course became Queen of Portugal.

Ida’s apparent readiness to acquiesce in her abduction may be explained by the fact that Renaud was far from being a simple adventurer. He is described variously by contemporaries in superlatives and four-letter words. He was ‘cultivated, ambitious and versatile’ and, among other things, a noted patron of the arts. More to the point, so far as material advancement goes, he appears to have been one of the most able military men of his generation. He campaigned successfully with Richard the Lionheart against Philip of France in the late 1190s but defected to Philip shortly after Richard’s death. He was then apparently instrumental in the vital French propaganda victory in 1203 – the taking of Richard’s beloved and supposedly impregnable Chateau Gaillard.

The link between Renaud of Dammartin and this attack is strongly suggested by the fact that, very shortly thereafter, Philip created him Count of Mortain, Varenne and Aumale. Nor was this the end of Philip’s gratitude, for he then appears to have sided with Renaud when he contrived to fall out with his neighbour in the Pas-de-Calais – Alys’s husband, William Talvas. Through Philip’s influence and Renaud’s high standing with him a reconciliation was brokered, the key point of which was the marriage of Simon, Renaud’s nearly landless younger brother, and William Talvas’ heiress, Marie. The land issues which had brought the row into being were compromised and Renaud agreed to give Simon some of his Norman lands and possibly also his own county of Aumale. The deal was sealed by the marriage, which took place in 1209.²¹

But within ten years Renaud, at the best of times difficult to live with, had overreached himself and brought ruin not only on himself but also for a time on the county of Ponthieu. By 1212 it was clear that he would gain no further promotion from Philip; he therefore sought refuge with his cousin, the Count of Bar, and threw in his lot with King John, who promised him further counties in the Pas-de-Calais–Somme area, some of which he earmarked for Simon. The acquisition of these counties, together with the future occupation of Ponthieu, would have given Renaud control over virtually the whole of the strategically vital Pas-de-Calais area and made him one of the most important men in France and England.²²

Accordingly it was on John’s side that Renaud, Simon and their de Fiennes in-laws fought at the epochal Battle of Bouvines in 1214, while Simon’s father-in-law, William Talvas, remained loyal to the throne of France. Renaud fought brilliantly, repelling charge after charge, but eventually his formation was wiped out by sheer force of numbers. Simon escaped the field of battle, but Renaud was taken prisoner in the melee. He and Comte Ferrand of Flanders, who had defected with him to support John, were held in the castle of Goulet for thirteen years; according to some picturesque reports, Renaud was chained to the wall by a chain half a metre long for all this time. It is then said that, on the release of Ferrand in 1227, Renaud was told that he would never be released, upon hearing which he committed suicide, choosing the anniversary of Ida’s death for the occasion.²³

Meanwhile, Simon escaped to England, where he lived for some time without his wife, who remained with her father in Ponthieu. Inevitably, in the light of the betrayal by Renaud, his and Simon’s assets and titles in France were confiscated by King Philip. Thus at the death in 1221 of William Talvas, although Marie was his heiress, the title of Count of Ponthieu was confiscated to France. Philip had guardians appointed for Marie, who lived at Abbeville on a small pension from the king. However, the separation from her husband in this period was perhaps not as absolute as the records might suggest. Her eldest daughter, Jeanne, Eleanor’s mother, was apparently born in around 1220, six years after Bouvines, and three other daughters followed – at least one of them being of marriageable age in 1236 and therefore inferentially born in the early 1220s. It would seem therefore that one or the other of the couple managed to sneak across the Channel for occasional conjugal visits.

Reconciliation with the French Crown followed in stages. First, in 1225, Marie concluded a treaty at Chinon by which she acknowledged the Crown’s right to take her lands and in return she was restored to her father’s lands. Simon, however, remained persona non grata until five years later when a second treaty, concluded at St Germain en Laye, finally allowed him to return from England and reconciled him to the French Crown. But the treaty had teeth. Not only did he have to endorse the seizure of his lands, but critically he also agreed not to marry either Jeanne or her next sister to any enemy of the king or kingdom. Thereafter Simon and Marie held Ponthieu jointly until his death in 1239, and Marie held it alone until her own death in 1251.²⁴

By 1233, Jeanne was of marriageable age. She was a reputed beauty – she was later described by Roderigo Ximines de Rada, the Archbishop of Toledo, as ‘a princess who excelled as much in modesty as beauty … enriched with all sorts of good qualities’. She was also the heiress to a county, which was vital if the English Crown was going to maintain any form of challenge to the French in Normandy. Finally, her family, which had suffered considerably in the service of King John, might well be seen as having a claim on the English monarchy for some considerable benefit. For one or more of these reasons, in 1233 Henry III began to negotiate a marriage with Jeanne. These negotiations progressed to the stage that, on 8 April 1235, Henry and Jeanne actually pledged themselves to each other by proxy by the verba de praesenti, an exchange of vows couched in the present tense, which was widely taken as being a binding marriage. The marriage between Henry and Jeanne was therefore seen as a done deal, subject only to obtaining a dispensation from the Pope allowing people related within the prohibited degrees to marry. The intention appears to have been for the formal marriage to take place quickly – possibly as soon as 27 May 1235 – and a letter was promptly sent to the Pope seeking a speedy dispensation.²⁵

Of course we know that this marriage did not ultimately take place; by 22 June Henry was instead suggesting to the Count of Savoy a marriage with Eleanor, daughter of the Count of Provence; and by October this suggestion had materialised into a definite marriage contract. In the end Henry married Eleanor of Provence and became father of Edward I, while Jeanne married Ferdinand III and became Eleanor’s mother. What prevented the original plan from coming to fruition was some constructive collusion on the parts of the formidable sisters Blanche of Castile, Dowager Queen of France, and Berengaria of Castile, Dowager Queen of León.

That collusion was necessitated by Blanche of Castile’s political agenda. For Blanche, who had ruled a somewhat restive France throughout her son’s minority, this proposed marriage between Henry and Jeanne created a real problem. The principal attraction of the marriage for Henry was the strategic importance of Ponthieu, which would give England a key foothold in north-east France – as the Battle of Crécy en Ponthieu was later to prove. This would be a loss of prestige for the Crown which would encourage disloyalty as the new king, Louis IX, found his feet. Moreover the history of the Dammartin family would have indicated to Blanche that trouble might well be expected from them. Blanche was therefore determined that this marriage should not take place and invoked the term in the reconciliation between the French Crown and the Dammartin family. Although the marriage to Henry arguably did not fall foul of this provision, the threat of invoking this penalty was enough to ensure that the marriage did not proceed.²⁶

But having deprived Jeanne of a splendid marriage, with a king as a husband, Blanche was in honour bound to find a very good alternative. It was here that what might be termed Berengaria’s personal problem offered a solution to Blanche’s political one. Berengaria’s problem was relatively simple: Ferdinand III was now widowed. There might have seemed no pressing need for him to remarry since he had an extensive and relatively healthy family – including seven living sons – by his first wife, and there can be no doubt that his mother was more than capable of arranging for the upbringing of these children. However, she was concerned lest he contract liaisons which were unbecoming to his dignity. Whether this was a real concern can never be known, but certainly the number of children produced by his two marriages (he was to add a further five by his second marriage to his tally of ten children from his first marriage) suggests a partiality for feminine company. In addition, Berengaria will have been aware that if Ferdinand resembled his father at all, there might well be a tendency to collect mistresses: Alfonso had acquired at least thirteen illegitimate children during the course of his two marriages.²⁷

A marriage between Jeanne and Ferdinand was therefore ideal for both sisters’ purposes – it was of sufficiently high status to placate the Ponthevins but moved Ponthieu away from English alliance. It also kept the heir to Ponthieu under Blanche’s control, albeit at one remove, and it strengthened the links of blood between the Castilian and French crowns. Meanwhile, from Berengaria’s point of view there was that Castilian blood link. She was banking a favour with France, and if Ferdinand had a keen eye for feminine charms, a young wife of great beauty was just what was required.

Seventeen-year-old Jeanne was therefore betrothed to King Ferdinand in the summer of 1237 and married in October of the same year. The marriage seems to have been a success – Ferdinand was very fond of his new wife, taking her with him on campaign, and giving her extensive gifts of property. In dynastic terms, too, the marriage was productive; the couple had four sons and one daughter. The eldest child was Infante Ferdinand, later Count of Aumale, who was born in 1239 and died in around 1265. Their second child was Eleanor.²⁸