26/08/2026
They buried her in her wedding dress. She had been twelve years old when she wore it at Boulogne in January 1308. Fifty years of one of the most extraordinary lives in medieval history lay between the girl in that dress and the woman buried in it on 22 August 1358. She had asked for Edward II's heart to be interred with her. It was.
Isabella of France arrived in England as a diplomatic instrument, the daughter of Philip the Fair sent to bind France and England together through marriage to a king who had almost no interest in her. She managed him, supported him, bore him four children including the future Edward III, and watched him give his affections and his kingdom's resources to a succession of male favourites who stripped England's treasury and antagonised its barons. For fifteen years she endured it. Then in 1325 she went to France on a diplomatic mission, met Roger Mortimer, and decided not to come back.
She invaded England in 1326 with a small force, and Edward II's own support collapsed almost immediately. He was captured, deposed, and probably murdered at Berkeley Castle in 1327. She governed England with Mortimer for three years as regent for her fourteen-year-old son. In 1330 Edward III led a coup through the underground passages of Nottingham Castle, arrested Mortimer, and had him executed. He spared his mother. She spent her final twenty-eight years at Castle Rising and other comfortable residences, visiting her grandchildren, doting on the Black Prince, and taking the habit of the Poor Clares before the end.
The She-Wolf of France was never called that in her own lifetime. The phrase comes from Shakespeare, who gave it to a different queen entirely. Isabella was real enough without it.
Died on this day in 1358, Isabella of France, Queen of England. She was buried in the dress she had worn at twelve, with the heart of the man she had destroyed. History called her a she-wolf. She was considerably more complicated than that.
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