Just some more interesting tidbits on Eleanor of Provence
She was intimately involved in Henry's battles. These included excursions to France to fight for the Continental lands the French and English had been squabbling about for decades. At home, Henry and Eleanor had rebellious barons to contend with. When Henry was captured by his own barons and forced to agree to their terms for reforms, Eleanor went to France and raised a formidable army to free her husband. But her invasion fleet was wrecked before it reached England. Her son Edward (later Edward I), as combative as his mother, fought off the rebels and rescued his father.
After Henry died in 1272 Eleanor became Queen Dowager, but she never gave up her active role in promoting the royal family's interests. Only after fourteen years did she take off her crown and don the veil at the nunnery of Amesbury. There she lived a quiet, pious life until her death in 1291.
Queen Eleanor of Provence was beautiful, resourceful, clever-and unpopular. Her foreign airs and entanglements, her influence on her husband and her imperious manner could not endear her to the English. The chronicler summed up her contradictory qualities after her death: "the generous and devout virago."