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Here at Saint-Denis, in June 1147, Eleanor knelt to receive the Pope's blessing during the crusade's elaborate send-off and she almost fainted on a suffocatingly hot day but she didn't show any such vulnerability in the face of the very real dangers of the crusade itself. Eleanor and Louis were joining the great battle between the Christian West and Muslim East to win control of Jerusalem and the Holy Land. This adventure was the first sign that Eleanor was not going to be a conventional wife or Queen. A crusade was not to be taken lightly, a treacherous journey across thousands of miles to face dangers of landscape, climate, disease and war. Ironically, though, the greatest threat to France's Queen wasn't her position near the front line but a personal scandal. Eleanor and Louis made their way across Europe. In the Spring of 1148 they sought refuge in Antioch, now in modern day Turkey, which was ruled by Eleanor's uncle, Raymond of Poitiers. |
