Until the dukedom of Aquitaine passed to a woman, as were the vassals, so was their sovereign. Eleanor’s grandfather the crusader-duke William VIII. and her father William IX. were simply the boldest knights, the gayest troubadours and the most reckless adventurers in their duchy. There can be no doubt that the submission of Aquitaine to Louis VII., so far as it ever did submit to him, was due to Eleanor’s influence; and it was the same influence which chiefly contributed to preserve its obedience to her second husband during those earlier years of their married life when, at home and abroad, all things had seemed destined to prosper in his hands. But at the first symptom of a turn in the tide of his fortunes, southern Gaul at one rose against its northern master. Eleanor’s tact and firmness, Henry’s wariness and vigour, were all taxed to the uttermost in holding it down throughout the years of his struggle with the Church; and when Eleanor herself turned against him in 1173, the chances of a good understanding between her subjects and her husband became very nearly desperate. Henry himself seems to have long ago perceived that a duke of Aquitaine, to be thoroughly sure of his ground, needed a different apprenticeship from that which might befit a king of England, a duke of Normandy or Britanny, or a count of Anjou. The very first step in his plans for the future of his children--a step taken several years before he seems even to have thought of crowning his eldest son--was the designation of the second as his mother’s destined colleague and ultimate heir. Richard had been trained up ever since he was two years old specially for the office of duke of Aquitaine. After long diplomacy, and at the cost of a betrothal which became the source of endless mischief and trouble, the French king’s sanction to the arrangement had been won; and on Trinity-Sunday 1172 Richard, in his mother’s presence, had been formally enthroned at Poitiers. He was probably intended to govern the duchy under her direction and advice; if so, however, the plan was frustrated by Eleanor’s own conduct and by the suspicions which it aroused in her husband. She was one of the very few captives whom at the restoration of peace in 1175 he still retained in confinement. Richard, on the other hand, had been like his brothers fully and freely forgiven; and while his father and eldest brother went to seal their reconciliation in England, he was sent into Poitou charged with authority to employ its forces at his own discretion, and to take upon himself the suppression of all disturbance and disorder in Aquitaine.[968] [968] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 81.