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- 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.
- 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!
- Geoffrey: I know. You know I know. I know you know I know. We know Henry knows, and Henry knows we know it. We're a knowledgeable family.
- 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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!
- 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.
- Eleanor of Aquitaine: I love you.
- Richard: You love nothing. You're incomplete. The human parts of you are missing. You're as dead as you are deadly.
- 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 of Aquitaine: 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.
- Eleanor of Aquitaine: Oh Henry, we mangled every thing we touch.
- Henry II: Deny us what you will, we have done that. Do you remember when we met?
- Eleanor of Aquitaine: Down to the hour and color of your stockings.
- Henry II: I could hardly see you for the sunlight.
- Eleanor of Aquitaine: It was raining, but no matter.
- Henry II: I have an offer for you, my dear.
- Eleanor of Aquitaine: A deal? A deal? I give the richest province on the continent to John for what? You tell me, mastermind, for what?
- Henry II: Your freedom.
- Eleanor of Aquitaine: [softly] Oh.
- Henry II: Once Johnny gets the Aquitaine, you're free, I'll let you out. Think. On the loose in London, winters in Provence, impromptu trips to visit Richard anywhere he's killing people. All that for a signature.
- Eleanor of Aquitaine: [to her husband, Henry II] I wonder... do you ever wonder... if I slept with your father.
- 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.
- Eleanor of Aquitaine: Her eyes in certain light were violet, and all her teeth were even. That's a rare, fair feature: even teeth. She smiled to excess, but she chewed with real distinction.
- Eleanor of Aquitaine: We're jungle creatures, Henry, and the dark is all around us. See them? In the corners, you can see the eyes.
- Henry II: I've snapped and plotted all my life. There's no other way to be alive, king, and fifty all at once.
- Eleanor of Aquitaine: 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: [Henry brings candles into the dungeon] What we do in dungeons needs the shades of day. I stole the candles from the chapel. Jesus won't begrudge them and the chaplain works for me.
- Henry II: My life, when it is written, will read better than it lived. Henry Fitz-Empress, first Plantagenet, a king at twenty-one, the ablest soldier of an able time. He led men well, he cared for justice when he could and ruled, for thirty years, a state as great as Charlemagne's. He married out of love, a woman out of legend. Not in Alexandria, or Rome, or Camelot has there been such a queen. She bore him many children. But no sons. King Henry had no sons. He had three whiskered things but he disowned them.
- [to his sons]
- Henry II: You're not mine! We're not connected! I deny you! None of you will get my crown, I leave you nothing and I wish you plague! May all your children breach and die!
- [storms out the corridor, turns and looks back]
- Henry II: My boys are gone.
- [he starts unsteadily down the corridor]
- Henry II: I've lost my boys.
- [he stops, glares towards the Deity]
- Henry II: You dare to damn me, do You? Well, I damn you back.
- [like a biblical figure, shaking his fist to the sky]
- Henry II: GODDAMN YOU!
- [moving blindly down the corridor again]
- Henry II: My boys are gone. I've lost my boys. Oh, Jesus, all my boys...
- [collapses, weeping on the stairs]
- Eleanor of Aquitaine: And that's to be the king.
- Geoffrey: And I'm to be his Chancellor. Has he told you? John will rule the country, while I run it. That is to say he gets to spend the taxes that I raise.
- Eleanor of Aquitaine: How nice for you.
- Geoffrey: It's not as nice as being king.
- Henry II: We've made you Duke of Brittany, is that so little?
- Geoffrey: No one ever thinks of crown and mentions Geoff, why is that?
- Henry II: Isn't being chancellor power enough?
- Geoffrey: It's not the power I feel deprived of; it's the mention I miss. There's no affection for me here; you wouldn't think I'd want that, would you?
- John: I thought I'd come and gloat a little.
- Eleanor of Aquitaine: Mother's tired. Come stick pins tomorrow morning; I'll be more responsive.
- John: It's no fun goading anyone tonight.
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