She May Have Cheated on Her First Husband…with Her Uncle
Eleanor wasn’t well-liked when she was the queen of France, and the rumor mill attacked her in full force. As queen, who was responsible for the legitimacy of the succession, contemporary writers and commentators regularly called her fidelity into question. Most of the rumors, like that she was the mistress of the twelfth-century Muslim Crusader Saladin, were laughable. However, it was her rumored affair with her uncle, Raymond of Antioch, that ruined her reputation and possibly her marriage.
When Louis and Eleanor arrived in Antioch on the Second Crusade, Raymond welcomed them into the city. Raymond had been raised in the same court as she had, so Eleanor may have found Raymond’s company refreshing, compared to her ascetic husband. There have been many suggestions and explanations over the centuries to explain the relationship between Eleanor and Raymond that range from a full-blown affair to a cultural difference between the reserved French and the more open and loving Aquitaine.
As the rumors about the inappropriate relationship between Eleanor and Raymond, she found herself in the middle of a disagreement between Louis and Raymond on military matters. Raymond wanted to use Louis’ forces to launch a joint attack on Aleppo, with the goal of retaking Edessa. Eleanor agreed with her uncle and tried to convince her husband that it was a good idea. Louis refused; he had come to the Holy Land to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, which is where he was going.
Eleanor requested to stay with her uncle in Antioch; in a sense, she was choosing her uncle over her husband. There was no way Louis was going to let that happen: he had already heard of the rumors of Eleanor’s relationship with her uncle. The French king refused to let his wife stay in Antioch and forced her to come with him to Jerusalem. Along the way, Louis and Conrad III’s forces attacked Damascus, which was a huge disaster, ending the Second Crusade.
The relationship between Eleanor and Louis had deteriorated to the point that Louis finally agreed to an annulment, but this may have been a way for Louis to get out of his marriage to a woman who had only given him two daughters in fifteen years. Interestingly enough, at the papal court that decided on the validity of Eleanor’s marriage to Louis, the rumors of her incestuous behavior with her uncle were not mentioned at all.