When the then princes of Asturias, Felipe and Letizia, announced that they were expecting a daughter, there was much expectation in relation to the name they would choose for the one who, if nothing changes, will be the first Spanish queen in her own right since Elizabeth II. As is known, the chosen name was Leonor, a name with ancient echoes of Castilian royalty. The objective of this entry is to explain the origin of this name, which will lead us to talk about many characters that will sound like the regulars of the blog. As always, there will be links to posts already published about them.
The first time that name was heard in Spain was when in 1170 the king of Castile Alfonso VIII married the English princess Eleanor Plantagenet. She was the daughter of Henry II of England and inherited her name from her mother, the famous Alienor or Eleanor of Aquitaine. Actually, the Aquitanian Duchess who was first Queen of France and then of England was not christened Alienor. When she was born she was given the same name as her mother, Aenor. But to avoid confusion between mother and daughter, the young woman soon became known as Alia Aenor. , that is to say “the other Aenor”. She from there she went to Alienor and, when she came to England, to Eleanor. When her daughter arrived in Castile, here her name was changed again, passing to the form we know in Spain:Leonor.
It is curious that a few years later and as an almost direct consequence of the election of Eleanor Plantagenet as wife of Alfonso VIII, another Castilian princess of the same name made the trip back to England. Indeed, part of the dowry that Eleanor brought to her wedding to Alfonso was the county of Gascony. In 1205, Alfonso campaigned to take possession of Gascony on behalf of his wife. Although it was more of a formal act than a true war of conquest, it reaffirmed the rights of the Castilian kings over the county.
Years later, another king of Castile (also of León), Alfonso X, decided to try to make these rights a reality, which provoked the reaction of the effective holder of the county of Gascuña, King Henry III of England. He sent an army under the command of his eldest son, Prince Edward. The war conflict ended with a treaty by which the marriage between the English prince and a Castilian princess, half-sister of the King of Castile and of León, as both were sons of Fernando III the Saint, was agreed upon; the name of this princess:Eleanor. The couple married in Burgos, where the Castilian king also knighted the young Englishman, a man who would eventually become the great and fearsome Edward I of England, conqueror of Wales and Scotland.
The young couple returned to England, where a union that began as a marriage of convenience turned into a passionate love affair, which did not end when Eleanor passed away in 1290. if you have ever visited London you have passed or heard of a street called Charing Cross. What they may not know is that the cross to which that name refers is part of a road known as the Eleanor Crosses, a set of twelve crosses ordered to be erected by Edward I, broken with grief at the loss of his wife, to to mark the path traveled by the mortal remains of his beloved Eleanor from her place of death, Harby (Nottinghamshire) to her tomb in Westminster Abbey. The Twelve Crosses were erected at Lincoln, Grantham, Stamford, Geddington, Northampton, Stony Stratford, Woburn, Dunstable, St. Albans, Waltham, Cheapside and Charing, then a small village near Westminster and now a famous street that owes its name to the cross of Eleanor of Castile, Charing Cross.
Image| Las Navas de Tolosa Museum (photo:author's archive).