fuckyeahhistorycrushes:

This is Eleanor Cobham, who was mistress and later wife of Humphrey, the Duke of Gloucester, under Henry V and then VI (during the War of the Roses). According to historians Eleanor was “beautiful, intelligent, and ambitious” and she desperately wanted the crown for herself and her husband. She was not well-liked in court, and when she began to dabble in necromancy some of the nobles thought up a plot to catch her in the act. She was tried and convicted, forced to do a public penance (pictured), and then banished to several castles until she died at Beaumaris Castle in Wales. She and Humphrey seemed to have a happy marriage and a good life, with an estate in Greenwich full of musicians and poets, and allegedly had two children, Arthur and Antigone. Eleanor was brave and badass and beautiful and should have been Queen, even if everyone else hated the Gloucesters.

(1400-1452)