Royal FamilY: the Children of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine

Large families were a plus for royalty and nobility in the Medieval era.  Infant and child mortality was high and whether or not a child survived to adulthood was a matter of luck.  Sons who survived could hope to inherit some or all of their family's domains, but would also serve as commanders, governors or in whatever other position was needed.  Daughters were vital for forging marriage alliances through marriage.  Nor was being illegitimate necessarily a bar to advancement.  The illegitimate son of a king still bore royal blood and could inherit land or titles.  King's daughters by unofficial unions could also hope to marry well.  To that end, many Plantagenet kings had large families, both official and otherwise, who in turn had large families, which makes for plenty of drama and intrigue. The children of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, who are somewhat familiar from the movie The Lion in Winter, are a case in point.

Eleanor had been married before, to Louis VII of France.  She had two daughters by him, Marie and Alix.  When Louis and Eleanor divorced, Louis kept custody of the girls, though they maintained a relationship with their mother.  Then Eleanor married Henry, and the childbearing began in earnest.  Their first son William IX, Count of Poitiers, died as a toddler (1153-1156).  The other children lived to grow up, including. Henry the Young King (1155-1183); Matilda, Duchess of Saxony and Bavaria (1156-1189); Richard I the Lionheart (1157-1199); Geoffrey II, Duke of Brittany (1158-1186); Eleanor, Queen of Castile (1162-1214); Joanna, Queen of Sicily (1165-1199); and John, King of England (1166-1216).  Three Kings, two queens, a Duchess, a Duke, and a Count.  Henry was intended as his father's heir, taking England, Normandy and Anjou, which is why he was crowned a junior king in his father's lifetime.  This didn't sit too well with Richard and Geoffrey.  Richard was heir to his mother's domains, including Aquitaine and Poitou, but he also wanted his father's inheritance.  So did Geoffrey, who was Duke of Brittany by right of his wife.  John, who would have to be content with land in Ireland if he got anything at all, was hurt at being left out.  Henry, Richard and Geoffrey started a civil war that turned into a rebellion against their own father.  It was in this atmosphere that Henry called his Christmas court at Chinon in 1183 as depicted in the movie.

An often-told story about Henry II is that he once showed a visitor a tapestry or a mural in the Palace of Winchester that showed an adult eagle being cannibalized by its own offspring.  Henry explained that his own sons would do the same to him and he died fighting Richard.  But for all their squabbling, the Plantagenet siblings would stand together against a common foe.  Richard bailed his sister Joanna out of her dispute over her dowry with her husband's successor, Tancred of Sicily.  After the Crusade, he was trying to reach the safety of the domains of his brother-in-law, Henry the Lion of Saxony, when fate in the form of Leopold of Austria got in the way.  Eleanor, who would survive all but two of her children, had to rally support for Richard during his absence on crusade, while keeping John at bay.  It makes for good movies and novels but would have been a hazardous life for anyone who aroused the ire of the power couple of the age or their brood of ravenous eaglets.