WCW: Eleanor of Aquitaine

59 thoughts on “WCW: Eleanor of Aquitaine”

1. No-one can beat Katherine Hepburn as far as I am concerned. Such a wonderful film, almost perfectly cast. (Hopkins! Dalton!) Such amazing chemistry.

   Hepburn insisted on her throat being covered in all her costumes, so I imagine the ugly wimples with head hair showing is a compromise. They could have done better. But I still love the film – and the locations (actually in Provence, not far from Avignon) are fabulous.

2. Jill Esmond. She gets some lovely lines advising Marian, and does a bit of cougaring after Robin. Also, Esmond was a niece of Decima Moore, the original Casilda in The Gondoliers.

   1. Also, she was Olivier’s first wife.

3. I love Eleanor of Aquitaine, after whom my daughter is named. The costumes from Becket, while lovely, are 150 years incorrect. The only ones that look decent for the late 12th century are from both versions of “Lion in Winter” and “Robin Hood.”

   1. For me it’s Kate and Glenn. I prefer the costumes in Glenn’s but no-one can do it better than Kate. Although I wonder what Dames Judi and Helen would do with the older Eleanor from the years 1189 to her death? Lately in historical fiction, it’s been common to portray her as a redhead or at least a strawberry blonde. Wonder what Netflix will go with?

      1. Wow, Helen could do it. Years ago, I was reading a novel about Eleanor, Henry and all those warring kids (by Sharon Kay Penman–not bad), and thought of Catherine Zeta Jones. Penman saw Eleanor as ambitious, smart and quite pragmatic, a woman who had learned to balance emotions and intellect.

         1. Was the novel “Here be Dragons”? That’s my all time favorite! It introduced me to Eleanor and the Plantagenets.

            1. I love Here Be Dragons. I always mentally cast Ioan Gruffudd as Llewellyn in that book!

   2. I love that film but the costumes for the ladies pull me right out of the film! It’s such a needle scratch to see!

4. Katherine Hepburn in The Lion in Winter. I’ve seen this film so many times that I can quote the dialogue by heart. I have not seen the remake, but I did see a production in the West End starring Joanna Lumley, Robert Lindsay, and James Norton about ten years ago that was okay but no one can beat the chemistry between Hepburn and Peter O’Toole.

   1. I can’t quite picture Joanna Lumley as E of A, although I like her very much, and imagine she could really detonate all those anachronistic wisecracks. Siân Phillips and Eileen Atkins are great choices. (I prefer to forget Eleanor’s depiction in “Becket.”)

5. I’ve been a fan of Eleanor ever since my mum gave me E.L.Konigsburg’s ‘A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver’ to read when I was about 12 or 13. She’s sadly underrepresented on the screen, so take the literary version and enjoy!

   1. I love Konigsberg’s book too but my intro to Eleanor was Nora Lofts’ novel.
      IMO opinion the Hepburn/O’Toole Lion in Winter cannot be bettered and should not have been remade – with all respect to Glenn Close and Patrick Stewart.

   2. I was about to comment that was my favorite depiction of her that I’ve seen(I might change my mind after Lion in the Winter, haven’t seen it yet.)! That is my favorite book ever. If we can’t have a biographical depiction of her, I would love to see a film based off that book.

6. Both versions of Lion are fabulous and I can’t choose a favorite. But I can pick a series of books I would rather see used than Weir’s. Elizabeth Chadwick wrote a wonderful trilogy about Eleanor that would be amazing if done well. I don’t think I trust Starz to get it right. But we will always have Snark Week, so that’s a conciliation prize?

   1. Elizabeth Chadwick’s trilogy was a great read and would make a wonderful series, provided the script, actors, and costuming were both sympathetic and historically accurate—no attempts to make it “relatable” to audiences that haven’t cracked a book open since high school!

   2. In my earlier comment about “A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver” I completely forgot about Chadwick’s trilogy. This would also make a good adaption.

7. I think the 2nd 1952 one with the dodgy bustline is an attempt to show a particular style of bliaut (If you ahve a copy of hill and bucknellit’s shown for around 1100)

8. I’m pretty worried Starz will fuck it up! Let us pray PFG won’t get her claws on Eleanor! Knock on wood, please!

   1. Well, it’s based on an Alison Weir book and NOT one by PFG, so already they’ve got a good start on being better; as for how it turns out in the end, I suppose we’ll just have to wait and see.

      As for my favorite Eleanor, let’s see…I haven’t seen the Close/Stewart version yet, although I suspect it’s very good, so right now I’ll have to go with Kate the Great. (It turns out that on my mom’s side of the family, we’re directly descended from Eleanor and Henry, and I admit to getting a big kick out of the fact that Kate won her third Oscar playing my 26th great-grandmother!)

      1. I’m not sure of the number of greats, but she’s my ancestress too. Not that that’s a very big boast here in England, since it has been calculated mathematically that at least 99.9% of people of native English ancestry are descended by at leas one bloodline from Edward III alone – and he’s only one of her great-great-great-grandchildren.

   2. Trying to find info about it, and there doesn’t seem to be anything since the initial announcement in November, 2020. No title, no casting, no credit on Alison Weir’s IMDb page. So it might not happen.

9. Surely that second Eileen Atkinson’ headdress is just another circular veil with the front edge turned back?

   I love Atkins as an actress, but Ridley & Co’s decision to portray Eleanor as a commonsensical, boot-faced, aggressively English matron is bizarre. It’s impossible to imagine wandering scholars singing this about Atkins’ Eleanor:

   “If all the world were mine,
   From the sea unto the Rhine,
   I’d give it all
   If so be the Queen of England
   Lay in my arms.”

   “

10. I haven’t seen any of these sadly. I’ll look up the biographies mentioned here for sure.

11. Hepburn, hands down!

12. Katherine Hepburn and co. absolutely blow Close & Stewart out of the water. The film with the latter two makes me cringe, and it does–in the opening moments–put Eleanor in armor, riding into battle with her sons against Henry. It’s awful.

13. Katherine Hepburn and company………….fabulous!

14. I adore Katherine Hepburn, but Sian Phillips gets far, far too little screen time in that version of Ivanhoe. She has only about six minutes, in which — in wonderfully measured tones — she thoroughly lambasts both Richard and John, at the end of which she tells them “embrace, and forgive each other” and when they look dubious, snaps out, “Now! Or by the fires of hell I’ll see the pair of you beneath the ground and put the king of Egypt in Westminster!” (They comply.)

    1. Sian Philips is half the reason I watch that version of Ivanhoe! She’s magnificent!

    2. To be fair, Scott did not have Eleanor in Ivanhoe at all, so this scene is a creatve bonus. Actually, this version has quite a few creative additions that work well (I’m looking at you, Rebecca and Brian.)

15. After Kate and Peter there will never be a better Eleanor and Henry on film.

    1. “Hush Dear. Mother’s fighting.”

       1. “Henry, I have a confession to make.”
          Henry looks interested.
          “I don’t much like our children.”

    2. There are so many wonderful lines in that film, and the great Kate delivers them to perfection. One of my favorites:

       Henry II: The day those stout hearts band together is the day that pigs get wings.

       Eleanor of Aquitaine: There’ll be pork in the treetops come morning.

16. As I posted in the snark week post, even if all the horrible that was brought forth with “Glow and Darkness” is pretty much explained with the fact that the creator of the series is the same man behind “Queens: The Virgin and the Martyr”, that same man is undergoing a judicial process because he has been accused of fraud, so the production of the series has been halted. (BLESS)
    Still, for a good chuckle, google: “Resplandor y Tinieblas Escenas inéditas” to see a scene that leaked featuring Jane Seymour as a young!Eleanor. (it does show a lot of snarky promise)
    This being said, I am also very worried about the Starz show. Because Starz.
    And, I have to agree with everyone saying Katherine Hepburn as their favourite Eleanor, though I also have to say that the memories I have of Jean Lapotaire in The Devil’s Crown are good, if a bit fuzzy (probably it did not help that the copy I had was not good itself.)

    1. OMG. I googled and … what did I just watch!? Are they sitting on modern couches, on a modern mowed lawn, with modern pavement within a stone’s throw of the camera, wearing bad jewels, reciting bad dialogue, and … did I make a mistake somewhere and stumble into an episode of Reign?! xD

17. I went to her tomb in Fontevraud Abbey some years ago. An amazing and stunning place.

    1. I love the fact that her effigy is reading a book. Eleanor was known for two things; being badass and being extremely cultured.

18. That’s Martita Hunt again sitting next to Pamela Brown’s Eleanor (and in an equally amazing headdress).

19. Hepburn. Definitely Hepburn.

    I will add that the older I get, the more I appreciate the wimple. Can we bring it back as a fashion option?

20. Hepburn and Close!! Yes, very concerned about Starz series. Eeesh.

21. I had no idea that Sian Phillips logged in her time as Eleanor!!!! I can only imagine how awesome and mighty, although Katherine Hepburn will always be the gold standard.

    I also loved Eileen Atkins in that movie, and I love how they have her in a tabard with the Plantagenet lions, since she was basically the super-regent over “Regent” Prince John (an unnoticed Oscar Isaac, by the way), while Richard the Lionheart was fucking around in the Levant.

    If you want a fun book series in which Queen Eleanor plays a prominent role, try the alt-historical “The Enchanter General” series by the late, great Dave Duncan.

    1. although my curiosity got the better of me and I just wasted an hour googling Plantagenet heraldry and it seems that the lion was the sigil of Aquitaine, and was adopted by the later Plantagenet kings (her offspring)

       1. Geoffrey Plantagenet was given a shield with nine lions rampant when knighted by Henry I. Interestingly that same shield was used by his grandson William Longspree, one of Henry II’s bastards. The lion passant gaurdant used on the English shield does seem to derive from the arms of Aquitaine. This may indicate the value Richard I and John put on the Aquitaine, but the rules of heraldry were far from set back then.

          1. Thank you!

             1. Heraldry is one of the many useless things I know about 😉

22. I don’t understand why filmmakers alter medieval styles so much when accurate medieval clothing is so legitimately cool looking.

23. I can send you some screencaps of Elinor from the Ivanhoe movie if you’d like. Just watched it this week.

24. My brother came to me one day after spending weeks on Ancestry.com, and informed me dourly that we are descended — on the “wrong side of the sheets” I might add — from Prince John of Robin Hood fame. Naturally, what sprang to my mind first was the Disney movie with the thumb-sucking lion, but then I paused and said, “Wait just a damn minute… I reject being descended from Prince John, but I sure as hell don’t mind being descended from Eleanor of Aquitaine, the Boss-Ass Bitch to conquer all Boss-Ass Bitches!” My joy still stands.

    As for movie interpretations — I tried with The Lion in Winter. I truly did. But after that early scene where they spent like five years of my life waiting on shore for a barge to row itself slooooooooowy closer, I noped out of there. Ain’t nobody got time for that. (I will try it again at some point, when I am feeling less rushed.) I do love her depiction in Crowe’s Robin Hood. She rolls her eyes with the best of them, and looks properly long-suffering at being stuck with her ludicrous son.

25. Oh dear me… I live for the day Eleanor of Aquitaine gets a proper biographical series! She was Duchess of Aquitaine in her own right and held more land than the King of France himself; she rode on Crusade and made a better show of it than her husband (the King of France no less!); was accused of having an affair with her uncle who ruled Antioch at the time; divorced King Louis of France and made her second husband, Henry Plantagenet King of England; outlived both husbands and most of her children, and lived to park her granddaughter on the French throne she once gave up.

26. “We all have knives. It’s 1183 and we’re barbarians.” Katherine Hepburn all the way. The Lion in Winter is on of my top five. Maybe even number one.

    1. Yes, this.

27. If some readers here understand French I really recommend checking this on Youtube (this is from a parodies webseries but where the historical content underneath the humourous tone is actually pretty well researched). It covers quite well Alienor’s life and why she was such a powerhouse political figure (Aquitaine in her time was 1/4 of contemporary France and one of the richest regions of the coutry)

28. Much as I love Katharine and peter, the 2003 Lion in Winter is just Chef’s kiss. And it looks incredible. I have it on DVD and never tire of watching it!

29. Remember the scene between Eleanor and Alys? Alys says angrily that what she wants for Christmas is to see Eleanor suffer. “Just for you.” Eleanor replies. And Alys bursts into tears, sobbing in Eleanor’s arms and calling her ‘Maman’. Remember Eleanor raised Alys from age eight. She was probably the only mother Alys could remember.
    Historically the story Alys was Henry’s mistress is based on contemporary gossip. It’s perfectly possible of course but gossip is not always accurate. Accurate or not is wrecked Alys’s reputation, especially after she was rejected by both Richard and John.

    1. To continue; Alys was returned to her brother Philip Augustus of France, who married her, at age 35, to the 16 year old Count of Ponthieu. They had two daughters and a stillborn son and Alys died in 1220 aged 60, a long life by medieval standards.
       Am I the only one who thinks her story has cinematic possibilities?

30. The screencap from The Legend of Robin Hood (1975) shows Diane Keen as Maid Marion (and John Abineri as her father).

31. Hepburn! (As an Eleanor, I get extra points.)

32. Eleanor’s maternal grandmother was even.more colorful. Called Dangereuse for her wild and seductive personality she left her husband the viscount de Challeraute for Eleanor’s paternal grandfather William lX. William’s outraged wife retired to the abbey of Fontevraud. The reaction of Dangereuse’s husband is not mentioned. Possibly it was relief. The lovers proceeded to marry their children to each other: Dangereuse’s daughter, Aenor, to William’s heir the future William X. The result was Eleanor, her sister Petronilla, and a short lived son.
    Dangereuse may have been the mother of the dashing Raymond of Antioch, who isn’t included on lists of William IX’s legitimate children.
    Dangereuse disappears from the chronicles after William IX’s death in 1127. There are no reports of her activities but no record of any retaliation against her. Most likely Dangereuse lived quietly and enjoyed her grandchildren. She died in 1151, aged 72.

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