Henry II marries Eleanor of Aquitaine

May 18, 1152

Eight weeks after her annulment, the twenty-nine-year-old former queen of France married the nineteen-year-old Henry of Anjou without asking permission of her nominal overlord Louis VII. The marriage brought Henry more French land than the French king held himself. The union created the vast Angevin empire stretching from the Scottish border to the Pyrenees, a territorial assemblage that would dominate European politics for the next half century.