History

If I could go back in time I would go to to England in around the year 1152. That was the year that Henry II of England married Eleanor of Aquitaine.

Eleanor of Aquitaine became queen of France after her father's death in 1137. He left her Duchess of Aquitaine and the king of France's son was married to her within a few months. While she was queen she went on the Second crusade. It might not have been the best idea, and it surely didn't help her marriage, but how many women could say that they had been on crusade with their husbands?

So when the crusade finally dissolved her marriage to king Louis, Eleanor instantly became the most desired woman in the world. She wasn't just beautiful, she inspired many poets and songwriters. She wasn't just wealthy, she was duchess of Aquitaine, and Aquitaine was more than HALF of France. And along with everything else that she had she was smart. So in 1152 she married King Henry II of England. That was probably the highest point in her long (for the Medieval period) life.

And the coolest thing I can say about her is that I'm directly descended from her.

My dad went and did some digging a few years ago (I think I inherited my passion for family history from him.) He knew that our ancestor Annin Smith had lived in New England with his sons. Henry Wolcott came over to America from England in 1630, but dad started with Annin Smith. He even found the cemetery where he and his sons are buried. From Annin dad went back further, and then further and then further and further. He finally couldn't find any more information around the year 800. That's over one thousand years of my family history, and I'm only talking about my dad's side.

I had a book, a little princess diary book meant to teach little girls about real princesses. The one about Eleanor was my favorite. I read it about 10 times and had looked up some real information on her. Then dad handed me a list and showed me names and dates. I scanned to the bottom of the list where her name stood out. I could not have been more thrilled.

There is something so amazing about knowing so much family history. I don't point it out to rub it in anyone's face, I truly enjoy knowing more about my family and being proud to know about them. I can say that I am that my great great great grandfather was Fred the ship builder, and that Fred the Ship builder's family came over to America from England, and that if you follow his family back you reach King John of England, and king John of england was the son of Eleanor and Henry.

As fun as it is to say that, they all have a darker side. My great grandfather Vernon was married to a sad, broken woman. To this day I don't think I know exactly what happened or fully how it affects me, but Beatrice was not faithful to Vernon and she ended her own life while her children, including my grandfather, were still small. I don't know enough about Fred the Shipbuilder or Annin Smith, but there is plenty of information on my relatives from farther back.

I was watching a documentary the other day where it talked about king John's grandson Edward the third. His favorite daughter was sent off somewhere in France toward an advantageous marriage. What no one realized was that she was walking straight toward the path of the famous plague that wiped out half of Europe in the 12 hundreds. I really don't need to say it but she caught the disease and died.

King John has quite a history as well. If you live in England you may have heard of him referred to as "Bad king John" and if you live in America you've heard about the Magna Carta. The story I always heard in school was that bad king John was mean to the people and they cornered him in a field and forced him to sign a document saying that he would give up his power. There are books of the stories of the things John did before and during his reign. His own nobles were afraid to bring their wives anywhere near where he might see or hear of them. He had no respect for anything at all and is thought to be the only English king to have ever killed anyone with his own hands.

Bad king John learned much of his bad behavior from his father Henry. Henry's favorite pastime seemed to be cheating on the wife who gave him more than half of his power and wealth. Eleanor even raised one of his illegitimate sons, Geoffrey, along with her own sons Richard and John. Henry married Eleanor and instantly began insulting her. His friend the archbishop Thomas Becket was given many of the responsibilities usually given to the queen. One of those responsibilities was housing and entertaining foreign officials, and Eleanor would have been perfect for the job. Many of the foreign officials at that time were from France. Eleanor was from France, in fact she had been their queen and was mother to at least several French nobles. Slap in the face number two (that the books record) was baby Geoffrey, the son of Eleanor's husband and a prostitute.

The story of Henry and Eleanor continues. Eleanor favored the eldest son, Richard. Ya know, King Richard the Lionheart from the Robin hood stories. And Henry favored the youngest son, John. Ya know, bad king John from the Robin Hood stories. Their arguing eventually led to civil war, Henry and John on one side, and Eleanor and Richard on the other. In the end Eleanor was imprisoned by her husband, who somehow picked up the daughter of Eleanor's first husband (Through another wife or I'd be kinda grossed out…)

When Henry died Richard became king. Richard went off on the third crusade, and actually, as far as crusades go the one he went on was the most helpful thanks only to him. On his way home from the crusade he was captured in Germany. When he got his little brother to raise enough taxes to get his ransom, he made his way to France and thought "My mom is from France, and that whiny french king didn't help much at all during the crusade. I'm already king of England, I could just go home and rule my country but, I'm thinking I want France today." So Richard began sieging castles across France until he came to one little one that wasn't well defended. At this point Richard had been on crusade, in german dungeons, living on battle fields in France, and he probably hadn't bathed or washed his clothes in any of that time. Richard also had a pretty big head. He decided one morning before the fighting to have a look around the castle they were besieging. He took one man with him, no weapons, no cover, and no armor.

There was one French soldier on the little castle wall. He was ill-equipped and had little hope of winning the battle he was helping fight. Richard made fun of him for using a frying pan as a shield, but behind the frying pan the little French soldier had a crossbow. The French soldier shot him and the bolt went through his clothes and skin, taking all the germs it could with it. Richard rapidly developed an infection and left his kingdom to John. If any of you have seen the most recent Robin Hood movie with Russell Crowe it gives a rather accurate depiction of John, except that in real life anyone who was nobility in England spoke French. That depiction isn't flattering, it shows him as a whiny little boy trying to live up to his brother's image but with his father's personality. Plus he had an annoying mother who just wouldn't die. Eleanor lived to be over 80 years old. She outlived nearly all of her children.

So why am I so proud to know that I come from them? There were plenty of better people to be related to. I still like knowing so much about them, awful as they were. I find it interesting too to wonder how my family went from Kings and Queens to Fred the Shipbuilder, Dwight the Truck Driver, and Gordon the FAA investigator. What actually happened was one of the king's sons had a youngest son who wasn't king, and he had a youngest son, and he had a youngest son and eventually you're far from royalty. I see the royalty that I am related to as someone to be better than. Eleanor had everything anyone could want, but I want to have a better husband than she had, and I want to raise my children better than she did. I want to leave a better legacy than any of them left. I want to hold my head as high as they did and for much better reasons. I want to live like the kings and queens they had the opportunity to be but never were. Because when I think about it, through the generations my family hasn't changed much, we've just had so much less opportunity to be so bad. It's not that I want to make up for all the things they did, but I feel compelled to be someone they would be proud to have descended from them, I want to put them all to shame.