The divorce that changed history

I should be working on a map of Outremer and Tripoli, but it is more fun to play hooky again and post about one of our favorite medieval queens, the remarkable Eleanor of Aquitaine. So here is a catch-up post about a very eventful date in Eleanor’s life, one that literally did change history.
One of history’s most consequential divorces occurred on this date. On March 21, 1152, Louis Capet and Eleanor of Aquitaine’s marriage was annulled at Beaugency on the grounds of consanguinity. Think how history would have changed if Louis had elected to stay the course. If Eleanor had not given birth to a son, France could have had a Queen Marie, as the Salic Law was not in force then. There would have been no Philippe Capet, no St Louis, no Philippe the Fair—shedding no tears here, folks. But there would have been no Plantagenets as we know them! Yes, Henry II would still have become king—most likely. But without Eleanor’s Aquitaine, maybe not? And without Eleanor as his queen, no Devil’s Brood. Take her DNA out of the mix, and the Plantagenet dynasty would have been an entirely different breed of cat. If the Chaos Theory is applied (the argument that a butterfly’s flapping wings could give rise to a hurricane) , history as we know it would have been utterly altered. For better or worse? Who knows? But my history would definitely have been changed for the worse without Richard III to write about. I’d have still been a lawyer—shudder. So I shall drink a toast today to the Beaugency annulment, thanking my lucky stars that Louis set Eleanor free to hook up with Henry just two months later. As Eleanor says to her sons in The Lion in Winter, “Such, my darlings, is the role that sex plays in history.”