Flying Friday June 26, 2009.

Eleanor of Provence died on 24/25 June 1291. She was Queen Consort of King Henry III of England from 1236 until his death in 1272.

I will fly a current flag of Provence, France, today.

Eleanor was born in Aix-en-Provence, she was the second eldest daughter of Ramon Berenguer IV, Count of Provence (1198-1245) and Beatrice of Savoy (1205–1267), the daughter of Thomas I of Savoy and his second wife Marguerite of Geneva. All four of their daughters became queens. Like her mother, grandmother, and sisters, Eleanor was renowned for her beauty. She was a dark-haired brunette with fine eyes. On 22 June 1235, Eleanor was bethrothed to King Henry III of England (1207-1272). Eleanor was probably born in 1223; Matthew Paris describes her as being "jamque duodennem" (already twelve) when she arrived in the Kingdom of England for her marriage.

Provence: Described formally as "Azure a fleur-de-lis or and a label of three points gules"

Above is my flag. This is just one of two flags are used today to represent Provence, based on the two "traditional" arms of Provence. The other being:

Provence

This should not be confused with that of the north east Spanish Autonomous Region of Catalonia:

Catalonia

There is no evidence they were ever used either as the flag of the County of Provence or as the flag of the province of Provence within the Kingdom of France.

Today, the banners of those two arms are widely used in Provence, sometimes together. The Occitanists probably prefer the second Aragonese banner, which refers to the golden age of the Occitan, independent Provence. In the department of Vaucluse, several municipalities have added their name in Provencal on the road shields, which bear the Aragonese arms.

In my flag, the blue flag above, the arms are a simplification of the arms of Count of Provence Charles d'Anjou. In his Histoire de Provence, Nostradamus writes that the label has five points, but it seems that the label always had three points.

The current Provence