In 1173, Eleanor of Aquitaine's three eldest sons - Henry, Richard, and Geoffrey - rebelled against their father, Henry II, with Eleanor's support. They were forced to flee to France. Eleanor tried to follow, disguised as a man, but she was captured by Henry's forces.
King Henry kept Eleanor more or less imprisoned for sixteen long years. His sons continued to war against him; in the end even his favorite son, John, turned against him. Finally, in 1189, Henry II died. Eleanor and Henry's eldest son, Henry, was already dead, so Eleanor's favorite, Richard the Lionheart, became king. Richard soon went away on a crusade, leaving his mother as regent. "He issued instructions to the princes of the realm, almost in the style of a general edict, that the queen's word should be law in all matters," wrote a contemporary chronicler, Ralph of Diceto.
She proved to be a shrewd ruler. When Richard was taken hostage, Eleanor helped to raise his ransom money. She also stood up to Richard's brother John, who plotted to seize the throne. She even managed to get Richard and John to reconcile after Richard's return to England.
Eventually Richard died and John became king. Like Richard, King John respected his mother and heeded her advice. She, in return, supported him against his enemies. Eleanor was now quite elderly by the standards of her time, but she continued to lead an active life, travelling through Europe and arranging marriages for her grandchildren. In 1202 the ailing Eleanor was trapped in a castle by the army of the French king, with whom John was at war, but John freed her.
Eleanor of Aquitaine died in 1204 at the abbey of Fontevrault, which she had long patronized. She is buried there, as are Henry II and Richard the Lionheart.
According to Ralph of Diceto, Eleanor's life "revealed the truth of a prophecy which had puzzled all by its obscurity: 'The eagle of the broken bond shall rejoice in the third nestling.' They called the queen the eagle because she stretched out her wings, as it were, over two kingdoms - France and England. She had been separated from her French relatives through divorce, while the English had separated her from her marriage bed by confining her to prison . . . Richard, her third son - and thus the third nestling - was the one who would raise his mother's name to great glory."
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