ISABELLA THE MYTH

Cultural depictions of the queen have shaped her enduring legacy

In the centuries since her death, Isabella has frequently been portrayed as a conniving and greedy Jezebel who used her feminine wiles to betray her king and country. Even though Edward was an incompetent ruler and his deposition was welcomed by many, his mysterious death led to speculation that he had been murdered. The idea that a king had been unlawfully killed, perhaps on the orders of his wife, turned Edward into something of a martyr over time, while Isabella became a villain.

So entwined are certain myths about Isabella, coupled with a tantalising lack of evidence, that it is difficult to know the truth. In his poem, The Curse Upon Edward,

18th-century poet Thomas Gray notably referred to Isabella as the, “She-wolf of France, with unrelenting fangs/that tear’st the bowels of thy mangled mate.” Gray’s mention of Edward’s bowels likely refers to the legend that Edward was killed by a red-hot poker shoved up his anus, that scorched his intestines and burnt him from the inside out. There is no evidence to suggest this is true and yet it is still widely repeated. Of course, Isabella is the one who is accused of ordering such a cruel and gruesome death.

Even the more sympathetic portrayals of Isabella are full of inaccuracies. The 1995 film Braveheart

(below) depicts a neglected Isabella having an affair with William Wallace, one of the main leaders during the First War of Scottish Independence. It is implied that she fell pregnant with her son, the future Edward III, as a result of this affair and thereby ending the Plantagenet line of kings. In reality, Isabella was only around 10 years old and still living in France when Wallace was executed in 1305, and her son was not the product of an adulterous relationship.