Humiliated and deprived of her income, her children, and her liberty, Isabella escaped to France, where she entered into a passionate affair with Edward II's mortal enemy, Roger Mortimer. As their marriage progressed, Isabella was neglected by her dissolute husband and slighted by his favored male courtiers. Praised for her fair looks, the newly wed Isabella was denied the attentions of Edward II, a weak, sexually ambiguous monarch with scant taste for his royal duties. But Queen Isabella's political machinations led generations of historians to malign her, earning her a reputation as a ruthless schemer and an odious nickname, "the She-Wolf of France." Now the acclaimed author of Eleanor of Aquitaine, Alison Weir, reexamines the life of Isabella of England, history's other notorious and charismatic medieval queen. Her marriage to the heir to England's throne was designed to heal old political wounds between the two countries, and in the years that followed, she would become an important figure, a determined and clever woman whose influence would come to last centuries. Isabella arrived in London in 1308, the spirited twelve-year-old daughter of King Philip IV of France.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |