Eleanor of Aquitaine, medieval Europe's most astonishing woman, recalls wars, intrigues, her crusade and ruthless diplomacy while confessing her loves, her hopes for her children, and their fates. POWER OF A WOMAN is Eleanor's memoir of her marriages to two warring kings, Louis VII of France, followed by Henry II of England, in one of history's most tumultuous periods. Eleanor's memoirs bring the age of troubadours alive.

Eleanor was queen of France for fifteen years. For the next 34 years she was queen of England and empress of the Angevin Empire, a vast tract stretching from the Scottish borders to the Pyrenees.

In POWER OF A WOMAN, Eleanor describes her glamorous, difficult, awkward, argumentative life, a life she played to win. In the end she can sum up her triumphs and tragedies: "How fortunate I was for a few years in my husbands: the monk, and the young bull in spring. Whether they would or no, they placed me on a promontory against which tides of time have crashed and fallen back. They left me worn, these men and their tides, but they did not level me. Only the throb and pulse of time and events have done that." POWER OF A WOMAN delivers a memoir worthy of the life.