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held long conversations with them and considered their looks, personality and suitability for the demanding life ahead before arriving at a decision. Eleanor, of course, was something of an expert on the role of queen of France, having been Louis VII’s first wife before their divorce and her subsequent marriage to Henry II of England. She knew that looks were important – no king would stand for an ugly bride – but also that more was needed. Berengaria, the eldest of the three sisters, was already betrothed to King Alfonso IX of León (her father’s cousin) and so discounted from consideration, although one suspects that this might not have stopped Eleanor if she had really decided that Berengaria was her preferred candidate. That left Urraca and Blanche, who was known in Castile as Bianca. We do not know exactly what Blanche looked like, but although she was born in what we would now call Spain, her ancestry meant that she may well have been blond; certainly the only surviving contemporary portrait of her has blue eyes. Whatever she looked like, Eleanor judged that Urraca was the more beautiful of the two, but she selected Blanche anyway. One Spanish chronicler put this down to her name: Bianca (meaning ‘white’) could easily be rendered into the more French Blanche, but Urraca would sound foreign however it was pronounced. However, given Eleanor’s reputation as one of the shrewdest women of the Middle Ages, she may be credited with more imagination than to choose a future queen based merely on her name. She evidently saw something in Blanche.
    And so, with no choice in the matter, which she would have known was the usual lot of the daughters of kings, Blanche was to leave her home. She must have been aware as she said goodbye to her parents that she would probably never see them again. Then came the journey through the mountain passes of the Pyrenees and northwards through France; their cavalcade was well guarded and not in particular danger of attack by brigands, but travelling in a slow, creaking, jolting cart for weeks on end was arduous. One of the stops they made on the way was at the abbey of Fontevrault, and it was here that Eleanor concluded that old age (she was in her late seventies) had at last got the better of her, so she decided to retire there. Blanche continued her journey into a foreign land with no family at all around her.
    Due to the Interdict which was still in force over France the wedding could not take place in French territory, so the end point of Blanche’s journey was Port-Mort just over the border in English-controlled Normandy. When Blanche arrived she may have been surprised to find that neither of the kings who had arranged the match was there: before letting his young son travel to English territory Philip, ever cautious, had demanded that John should give himself up as a hostage for Louis’s safety, so both kings were in Paris. At Port-Mort were those nobles who had witnessed the treaty of Le Goulet, including the French counts of Dreux and Perche, and John’s representative William Marshal; also the archbishop of Bordeaux, who was to preside over the ceremony; and of course Blanche’s future husband.
    When she first came face to face with Louis Blanche would have seen a slight, blond youth of about her own age. That was a reasonable start: numerous royal princesses were married off to men much older than themselves. Although many of these husbands were no doubt kind, they could also range from lecherous to distant, uncaring or downright cruel, and young girls had no right to reject them for these reasons; women, even royal ones, had very little power in their marriages and no real control over their husbands’ behaviour or the way they were treated. The course of the rest of Blanche’s life would be determined by Louis, and she had no doubt spent much of the journey praying that he would be kind.
    The wedding was a quiet affair. There were no great feasts or celebrations