Eleanor of Aquitaine
Born: 1122.
Married: Louis VII and Henry II.
Children: Richard, John and Marie.
Education: Extensive, including elements of Byzantine and Muslim culture.
Other: Accompanied her first
husband, Louis VII, on the Second Crusade in
1147. Established Courts of Love that were to write legal-sounding codes
of etiquette. Grandmother of Blanche of Castile, mother of Louis IX.
(Modified from Diamonds and Precious Stones
by Patrick Voillot, published in 1998 by Harry N. Abrams, Inc., New York.)
Legend has made her [Eleanor of Aquitaine] the first owner of the 90.38-carat
diamond, the Briolette of India. It is supposed to have been acquired in
Asia Minor around 1145, at the time of the second crusade, and to have been
given to her son, Richard the Lionhearted. When Richard was later captured
by Henry IV of Austria, it is supposed to have paid his ransom. This scintillating
diamond is mentioned in the 16th century as adorning the delicate beauty of
Dianne de Poitiers, mistress of the French king Henry II. It then
disappears for four centuries, but resurfaces in our era at the jewelry firm of
Cartier and is sold to a maharajah. When its owner dies, Harry Winston
sets it with 157 marquise-cut diamonds in a necklace and sells the lot to
Dorothy Killam, wife of a Canadian financier and already owner of a 39-carat
perfect blue diamond that, it is said, once graced the crown of
Charlemagne. The Briolette has since been sold once again to a private
individual.
(Quoted from The World Encyclopedia of Food by L.
Patrick Coyle, published in 1982.) For three hundred years in the Middle
Ages, Aquitaine and its major city of Bordeaux belonged to the British—the
beginning of the English trade in "Claret." Richard the
Lion-Hearted was born in Bordeaux, and the troubadours who flocked to the London
court of his mother—the
beautiful Eleanor of Aquitaine—sang
the praises of their southern wine along with those of the new English queen.
Died: 1204.