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Andrea Reece
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Tel: 0208 889 1292
Mob: 07807 893369
Email: branford.boase@gmail.com
Press Enquiries
Andrea Reece
Tel: 07807 893369 | Email: branford.boase@gmail.com
At the start of this piece, the author creates a sense of distance between the reader and the beautiful woman being described. We don’t know who she is, but we know from the historical references that she is from the past, while the detailed descriptions of her clothes and hair and the references to her elegance and poise lull us into thinking that we are perhaps looking at a picture or a sculpture. But then the reference to the bitten nails and the change of pace forces us to look more closely and to make a human connection across time. While she may be a figure from the past, Eleanor of Aquitaine was a real woman who felt frustration, pain and longing – just like us. A very accomplished piece of work.
The room is furnished with beautiful tapestries portraying different scenes from the Book of Hours and the floor is covered with rich and exotic rugs. The beauty of the room is breath taking but the woman who sits in the middle of the room is the most beautiful thing of all. Once you look at her, it is impossible to turn your eyes away. There is no particular part of her face that brings her beauty to focus. A lover of beauty would have been at a loss whether to admire her perfect porcelain skin or her catlike elusive green eyes.
Her long inky sable hair falls freely to her waist, in the style then reserved only for brides and queens. The sun cascading through the window gently adorns her hair with gleaming threads of pure gold. A coronet of silver balances lightly on her elegantly poised head. Her beauty is flawless, like an angel. Her eyes are a startling jade colour, in them you can see galaxies and universes, everything but the nature of the woman they belong to. The look she aims at the observer is prideful and full of defiance. Her bodice is made of a delicate silver coloured silk and is embellished with a neat pattern of flowers done in a deep cherry red thread. Her mantle is a rich claret coloured silk. A plain gold crucifix at her neck completes her outfit. Her head is thrown back at an arrogant angle. To look at her, one would never think that she was the prisoner of one of the most powerful men in the medieval world. She is like an eagle who has had its wings clipped, born to fly high but constrained by the ideas of her time. She lives in a gilded cage, beautiful but a cage none the less. Her hands are folded neatly in her lap, the bitten nails breaking the symmetry of her long artistic hands. Her nails are the only part of her which reflect the turmoil inside of her. Her longing for her sons, her longing for her freedom. The rest of her body has devoted itself to the taking in of her observers. To making them think that she is perfectly satisfied with her present situation. That she is not afraid. That she doesn’t care. That she doesn’t long to be free. That she isn’t sick of this gilded cage. And it is impossible to see through her mask, impossible, that is until you look down to her hands and not many people do that. An air of unstudied grace surrounds her, making her seem even more ethereal and angelic. It is impossible to overlook her. She who was the crusader queen. The only women to have ever graced the crowns of both England and France. Eleanor of Aquitaine.