Isabella of France

Now that Biden has won the election I have enough brain cycles to resume project #EuropeanBios. Entry #33 is Isabella of France, a strong and assertive leader who sexist historians have predictably loathed and vilified. Bonus: she had an EXTREMELY gay husband.

Isabella is sometimes called the She-Wolf of France despite doing nothing remotely out of the ordinary in terms of 1300s political maneuvering and also despite the fact that female wolves exist and are just called wolves, not "she-wolves".

Isabella lived from 1295 to 1358 and was married to Edward 2 of England; Edward was the great-great-grandson of another redoubtable woman leader, Eleanor of Aquitaine, who we covered back in entry #24:

Edward 2 was extremely gay, with my usual caveat that the word didn't exist then, homosexual identity is a very novel idea, and he had enough straight sex to have several kids. I am not a proper historian, if you want that go elsewhere, I am here for the comedy.

Isabella was the daughter of Philip 4 of France, and was married to Edward at age 12 in order to seal a political alliance and end a long-running dispute between England and France over territory. This was a pretty common deal at the time, and she had no say in the matter.

What was less common was that Edward, frequently noted as handsome and athletic, ignored her completely in favor of a man, Piers Gaveston, a childhood friend and by the account of absolutely everyone also his romantic and sexual partner for years and years.

When I say ignored her: at the party to celebrate Isabella and Edward's wedding, Edward chose not to sit with his new wife and instead sat with Gaveston. Edward also took Isabella's jewelry and gave it to Gaveston, who was somewhat of a dandy.

Edward lavished gifts upon his boyfriend including money, land, titles and responsibility. This annoyed the various other nobles to no end, not out of homophobic prejudice so much that it threw their usual plans for gaining position and influence askew.

Isabella and Gaveston apparently got on surprisingly well given that he was very openly screwing her husband in a time when the church had made homosexuality very much taboo, but eventually the nobles got completely sick of Gaveston and had him exiled to Ireland.

This was something of a constitutional crisis in England, since the nobles overruling the extremely fervent wishes of the king was novel. Edward was extremely pissed about it but the so-called ordinances set a precedent that would eventually lead to parliamentary democracy.

Edward eventually got sick of the ordinances dictating what he could do and declared them void and brought Gaveston back. This precipitated a civil war, complicated by an ongoing war with the Scots. Eventually Gaveston was executed and Edward's power further diminished.

Isabella came through all of this pretty well, being seen as a moderating influence and a peacemaker, both by influencing her powerful father, king of France, and also directly in person. She maintained alliances and influence significantly more deftly than her husband.

Edward meanwhile immediately hooked up with another dude, Hugh Despenser the Younger, with whom he carried on similarly openly much to the exasperation of Isabella and all the nobles, once again mostly because it messed up their plans rather than any particular moral disapproval.

Isabella did not get on with Hugh, who started stripping her of her money and power. She fucked off to France, accompanied by various mutinous nobles. One of them was Roger Mortimer, with whom she hooked up, which seems only fair, why should Edward be the only one to get laid?

Isabella and Mortimer rallied their allies and invaded England herself, in what was basically another civil war. They won and Hugh Despenser was gruesomely executed. Edward was imprisoned and died in captivity, though it's hotly disputed whether he died of natural causes.

Isabella and Mortimer ruled for only four years before yet more extremely complicated politics led to Isabella's son Edward 3 seizing power and forcing his mother into semi-retirement. Mortimer was executed, because honestly the nobility in the 1300s were all vicious bastards.

Overall Isabella seems pretty cool. If she'd been a man none of this would have been remotely controversial; your average middle ages king got up to more intrigue and murder before breakfast. But of course if she'd been a man she'd have had a much happier marriage to Edward.