WI:Eleanor of Aquitaine pulls a Catherine the Great

What if Eleanor of Aquitaine gives birth to a male heir and bosses around her husband and has male lovers and the male heir has dubious fatherhood, how would France develop in this scenario?
 
Last edited:
How long until Eleanor is sent to a nunnery?

Because unlike Peter III, Louis VII isn't despised by most of his nobles. Eleanor trying to do unto him what Catherine did unto Peter is going to hurt her far more than Louis.
 
Last edited:
What if Eleanor of Aquitaine gives birth to a male heir and bosses around her husband and has male lovers and the male heir has dubious fatherhood, how would France develop in this scenario?

Eleanor might find herself at the receiving end of the option she is said to have given fair Rosamund - a choice between the blade and the poison.
 
How long until Eleanor is sent to a nunnery?

Because unlike Peter III, Louis VII isn't despised by most of his nobles. Eleanor trying to do unto him what Catherine did unto Peter is going to hurt her far more than Louis.
In short she ends up imprisoned as she was in OTL, I wonder what would her ITTL son would have thought of her, would he act like Richard and be sympathetic of her and try to free her from imprisonment.
 
Part of the reason Catherine could get away with it was that the royal line came through her and not her husband.
 
Part of the reason Catherine could get away with it was that the royal line came through her and not her husband.
You are completely wrong.
Peter was the royal heir, Catherine was only his wife (but Empress Elizabeth liked Catherine much more than her own nephew and heir Peter who was too much Prussofile and thus protect her niece-in-law)
 
Part of the reason Catherine could get away with it was that the royal line came through her and not her husband.

Not at all. Catherine was a minor noblewoman from Germany, her husband was the Oldenburg-Gottorp (Romanov).
 
What if Eleanor of Aquitaine gives birth to a male heir and bosses around her husband and has male lovers and the male heir has dubious fatherhood, how would France develop in this scenario?

That has little to do with her ability to be an effective female leader in an era where there were very few, if any, worth noting.

Louis in this scenario would have to be royally (note my extraordinarily witty pun) feckless and despised, and even then, it would be unlikely that it would work. Catherine was a brilliant ruler, and she had to constantly fear for her throne all the same.
 
That has little to do with her ability to be an effective female leader in an era where there were very few, if any, worth noting.

Louis in this scenario would have to be royally (note my extraordinarily witty pun) feckless and despised, and even then, it would be unlikely that it would work. Catherine was a brilliant ruler, and she had to constantly fear for her throne all the same.
but wasn't Margaret of Anjou rumored to pulled a Catherine the Great on Henry VI.
 
but wasn't Margaret of Anjou rumored to pulled a Catherine the Great on Henry VI.

There were certainly very formidable women contemporaries of Eleanor - Adela of Blois comes to mind (the dear girl kicked her husband out because he returned without fulfilling his Crusader oath). But it is hard to see Louis accepting such actions from Eleanor. After all, this very Louis had Eleanor carried out of Antioch by force, when she refused his course of action.
 
Top