Margaret Ball: Duchess of Aquitaine

They wanted me to write one 500-page book covering Eleanor's entire life. Ha! Can't be done. It would read like a Cliff's Notes of the 12th Century. The woman lived to be 82 and never, ever slowed down. At 50, she was conspiring with her sons to foment a rebellion against Henry; at 69, she escorted a bride for her son Richard out to Sicily in a desperate attempt to see that he begot an heir; at 80, she was interfering in yet another war, being captured by the Lusignans at Mirabeau and rescued by her youngest son.

This book covers Eleanor's life from 1137, when her father died leaving her Aquitaine and she married the son of the French king (a serious mistake; she famously complained later that she had married "a monk instead of a man"), until 1152, when she finally ditched Louis in favor of the much more attractive (and much younger) Henry Plantagenet, soon to become Henry II of England. During these years she dealt with civil war in France (caused by Louis' stupid rigidity), civil war in France (caused by her own younger sister's eloping with one of Louis' major supporters, who happened to be married to the daughter of his other major supporter at the time), and potential civil war in France (caused by one of Louis' younger brothers getting ideas while Louis was off on Crusade).

One suspects that the Second Crusade, while a disaster in military terms, was rather a relief to Eleanor; she got to visit Byzantium, which widened her horizons sufficiently that in Antioch she announced her intention to get a divorce. In a rare act of decisiveness, Louis kidnapped her from Antioch and dragged her to Pope Eugenius, who ratified the marriage and personally put the "reconciled" couple in bed together.

I AM NOT MAKING ANY OF THIS UP.