UC Irvine

This paper expands upon the argument that Peggy McCracken makes in her article,“Scandalizing Desire: Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Chroniclers,” which states that the adulterous depictions of Eleanor in chronicles on the Second Crusade reflect political anxieties of the male authors over the influence queens exerted over kings. Rather than merely focus on the influence Eleanor had over Henry II, her husband, this paper considers the role mediation played in the way authors depicted Eleanor. Queens in medieval society acted as mediators between not just their children and the king, but subjects as well. It was common for queens to ask for mercy of the king on behalf of their people, for instance, and Eleanor was no exception. However, Eleanor abandoned this role when she sided with her sons during the Revolt of 1173 and became imprisoned by Henry, being removed from his side and thus losing her ability to mediate. Such a shift in dynamics would have affected the public in addition to Eleanor, invoking anxiety that could contribute to the queen’s poor depiction in later stories. This paper explores this connection between her role as mediator and her reputation by first discussing rumor theory in queenship scholarship and how it relates to Eleanor. Then, the history of mediation and queenship will be summarized while also addressing how few documents about Eleanor survive and how that impacts any scholarship about her. It is due to this lack of sources that stories about Eleanor, regardless of how factual they might be, are important to scholarship about her. McCracken’s argument is explained afterwards, connecting both to Eleanor and her role as mediator. Lastly, this paper analyzes letters sent to Eleanor both before and after the Revolt of 1173 to show a negative shift in how Eleanor became viewed due to the event. The paper then argues how this change could be related to Eleanor’s loss of her mediator role.