Quotes

Henry II: Now see here, boy...

Philip II: I am a king - I am no man's "boy"!

Henry II: A king? Because you put your ass on purple cushions?

Eleanor: You don't dare go!

Henry II: Say that again at noon, you'll say it to my horse's ass! Lamb, I'll be rid of you by Easter: you can count your reign in days!

Henry II: The sky is pocked with stars. What eyes the wise men must have had to see a new one in so many.

Eleanor: 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.

Henry II: Oh God, but I do love being king!

Eleanor: You look fit. War agrees with you. I keep informed; I follow all your slaughters from a distance. Do sit down.

Prince Richard: Is this an audience... a good night hug with kisses... or an ambush?

Eleanor: Let's hope it's a reunion.

Eleanor: [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: That is the single thing of which I would have thought you had enough.

Henry II: We're in the cellar and you're going back to prison and my life is wasted and we've lost each other... and you're smiling.

Eleanor: It's the way I register despair. There's everything in life but hope.

Henry II: We're both alive... and for all I know that's what hope is.

Henry II: When I bellow, bellow back.

Henry II: Where's a priest? Somebody fetch me a priest! YOU! Fetch me a bishop!

Princess Alais: Kings, queens, knights everywhere you look and I'm the only pawn. I haven't got a thing to lose - that makes me dangerous.

Henry II: I found out the way your mind works and the kind of man you are. I know your plans and expectations - you've burbled every bit of strategy you've got. I know exactly what you will do, and exactly what you won't, and I've told you exactly nothing. To these aged eyes, boy, that's what winning looks like!

Eleanor: 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: Let him? I'd push him through the nursery door.

Henry II: You're not that cruel.

Eleanor: Don't fret. We'll wait until you're dead to do it.

Henry II: Eleanor, what do you want?

Eleanor: 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: What would you have me do? Give out? Give up? Give in?

Henry II: Give me a little peace.

Eleanor: A little? Why so modest? How about eternal peace? Now there's a thought.

Eleanor: Well, that's the way deals are made. We've got him if we want him. He'll sell us all, you know... but only if he thinks we think he won't.

Henry II: The Vexin's mine.

Philip II: By what authority?

Henry II: It's got my troops all over it; that makes it mine.

Eleanor: 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: ...two months and eighteen days. I never liked her much.

Henry II: You counted the days.

Eleanor: I made the numbers up.

Prince John: A knife! He's got a knife!

Eleanor: 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.

Henry II: More Brandy wine? They were boiling it in Ireland before the snakes left!

Prince Geoffrey: I know. You know I know. I know you know I know. We know Henry knows, and Henry knows we know it.

[smiles]

Prince Geoffrey: We're a knowledgeable family.

Prince Richard: I never heard a corpse complain of how it got so cold.

Henry II: I want no women in my life.

Princess Alais: You're tired.

Henry II: I could have conquered Europe - all of it - but I had women in my life.

Eleanor: Henry

Henry II: Madam

Eleanor: Did you ever love me?

Henry II: No

Eleanor: Good. That will make this pleasanter.

Eleanor: Henry?

Henry II: Hmmm?

Eleanor: I have a confession.

Henry II: Yes?

Eleanor: I don't much like our children!

Philip II: "What If" is a game for scholars.

Prince Richard: [the sons - in the dungeon - think they hear Henry approach] He's here. He'll get no satisfaction out of me. He isn't going to see me beg.

Prince Geoffrey: My you chivalric fool... as if the way one fell down mattered.

Prince Richard: When the fall is all there is, it matters.

Eleanor: [to her husband, Henry II] I wonder... do you ever wonder... if I slept with your father.

Henry II: My finest angle. It's on all the coins.

[last lines]

Henry II: I hope we never die.

Eleanor: So do I.

Henry II: Do you think there's any chance of it?

Eleanor: I adored you. I still do.

Henry II: Of all the lies you've told, that is the most terrible.

Eleanor: I know. That's why I've saved it up until now.

Eleanor: [to John] Hush dear, mother's fighting.

Prince Richard: I am a constant soldier, a sometimes poet and I will be king.

Prince Richard: I will have the crown

Henry II: You will have what Daddy gives you.

Prince Richard: I am next in line!

Henry II: To nothing!

Henry II: What shall we hang first? The holly or each other?

Henry II: What is this? I'm not mouldering. My paint's not peeling off. I'm good for years.

Eleanor: 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?

Henry II: In my time I've known contessas, milkmaids, courtesans and novices, whores, gypsies, jades, and little boys, but nowhere in God's western world have I found anyone to love but you.

Prince John: My God, if I went-up in flames there's not a living soul who'd pee on me to put the fire out.

Philip II: A king like you has policy prepared on everything: well, what's the official line on sodomy? How stands the Crown on boys who do with boys?

Henry II: Richard finds his way into so many legends; let's hear yours and see how it compares.

Philip II: Well, he found me first when I was 15. We were hunting; it was nearly dark; my horse fell; I was thrown. I woke to Richard touching me. He asked me if I loved him: 'Philip, do you love me?' And I told him yes. Do you know why I told him yes? So that one day I could tell you all about it. You cannot imagine what that 'yes' cost. Imagine snuggling to a chancred whore, and bending back your lips into something like a smile saying, 'yes, I love you, and I find you

[pause]

Philip II: beautiful.' I don't know how I did it.

Henry II: Geoffrey: There's a masterpiece. He isn't flesh: he's a device. He's wheels and gears. And Johnny: Was his latest treason your idea? I've caught him lying, and I've said, 'he's young.' I've found him cheating, and I've said, 'he's just a boy.' I've watched him steal and whore and whip his servants, and he's not a child; he's the man we made him.

Eleanor: Don't share John with me. He's your accomplishment.

Henry II: And Richard's yours. How could you send him off to deal with Philip?

Eleanor: I was tired. I was busy. They were friends.

Henry II: Eleanor, he was the best, and from the cradle on you cradled him. I never had a chance.

Eleanor: We're jungle creatures, Henry, and the dark is all around us. See them? In the corners, you can see the eyes.

Henry II: There's no sense asking if the air is good if there's nothing else to breathe.

Philip II: I'm not a boy!

Eleanor: Oh Henry, we mangled every thing we touch.

Eleanor: [to the king] If you're broken it's because you're fragile.

Henry II: How was your crossing? Did the Channel part for you?

Eleanor: It went flat when I told it to. I didn't think to ask for more.