It is the year 1152 and a beautiful woman of thirty attended by only a small armed escort is riding like the wind southwards through what is now France leaving behind her crown her two young daughters and a shattered marriage to Louis of France who had been more like a monk than a king and certainly not much of a lover. This woman is Eleanor Duchess of Aquitaine and her sole purpose now is to return to her vast duchy and marry the man she loves Henry Plantagenet a man destined for greatness as King of England. Theirs is a union founded on lust which will create a great empire stretching from the wilds of Scotland to the Pyrenees. It will also create the devils brood of Plantagenets including Richard Ceur de Lion and King John and the most notoriously vicious marriage in history. The Eagle and the Lion is a novel on the grand scale an epic subject for Alison Weir. It tells of the making of nations and of passionate conflicts: between Henry II and Thomas Becket his closest friend who is murdered in Canterbury Cathedral on his orders; between Eleanor and Henrys formidable mother Matilda; between father and sons as Henrys children take up arms against him; and f