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Eleanor of Castile: The Shadow Queen Paperback – 15 September 2016

by Cockerill Sara (Author)
4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 32 ratings
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Eleanor of Castile, the remarkable woman behind England s greatest medieval king, Edward I, has been effectively airbrushed from history; yet she had one of the most fascinating lives of any of England s queens. Her childhood was spent in the centre of the Spanish reconquest and was dominated by her military hero of a father (St Ferdinand) and her prodigiously clever brother (King Alfonso X the Learned). Married at the age of twelve and a mother at thirteen, she gave birth to at least sixteen children, most of whom died young. She was a prisoner for a year amid a civil war in which her husband s life was in acute danger. Devoted to Edward, she accompanied him everywhere, including on Crusade to the Holy Land. All in all, she was to live for extended periods in five different countries. Eleanor was a highly dynamic, forceful personality who acted as part of Edward s innermost circle of advisers, and successfully accumulated a vast property empire for the English Crown. In cultural terms her influence in architecture and design and even gardening can be discerned to this day, while her idealised image still speaks to us from Edward s beautiful memorials to her, the Eleanor crosses. This book reveals her untold story.
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  1. Print length
    416 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    AMBERLEY PUBLISHING
  4. Publication date
    15 September 2016
  5. Dimensions
    12.4 x 2.79 x 19.81 cm
  6. ISBN-10
    1445660261
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1445660264
  8. See all details
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Product description

Review

'A brilliant new life of one of the most surprising powers behind England's medieval throne'--DAN JONES, bestselling author of The Plantagenets

Tracy Borman's Book of the Year 2014: 'A compelling and intricately researched biography that brings one of history's most fascinating, influential yet neglected queens out of the shadows.'--Tracy Borman, Joint Chief Curator for Historic Royal Palaces and author of Thomas Cromwell and Matilda: Queen of the Conqueror

About the Author

Sara Cockerill studied Law at the University of Oxford. Between 1990 and 2017 she was a barrister and later a QC specialising in commercial law. She has had a lifelong interest in English history, which led her to write Eleanor of Castile: The Shadow Queen, the first full-length biography of Edward I's beloved queen. She is married with one cat, and divides her time between London and the seaside.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ AMBERLEY PUBLISHING; Reprint edition (15 September 2016)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 416 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1445660261
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1445660264
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 12.4 x 2.79 x 19.81 cm
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 32 ratings

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Matty
5.0 out of 5 stars A Queen who ruled even if not in her own right
Reviewed in Germany on 16 September 2019
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Great insight into a woman who helped share Britian as we know it
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Henri Hawkins
5.0 out of 5 stars Eleanor comes through as a woman of strength
Reviewed in the United States on 1 September 2015
Verified Purchase
Sara Cockerill has done a staggering job of research and folding that knowledge into a very readable history of Eleanor of Castile. I have wondered when the amassing of real estate began, and Cockerill does a great job of showing Eleanor's process. Well worth reading for students of history and for finding a royal who actually liked his or her spouse.
One person found this helpful
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EleanorB
5.0 out of 5 stars Out of the shadows
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 21 January 2015
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Sara Cockerill has that wonderful ability, shared by the best historical writers, of taking a mass of incredibly detailed research and producing material that is engaging, fluent, pacy and places events and personalities in their contemporary context. This work on the life of Eleanor of Castile is a vivid exposition of a long vanished world whose customs and mores could seem entirely alien to modern minds without such skilled interpretation.

English queens were often drawn, for strategic reasons, from the ruling houses of other European dynasties: some like Catherine of Aragon in a later time were loved and admired, and others not so. Eleanor of Castile seems to have divided opinion over the years and whilst she clearly had her faults, the lasting monuments to her life, in the form of the Eleanor Crosses, are evidence that she was beloved by her husband and anyone who inspires such devotion, cannot have been all bad. Her early experiences in England were of uncertainty and deep financial insecurity: in her tenure as queen, she obviously determined that neither she nor her family would be in that position again and her intense property dealing provides evidence of a sharp business brain well used. Whether that made her universally popular is probably open to conjecture.

In between times, her support for her husband during several extended trips overseas in the course of which she continued to give birth - averaging two children every three years - was unstinting. Given the lack of sophisticated transport, the dangers of sea travel and the acute risk of obstetric complications, she was clearly extremely strong both physically and mentally. Suggestions that she and Edward were not loving parents to their many offspring, takes parenthood from a modern perspective; high infant mortality, the royal couple's peripatetic lifestyle and the need for stability for surviving children were all factors in this aspect of the Queen's decision making.

Lack of source material is always a problem when examining such ancient lives, but this book has an immediacy and depth of knowledge which largely overcomes that obstacle, helped greatly by the early chapters which place Eleanor in her own familial and ancestral context, with detailed family trees to clarify relationships. This author will hopefully produce more work of this calibre and if she is seeking a new subject, I would recommend the amazing Yolande of Aragon as a prime candidate for future work by this highly recommended author.
12 people found this helpful
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Louise Grandouiller
5.0 out of 5 stars Another great history of a medieval lady!
Reviewed in the United States on 29 December 2020
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Another great history of a medieval lady!
2 people found this helpful
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Mr Tim Cole
5.0 out of 5 stars First ever biography of Edward I's beloved Queen Eleanor of Castille
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 7 December 2014
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Eleanor of Castille is a queen shrouded in mystery, but as the devoted wife of England's most successful medieval king Edward I This is surely undeserved! A lover of gardening and a passionate supporter of the crusader campaigns in the holy-land, Eleanor proved herself a capable ruler in her husband's long abscenses from the kingdom. Despite her Spanish blood Eleanor remained popular with the English people until her early death in 1290. Sara Cockerill has written an illuminating and detailed first ever biography of this remarkable woman and demonstrates her remarkable political acumen and common sense that guide her husband through turbulent periods of his reign. Her undoubted influence upon Edward steered England towards a political stability it had lacked under the reigns of Edward's two predecessors, thus ensuring peace throughout Edward's England. I would heartily recommend this book for anyone interested in this period of history as its a rip-roaring read and one that is both detailed and informative.
12 people found this helpful
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