Leonor Plantagenet y la consolidación castellana en el reinado de Alfonso VIII
The kingdom of Castile experienced a process of political and territorial consolidation between the death of Sancho III in 1158 and the Curia of Carrion de los Condes in 1188, leaving behind the troublesome minority of Alfonso VIII and the subordination to the kingdom of Leon, and thus becoming a dominant power within the peninsula, and one that achieved considerable success in the Reconquest. The following article is part of a biographical approach to Eleanor Plantagenet, queen consort of Alfonso VIII, and by means of a specifi c focus offers an analysis of the role played by the English queen in this process of political consolidation of Castile. As we approach the eighth centenary of her death, the life and work of this little-studied woman emerges as a testimony to the important diplomatic and cultural tasks assumed by queens in twelfth-century Europe.
Matrimonio y patrimonio. Las arras de Leonor Plantagenet, reina consorte de Castilla
The dower charter of Leonor Plantagenet granted by her husband Alfonso VIII of Castile in 1170 is one of the most interesting yet least studied documents in that period in regards to the analysis of queenship and the exercise of power by royal females. This document not only lists nuptial property and rights given under the same conditions, but a more contextualized analysis aided by some legal texts of the time brings out a very significant distinction between what the king granted with full rights and that could be identified as sponsalicia largitas, and property granted with limited rights as a donatio propter nupcias. The first type of property empowered the queen consort with economic autonomy, while the second authorized her before the political community of the kingdom.
Eleanor of Aquitaine
A biography of the wife of Louis VII of France, who divorced him to marry Henry II of England, after which strife ensued between the two countries which lasted some 400 years.