Eleanor of Normandy

Who was Eleanor of Normandy?

Eleanor of Normandy was a Norman noblewoman and the daughter of Richard II, Duke of Normandy. She was born between the years 1011 and 1013 in Normandy, the daughter of Richard and his wife, Judith of Brittany. She had two sisters and three brothers, including Robert I, Duke of Normandy, whose illegitimate son was William the Conqueror a.k.a. King William I of England. In 1017, when Eleanor was still a child, her mother Judith died. Duke Richard married secondly Poppa of Envermeu, by whom he had two more sons.

In 1031 she married, as his second wife, Baldwin IV, Count of Flanders, who was about 30 years her senior. He had a son and heir, Baldwin, by his first marriage to Ogive of Luxembourg. Eleanor was styled Countess of Flanders upon her marriage to Baldwin, and together they had one daughter:

⁕Judith, married firstly Tostig Godwinson, Earl of Northumbria, by whom she allegedly had issue; and secondly Welf I, Duke of Bavaria, by whom she had surviving issue.

Eleanor died in Flanders sometime after 1071. Her husband had died in 1035, two years after the birth of their only child.

Despite her common nomenclature it is not certain that Eleanor was her proper name. Eleanor of Aquitaine, who lived a century later, is the first individual in recorded history known to bear the name Eleanor.