Eleanor of Toledo - Personality

Personality

Contemporary accounts of Eleanor belie the stern formal appearance of her many portraits. In her private capacity she loved to gamble, and she was a devoted traveller, moving endlessly from one of her palazzi to another. Her sense of humour may have been well developed, as there are reports of her while 8 months pregnant laughing at a Turk actor in an entertainment, who was seemingly involuntarily stripped, then exposed an artificially huge penis.

She employed continually 10 gold and silver weavers to work on her apparel. She may have needed the fine clothes to disguise her failing appearance, as 21st-century forensic examinations of her body have revealed a huge calcium deficiency which must have caused her enormous amounts of ill health, and dental pain.