Court life for a queen of France at that time was, however, stultifyingly routine. Eleanor found that she was expected to be no more than a decorative asset to her husband, the mother of his heirs and the arbiter of good taste and modesty.

They inhabited a lost world of splendour and brutality, a world dominated by religious change, in which there were few saints.

Until quite recently women's histories were largely overlooked but in the wake of feminism there has been increasing interest in retrieving them.

... only one man could have been responsible for their deaths: Richard III.