Katharine Hepburn credited as playing...
Eleanor of Aquitaine
- John: A knife! He's got a knife!
- Eleanor of Aquitaine: Of course he has a knife, he always has a knife, we all have knives! It's 1183 and we're barbarians! How clear we make it. Oh, my piglets, we are the origins of war: not history's forces, nor the times, nor justice, nor the lack of it, nor causes, nor religions, nor ideas, nor kinds of government, nor any other thing. We are the killers. We breed wars. We carry it like syphilis inside. Dead bodies rot in field and stream because the living ones are rotten. For the love of God, can't we love one another just a little - that's how peace begins. We have so much to love each other for. We have such possibilities, my children. We could change the world.
- Eleanor of Aquitaine: I adored you. I still do.
- Henry II: Of all the lies you've told, that is the most terrible.
- Eleanor of Aquitaine: I know. That's why I've saved it up until now.
- Henry II: I marvel at you after all these years. Still like a democratic drawbridge: going down for everybody.
- Eleanor of Aquitaine: At my age there's not much traffic anymore.
- Eleanor of Aquitaine: And when you die, which is regrettable but necessary, what will happen to frail Alais and her pruny prince? You can't think Richard's going to wait for your grotesque to grow.
- Henry II: You wouldn't let him do a thing like that.
- Eleanor of Aquitaine: Let him? I'd push him through the nursery door.
- Henry II: You're not that cruel.
- Eleanor of Aquitaine: Don't fret. We'll wait until you're dead to do it.
- Henry II: Eleanor, what do you want?
- Eleanor of Aquitaine: Just what you want, a king for a son. You can make more, I can't. You think I want to disappear? One son is all I've got, and you can blot him out and call me cruel? For these ten years you've lived with everything I've lost, and loved another woman through it all, and I am cruel? I could peel you like a pear and God himself would call it justice!
- Eleanor of Aquitaine: I even made poor Louis take me on Crusade. How's that for blasphemy. I dressed my maids as Amazons and rode bare-breasted halfway to Damascus. Louis had a seizure and I damn near died of windburn... but the troops were dazzled.
- [last lines]
- Henry II: [yelling to Eleanor as she sails away back to her prison] I hope we never die.
- Eleanor of Aquitaine: So do I.
- Henry II: Do you think there's any chance of it?
- [Henry laughs hysterically while Eleanor graciously waves goodbye to him]
- Eleanor of Aquitaine: Henry was eighteen when we met, and I was Queen of France. He came down from the North to Paris with a mind like Aristotle's and a form like mortal sin. We shattered the Commandments on the spot.
- Henry II: What is this? I'm not mouldering. My paint's not peeling off. I'm good for years.
- Eleanor of Aquitaine: How many years? Suppose I hold you back for one. I can. It's possible. Suppose your first son dies, ours did. It's possible. Suppose you're daughtered next, we were. That too is possible. How old is daddy then? What kind of spindly, ricket-ridden, milky, wizened, dim-eyed, gammy-handed, limpy line of things will you beget?
- Eleanor of Aquitaine: Henry?
- Henry II: Hmmm?
- Eleanor of Aquitaine: I have a confession.
- Henry II: Yes?
- Eleanor of Aquitaine: I don't much like our children!
- Henry II: How was your crossing? Did the Channel part for you?
- Eleanor of Aquitaine: It went flat when I told it to. I didn't think to ask for more.
- Eleanor of Aquitaine: What would you have me do? Give out? Give up? Give in?
- Henry II: Give me a little peace.
- Eleanor of Aquitaine: A little? Why so modest? How about eternal peace? Now there's a thought.
- Henry II: If you oppose me, I'll strike you any way I can.
- Henry II: The day those stout hearts band together is the day that pigs get wings.
- Eleanor of Aquitaine: There'll be pork in the treetops come morning.
- Eleanor of Aquitaine: [after Henry tells Eleanor he wants their marriage annulled] Out Eleanor... in Alais. Why?
- Henry II: A new wife, wife, will bear me sons.
- Eleanor of Aquitaine: That is the single thing of which I would have thought you had enough.
- Eleanor of Aquitaine: Henry.
- Henry II: Madam.
- Eleanor of Aquitaine: Did you ever love me?
- Henry II: No.
- Eleanor of Aquitaine: Good. That will make this pleasanter.
- Eleanor of Aquitaine: Henry's bed is Henry's province. He can people it with sheep for all I care, which on occasion he has done.
- Henry II: Rosamund's been dead for seven years...
- Eleanor of Aquitaine: ...two months and eighteen days. I never liked her much.
- Henry II: You count the days?
- Eleanor of Aquitaine: I made the numbers up.