You may remember her, wet-eyed and winsome, in Braveheart. Mel, kiltedand blue in his role as William Wallace, enjoys a romantic interlude with herin between defeating the invading Sassenachs of Edward Longshanks.
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| Sophie Marceau (20th Century Fox) |
In real life she would have had them both for breakfast.
Isabella never met William Wallace, and she certainly never had hischild because she was about nine years old when he died.
Like Sophie Marceau inthe 1995 movie, she was beautiful, sophisticated and highly intelligent; but in charactershe was more like Mel’s Mad Max. In fact, she later become known as the She-Wolf.
She was born in 1295 into the royal family of the most powerful kingdomin Europe. The youngest daughter of Phillip le Bel (the handsome) of France,she arrived in England when she was twelve to be married off to Longshank’sson, Edward II.
Young Edward looked like a Plantagent king but he didn’t act like one;he preferred jigs to jousting and poetry to pig hunting. Edward was on the downlow - contemporary chroniclers referredto a ‘illicit and sinful union’ with his friend and adviser, Piers Gaveston. Heeven chose to sit next to him at their wedding rather than with his new bride.
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| Edward and Gaveston ... and everyone else |
She tolerated this; she was only twelve after all, and had no choice. The three lived out an uneasy truce until the King’s lover was murdered in 1312 in one ofthe ongoing feuds between the king and his barons.
In 1314, after Edward was humbled by the Scots at Bannockburn, she tookup a more queenly role in the governance of the kingdom. But she soon had anotherrival, when Edward found that a noble named Hugh Despenser the Younger had become ... well indispensable.
The country descended into chaos with the King and the Despenser family pittedagainst the barons under Thomas of Lancaster. Isabellaand Hugh detested each other, but Edward sided with his favourite. He confiscatedall of his queen's lands, imprisoned her French staff and then her youngest children were takenaway and placed in custody by the Despensers.
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| photograph: Chris McKenna |
The situation came to a head when the King left her stranded atTynemouth priory during another Scottish war, and the gutsy Isabella was forced,along with a group of squires from her personal retinue, to hold off the Scots whilesome of her knights commandeered a ship. It was a close call, and two of herladies in waiting were killed in the fighting. Once aboard, Isabella then evadedthe Flemish navy, and escaped.
Hell hath no fury.
Isabella went back to France in 1325 but instead of retiring to anunnery to mutter about the perfidy of men, she took matters into her own hands. She began apassionate affair with an exile named Roger Mortimer - in fact, it’s said shealready knew him, and that she sprang him from the Tower in 1523 after he’dbeen arrested by the Despensers.
This was a huge risk for her - female infidelity, even in the face ofsuch provocations, was a very serious offence in medieval Europe. Theirromance has been described as one of the great romances of the Middle Ages. It may have been -but the pillow talk was all about settling old scores.
Isabella and Mortimer returned to England in 1326 with a mercenary army,and defeated Edward in a lightning campaign. Edward and Hugh were arrested afterthey fled to Wales. Hugh Despenser was dispensed with in a very medieval manner.He was stripped and had Biblical verses about the evils of corruption andarrogance scrawled on his skin prior to his grisly execution (see the rathercheery illustration below.)
The king was invited to abdicate the throne and was then placed under housearrest at Berkeley Castle on the Welsh borders, where he later died trying toescape custody, as we would say in modern parlance. There is still muchcontroversy over the circ*mstances surrounding his disappearance.
The queen then ruled as regent for her son, but even the She-Wolf couldnot protect herself against her own cub; five years later he came of age andtook back the crown, and it was Mortimer’s turn on the gallows.
Isabella survived the transition however, and retired from politics tospend more time with her family. She continued a lavish lifestyle at CastleRising in Norfolk, doting on her grandchildren, one of whom was Edward, theBlack Prince. She took to religion, continued to be a gregarious member of the court, andremained on good terms with her son.
This complex, courageous and indefatigable woman died an old lady in1358, remaining an enigma until the end. She asked to be buried in her weddingdress and Edward's heart, which had been placed into a casket after his death thirty years before, wasinterred with her, at her request.
She remains one of the most remarkable women of medieval history; a truebraveheart, in fact.
See more history from Colin Falconer at LOOKING FOR MR GOODSTORY
