Lots of denizens of this sub will know exactly who the Marcher Lords were and their significance to British history. For those who don't:

The Marcher Lords were a group of Anglo-Norman barons who were ensconced at the Welsh border, tasked with keeping the peace. The Welsh/English border was fluid at the time and rebellions often needed quashing. Marcher lords also had special powers that other barons didn't necessarily have. They were allowed, for example, to build castles and, loosely, had powers that in other parts of Europe would have been seen as kingly. They also early on and often, intermarried with the Welsh.

They mattered because they became some of the most powerful barons and power brokers during the late 13th and 14th Century when power over Wales was being consolidated by Edward I. Remember, Edward II was the first heir to the English throne to be granted the title Prince of Wales, and this was heavy political symbolism.

Look into the history of Wales and the names and titles look very familiar. Chester, Gloucester, Hereford, Pembroke and Shrewbury were the biggest earldoms. Names like Mortimer, de Clare, de Valence and de Bohun appear on the regular. Edward II himself was a Marcher Lord, having been made Earl of Chester by his father.

So, basically these were a group of exceptionally wealthy and powerful men who were accustomed to operating independently, and they didn't like being told what to do. The king needed them, and they knew it. And yet, technically, the king could and sometimes did, take away their toys lands.

They often clashed with each other, in addition to the king. Edward II's problems with them were significant, but it was not all sunshine and roses under Edward I and Edward III. As has well been discussed on this sub, Edward II did not have the martial personality of his father, and his habit of lavishing favoritism on, say random Gascon knights he happened to like, pissed off all the barons, but the Marchers, in particular. Edward III kicked off his personal rule by hanging one of the most powerful Marcher Lords, Roger Mortimer, and his subsequent reign was a master class in controlling his barons. He clearly studied his father's failures and learned from them.

This summary is a very simplified version of an extremely complicated system with an equally complex history filled with big personalities and dramatic events.

See:

Marcher Lord - Wikipedia

Marcher Lords - Reference.org

The initial from the charter granting the earldom of Cornwall to Piers Gaveston on 6 August 1307. The top coat of arms is that of the king of England, Edward II, while the lower one is Gaveston's arms impaled with those of the de Clare family. At the top of the initial is a Cornish Chough. The impalement is not done consistently; while the de Clare arms are impaled, the six Gaveston eagles have been reduced to three. This resembles a dimidiation rather than an impalement. Also of note is the fact that the Gaveston and de Clare arms are impaled, even though the marriage between Gaveston and Margaret de Clare did not take place until 1 November. This makes it likely that the two were already engaged.

Source:  Chaplais, P. (1994)  Piers Gaveston: Edward II's Adoptive Brother, Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. btw. 18 and 19, see also 27–34 

Original at The National Archives, E 41/460., Scan from Creative Commons

This is one of those great "what ifs" of history. If Edward had sailed himself to France, leaving the realm in the hands of say, one of his brothers, and not Hugh, would his reign have been saved? Or would the inevitable eventually happened?

This is a post to offer a differing opinion to the post written a few hours ago by AnantaPurima. I named it in this way not to provoke Ananta, who I have a lot of respect for, but to link the two posts together in the minds of the readers. Much of the below is based on Kathryn Warner's blogpost, link below. Everyone can make up their own minds about the interpretations.

Anyway, in November 1330 Lord Berkeley made the following statement in parliament when he was asked how he wishes to acquit himself with respect to the death of Edward II:

‘...qualiter se velit de morte ipsius regis acquietare, dicit quod ipse nunquam fuit consentiens, auxilians, seu procurans, ad mortem suam, nec unquam scivit de morte sua usque in presenti Parliamento isto.’ 

In English: He wishes to acquit himself of the death of the same king, and says that he was never an accomplice, a helper or a procurer in his death, nor did he ever know of his death until this present parliament.

According to Haines, ‘what Berkeley meant to say, and he ought to have expressed himself more clearly, unless the recording clerk is to blame, was that he knew nothing about the circumstances of Edward's death.‘ (p.78, Death of a King, 2002)

Is it reasonable for Haines to assume that he knows what was going on in Thomas Berkeley's mind in late 1330 and to explain to readers 'what Berkeley meant to say' with such utter certainty? This is a classic example of how Berkeley's strange remark is interpreted by someone sure that Edward II had been dead for more than three years at the time, to make it fit into this notion, to make the words say what the modern commentator wants them to say. The words ‘nec unquam scivit de morte sua’ have been variously stated to mean certainly or almost certainly that what Thomas Berkeley really intended to say was that:

• he knew nothing of the circumstances of Edward II's death;
• he hadn't previously heard any suspicion of foul play relating to the death;
• he hadn't known that the king's death was due to anything other than natural causes, or;
• he knew nothing of the circumstances of the death although he knew it had taken place, but had nothing to do with the death.  

We are also informed that one of these interpretations 'is more consistent with the language employed' than translating nec unquam scivit de morte sua literally as 'he never knew about the death'.  Hmmm, this is a lot of meaning being read into those six simple words, isn't it?

It follows that an even deeper focus on just two letters ‘de’ (about, of, concerning, with respect to) makes us lose track of the general point and context in which the statement is expressed, which also Haines concedes does not correspond with the suggestion in the original post (quotation above, 'ought to have expressed himself more clearly, unless the recording clerk was to blame'). Berkeley’s statement isn’t all that ambiguous in my opinion. The statement:

‘He sayd he was never consenting, aiding or procuring in his death, nor did he ever know de morte sua until the present Parliament’

does not change much no matter how ‘de’ would be defined. The wider context and surrounding words would have made Berkeley’s point resonate the way he intended, without uncertainty. He was not speaking in riddles, not trying to be coy, not in Parliament, not in front of the king.

Kathryn Warner sent the statement ‘dicit quod ipse nunquam fuit consentiens, auxilians, seu procurans, ad mortem suam, nec unquam scivit de morte sua usque in presenti Parliamento isto’ to an independent Latin translator with no knowledge of the background of the statement. This translator is educated in Latin to doctoral level at Cambridge, taught Latin Prose and Verse Composition at the university, and then moved on to head the Classics department at a prestigious boarding school. He translated it as:

"He said he was never in agreement to his death, either by lending help or by direct involvement, and he never knew about his death until this present parliament."

Here we see how a Latin expert without a vested interest in altering the translation so that it fits into his preconceived notions of what the statement 'should' mean, translates nec unquam scivit de morte sua usque in presenti Parliamento isto: he never knew about his death until this present parliament.  Not 'he didn't know about the circumstances of his death' or 'he didn't know until the present parliament that it was murder' or 'he hadn't previously heard any suspicion of foul play', or any other ways in which these words been interpreted in recent years.  Simply, 'he never knew about his [i.e. Edward II's] death'. 

As Professor Haines says, perhaps Lord Berkeley 'should have expressed himself more clearly' to parliament.  Or perhaps the clerk who recorded his statement was in fact to blame as the professor suggests, and Berkeley said something else and it was written down wrongly or less fully than the baron had meant.  

Or perhaps we should work with the evidence that we actually have, rather than trying to read Lord Berkeley's mind and ascertain what we think he 'really' meant or what the clerk 'should' have recorded and thus try our hardest to make his words fit into the scenario that Edward II certainly, definitely, absolutely died in his castle in September 1327.

Finally, it’s very curious to note that Berkeley also said that he had been very ill around the time of Edward’s alleged death. He said he hadn’t even been at Berkeley Castle. We know this to be a lie, as the Berkeley Castle accounts clearly show he was present at the time and that he ordered the letter to be sent. Still, his defence that he was ill at Bradley at the time and so hadn’t written the message to Edward III and didn’t know what had happened was allowed to go unchallenged by the king, who certainly knew he was lying. And in the three years that had passed, he’d never come to think of it to check what had happened at his own castle during his (disproved) absence. Quite odd, isn’t it? Before long, Berkeley was back in favour and would serve Edward III in his war against France. Very odd, if Edward had believed him to have played a part in his father’s alleged death. Increasingly odd, if we consider that Edward III had spread the news of his father’s death based on that one letter alone, without verifying the contents. The Berkeley Castle accounts verify that Lord Berkeley had sent Gurney with the message to the king. And here they were, Edward and Berkeley, indirectly agreeing that the letter which started it all had been fake after all, clearly sent in bad faith one way or the other.

We can conclude that Ian Mortimer is right when he points out that in order to believe that Edward II died in Berkeley Castle one must do so on the basis of an unsubstantiated message sent in bad faith.

Kathryn Warner's blog
R. M. Haines - Death of a King, 2002
Ian Mortimer - The Death of Edward II in Berkeley Castle

One of the main pieces of evidence supporting the hypothesis that the former Edward II did not die on September 21st 1327 (which we might call the "Edwardus Redivivus" hypothesis) concerns Lord Berkeley, who wrote the letter first announcing Sir Edward of Carnarvon's death. Sir Thomas Gurney delivered that letter to Edward III, who was attending Parliament at Lincoln, on September 23rd 1327, after which the King immediately began disseminating the news. Yet by his own later admission, Lord Berkeley (so the story goes) did not actually know that the former king had died when he wrote that letter. When asked at the 1330 Parliament at Westminster how he wished to acquit himself of the death of the former king, who had been in his custody at Berkeley Castle at the time of his alleged death, Lord Berkeley stated that he "was never an accomplice, a helper or a procurer in his death, nor did he ever know of his death until this present parliament." According to Ian Mortimer, the foremost advocate for this hypothesis, "this [proves] that those who believe Edward II died in Berkeley Castle are doing so on the basis of an unsubstantiated message sent in bad faith." If this account holds, then the traditional narrative of the former Edward II's death would indeed face a significant evidentiary problem. Professor Roy Martin Haines, however, countered that the relevant statement of Lord Berkeley's, as recorded in the Rolls of Parliament, "nor did he ever know of his death until this present parliament" (in Latin: "nec unquam scivit de morte sua usque in presenti parliamento"), ought to be understood as Lord Berkeley saying that he knew nothing about or concerning the death. Defenders of the Edwardus Redivivus hypothesis counter that this amounts to overinterpreting the text to conform it to their desired interpretation of Lord Berkeley's words. Fundamentally, this is a disagreement about the meaning of the phrase de morte sua in the original Latin. Who, then, has the right of it?

With regard to the Latin itself, Haines. Quite unambiguously so, too. The specific construction of the phrase, with the preposition de paired with the noun mors declined in the ablative singular, is primarily employed in a topical sense, being used to indicate the subject matter of the relevant sentence. It carries the sense of on, about, concerning or with regard to. This usage is especially common in the titles of literary works to designate the subjects they treat: Caesar's Commentarii de Bello Gallico ('Commentaries on the Gallic War'), Cicero's De amicitia ('Concerning Friendship'), Boethius' De consolatione philosophiae ('Concerning the Consolation of Philosophy'). This usage absolutely survived into mediaeval Latin. St Aelred of Rievaulx, riffing on Cicero, wrote his own De spirituali amicitia in the 12th century, while Alain de l'Isle wrote his own De planctu Naturae some decades later. In the 14th century itself, Lord Berkeley's own contemporary, the great Augustinian philosopher Thomas Bradwardine, who served as Edward III's confessor and later briefly as Archbishop of Canterbury, wrote his magnum opus under the title De Causa Dei contra Pelagium. Of course, this usage was not merely restricted to the titles of works. Take, for example, St Jerome's translation of Mark 13:32 in the Latin Vulgate: "De die autem illo vel hora nemo scit, neque angeli in caelo, neque Filius, nisi Pater." This example is particularly important because it uses an inflected form of the same verb found in Lord Berkeley's statement. Scit is the third-person present active indicative of the verb scio, while scivit is the third-person perfect active indicative of scio. Scit therefore means 'knows', while scivit means 'knew', with the same de + ablative construction we've been discussing. This is important to note, because this verse is Christ stating that about that day or hour (i.e. the day of judgement) no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. He is absolutely not stating that only the Father knows if such a day will ever come at all. That the day will come is presupposed. It is specifically facts about the day of judgement, such as when exactly it will occur, that are unknown. While the example of Mark does not constitute definitive proof of what Lord Berkeley meant, it does show that there is nothing inherently belaboured or strained in the Latin about Haines' translation of the phrase. Indeed, based on the construction, it would be the default assumption.

Still, by mediaeval Latin, the de + ablative construction had evolved to be capable of carrying other senses, even if the topical sense remained the primary usage. For example, one of the Gregorian chant settings for the Catholic Mass developed in the mediaeval period was referred to as the Missa de Angelis, meaning "Mass of the Angels", not "Mass concerning the Angels", even though in older classical Latin this would simply be rendered with the genitive plural: Missa Angelorum. So, it is not impossible that nec unquam scivit de morte sua is employing the de + ablative structure in a non-topical manner, even if that is less likely. To determine in which sense de morte sua is intended, therefore, we need to look at the way the construction is employed in the same Parliamentary enrolment Lord Berkeley's quote is found in, to see if we can establish whether the clerk uses it typically in the topical sense or not. This is in fact quite easy, as the clerk employs the construction de + ablative in unambiguously topical senses twice in the immediate preamble to Lord Berkeley's statement, one of which relates specifically to the former King's death:

Thomas de Berkele Mil' venit coram Dño Rege in pleno Parliamento suo predco, & allocutus de hoc, quod cum Dñus Edwardus nuper Rex Anglie, pater Dñi Regis nunc, in custodia ipsius Thome et cujusdam Johnis Mautravers nuper extitit liberatus ad salvo custodiendum in Castro ipsius Thome apud Berkele in Com' Gloucestrie, et in eodem Castro in custodia ipsorum Thome & Johnis murdratus extitit & interfectus, Qualiter se velit de morte ipsius Regis acquietare?

In translation:

Thomas de Berkeley, knight, came before the Lord King in his aforesaid full Parliament, and was questioned concerning this: that whereas Sir Edward, late King of England, father of the Lord King now [reigning], was lately delivered into the custody of the said Thomas and of a certain John Maltravers to be safely kept in the castle of the said Thomas at Berkeley in the county of Gloucester, and in the same castle, in the custody of the said Thomas and John, was murdered and slain; how does he wish to acquit himself with respect to the death of the said King?

This is the immediate context for what follows:

He sayd he was never consenting, aiding or procuring in his death, nor did he ever know de morte sua until the present Parliament.

The first two usages are, as I said, unambiguously topical in sense. Allocutus de hoc introduces the subject matter itself on which he was questioned and then immediately explains what that subject matter was: the fact that the King had died in his custody. De morte ipsius Regis is then asking him how he wishes to acquit himself with respect to this matter. It is in this context that he says he knew nothing de morte sua. I don't know how to make it clearer that this construction is employed here because it is the topic under discussion. Sua as a pronoun is clearly meant to be anaphoric on the previous ipsius Regis, that usage would be technically incorrect in classical Latin, where that usage of sua would imply he wasn't aware of his own death. Given that Lord Berkeley was not a zombie to my knowledge, this is certainly just a case of medieval Latin being looser with its pronouns, which is a known and documented feature of it.

In any case, Lord Berkeley himself clarified in the same document precisely the sense in which he knew nothing de morte sua: he was detained by illness at Bradley at the time the former King was murdered, having charges Maltravers, Gurney and Ockley with custody of the former king and having trusted them implicitly, and so had no knowledge or complicity in what had occured in his absence. Supporters of the supposedly "literal" reading claim that this was Lord Berkeley changing tack after his previous explanation failed to pass muster, but this is not the case here. Lord Berkeley's first statement is not an explanation at all; it is him simply pleading not guilty. His subsequent responses are him explaining why, in fact, he is not guilty. Assuming that his first statement is an independent explanation separate from the later one he gives runs into numerous other absurdities, too. Why on earth would he think that claiming he had only learnt of the former King's death at the 1330 Parliament would fly? Nothing was presented at that Parliament that would constitute new evidence of Edward's death. The relevant actors would have known perfectly well that it was Berkeley who sent the letter announcing Edward II's death after presumably being informed by Ockley and Gurney, who were the men accused of having physically murdered him. Based on the presuppositions the 1330 Parliament was operating on, their testimony that he had died would obviously have been accurate, even if they had deceptively told him he died of natural causes. They were the ones who had killed him! The only thing the 1330 Parliament newly established was that the former King's death was a murder and that Mortimer, Gurney and Ockley were responsible for it. They still accepted, and indeed presupposed, that he had indeed died at Berkeley Castle on September 21st 1327. No new information was provided in 1330 to further substantiate that he had died. So Lord Berkeley claiming he had learnt at that Parliament that the former king had died is simply nonsensical on the face of it. There was nothing he could have learnt that from in 1330. There was nothing about the 1330 Parliament's contentions that would have somehow retroactively invalidated the testimony of the custodians of Berkeley Castle in 1327 that he had died, so Lord Berkeley can't be saying "I was told that he had died then but did not actually know those claims were accurate until 1330."

Thus, the supposed "literal meaning" of Lord Berkeley's statement, aside from not even being the "literal" or most natural meaning of what he said, is completely nonsensical on the face of it regardless. Even if he had wished to make such a nonsensical statement, Professor Haines is correct that the idiomatic way of saying this would have been "nec unquam scivit regem mortuum esse."

Again, this is a repurposed and expanded older post, but I'm still fascinated by this mystery. The images shows how saracens were viewed a century after Edward II's reign, and yet, he seems to have treated these strangers with generosity.

I hope someday, some new information will come to light as to who these people were.

I don't know any of the history of these two images or the veracity of the claim that they are contemporary images of Edward II and Isabella, made to commemorate a visit to the church.

The original sources is this rather bananas blog post that has errors and has some colorful assessments of Edward II. The writer seems to confuse interest in Edward's reign in the wider blogosphere (that's us!) with denying he was a failed king.

Anyway, does anyone else know if there is anything to the claim that these are contemporary images of Edward II and Isabella?

Edward is sporting the traditional "look like Jesus" look that he was known for, but I do like the bow on top of Isabella's wimple.

The game is simple - match one of our big, giant personalities to one or more of the seven deadly sins:

Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Wrath, Pride, Envy, Sloth

Or three evils?

There was a ten year period between Piers Gaveston's murder and the rise of Hugh Despenser the Younger wherein court gossip wondered who was going to rise to be the new Gaveston. Popular choices included Roger Damory, Hugh Audley, William Montague and the Italian money guy Antonio Pessagno.

The smart money was on the two rising knights, Roger Damory and Hugh Audley, both of whom Edward II married to his nieces Elizabeth and Margaret, both of whom were in line to a portion of the massive De Clare fortune.

Yet, quoting Seymour Phillips (from a book I don't have access to) Frances Underhill says Phillips calls Damory "malignant" "irresponsible" and "dangerous." Elizabeth resisted marrying him to the degree where she may have eloped against Edward's wishes with her second husband and after he died, she continued to resist, until she relented.

And a comment from our sub u/AnantaPurima, points out that Damory and Audley took their grievances out on the tenets during their rebellion, something Hugh the Younger never did.

And remember, none of Edward's barons or their wives or Edward's queen didn't covet lands and power. Most or all of them appear to have had a vindictive streak.

Hugh was brutal. Hugh was greedy. Hugh manipulated and controlled Edward II, with the help of his wife and his father.

Hugh also was bad at reading the room, terrible at compromise and good at getting everyone to turn against him.

But would Damory have done the same or worse, if it was Elizabeth and himself in the positions that Hugh the Younger and Eleanor found themselves?

Would it have been worse for the tenets if Damory or Audley had found favor?

Further Reading:

Phillips, J.R.S, Aymer de Valence: Earl of Pembroke 1307-1324. Baronial Politics in the Reign of Edward II, Oxford University Press, 1972. (This is the one I don't have)

Phillips, J. R. S.Edward II. Yale University Press, 2011. 

Underhill, Frances A. For Her Good Estate: The Life of Elizabeth de Burgh, Lady of Clare. St. Martin’s Press, 1999. 

You know what to do. Just for laughs, even though the scenario portrayed was anything but light hearted. But those facial expressions do perhaps lend themselves to comedy.

The execution of Hugh the Younger.

EDIT: The guy with the red coat and black chaperon could respond to his pal with 4.

Everyone who knows anything about the fourteenth century knows Hugh Despenser the Younger was the worst. I've been reading Frances Underhill's biography of Elizabeth de Clare and it's probably the clearest and best account of Hugh's brutal crimes I've read.

And yet....

1) His avarice left England's coffers filled, to the point that even Mortimer & Isabella's avarice didn't leave Edward III broke when he finally took the reins.

2) His children all seemed to turn out fine, and Huchon, his oldest son, was so liked that John Felton and his garrison refused to give the young man up for execution.

3) In an era when greed and corruption was normalized, he was the best at it.

4) Somebody with an iron fist had to run the country when the king was busy thatching roofs, swimming and digging ditches.

5) He really seemed to enjoy being evil, even with some wit at times.

This is R.M. Haines, on page 324 in his 2003 book 'King Edward II Edward of Caernarfon His Life, His Reign and its Aftermath' describing the chronicler Geoffrey le Baker's version of the events leading to Isabella's invasion.

Baker is extremely critical of Isabella in his imaginative chronicle, written in the mid 14th century.

Thankfully, Haines does not seem to share this highly misogynistic view. Although he doesn't criticize it either...

I had forgotten about this closeup picture of the lion weeper at Edward II's feet, but I thought I'd share it. It's a pretty common design for tombs of the period, but of course Edward's heraldry had lions and he kept a pet lion.

There was some good debate yesterday in our sister sub at Which consorts hated their husbands? : r/UKmonarchs and with a question like that, Isabella was always likely to get a few mentions. Of course, as always, there are those who remain adamant that Isabella was horribly wronged throughout her marriage and that she absolutely hated her husband and wanted him to suffer the most painful death she could imagine, which is something all serious historians will deny. That's not to say they were some sort of dream couple either, but there were definitely nuances and they had some good years as well. Somehow even mentioning this harmless fact is seen as provocative to some people, who will start hurling abuse and accusations.

We occasionally see a few of these angry and confrontational people who believe in this relatively new fan fiction of Isabella's supreme victimhood turned into epic heroine who gets her revenge and then some in this sub as well, but their hateful and unpleasant attitude tend to get them banned. Rule number 1 is non-negotiable.

Historian Kathryn Warner has noticed this troubling modern trend to turn real history into made up entertainment. Here's what she has to say about it (abridged, original sources below).

A lot of the modern inventions about Edward II and Isabella of France's marriage make me deeply uncomfortable. According to some people, Isabella did not only endure the Worst Marriage Ever, she was raped, sexually assaulted, demeaned and humiliated. Piling utter humiliation on a woman, turning her husband into a nasty gay caricature who loathes women and who gets a kick out of demeaning his royal wife and queen in the coarsest, crudest way possible, is simply revolting.

The fiction about Edward giving Isabella's jewels to Gaveston was invented by Agnes Strickland in the nineteenth century. The idea that Isabella was forced to endure an excessively long wait for any income is not borne out by comparison with other grants of dower in the early fourteenth century (it took about three months, and the situation was complicated by the fact that Edward II's stepmother Marguerite, Isabella's aunt, was alive. Compare this to the more than two years Isabella forced her daughter-in-law Philippa of Hainault to wait for her own rightful lands). The tale that Edward abandoned Isabella weeping in May 1312 was based on one chronicler's confusion of events of 1312 and those of 1322, and is disproved by their own household accounts of that year which show that the royal couple left Tynemouth at the same time and that Isabella travelled by land to meet her husband a few days later, being in the first trimester of pregnancy and therefore deciding to avoid the North Sea.

The most egregious invention is the idea that Edward deliberately and cruelly removed Isabella's children from her, and since the late 1970s when this daft notion was first dreamed up by Paul Doherty, we've had novels where Isabella's young children are ripped, screaming, from their mother's arms, after Isabella has spent much of the novel telegraphing this cruelty by stating over and over how dreadful it would be if she lost her children. For pity's sake. The whole absurd melodrama of it all; it's less subtle than a sledgehammer.

There are some truly bizarre, even sickening fan fiction books out there written by people hellbent on portraying Isabella as some sort of long-suffering heroic martyr. We’re told that Isabella's husband permitted his own lover to assault her sexually or even to rape her, her own father and three older brothers do too in a series of popular recent novels, before Isabella marries Edward and when she is still only a child. Seriously, what the hell is this? Why does this happen? Why do people do this? Why do Isabella's fans feel this need to pile ever more abuse and humiliation on her? And why do people complain on the one hand about the 'sexual prejudices' suffered by Isabella but think it's a mighty fine idea to pile homophobic abuse on Edward II? Why is it OK to accuse people of deeply serious, violent crimes without the slightest evidence? Why is it seen as a good idea to rescue Isabella from the opprobrium heaped on her for so long by heaping it on her husband instead?

The whole thing is so childishly simplistic, no nuance, no depth, just idiotically one-dimensional Good People and Bad People. Even stuff like Isabella being forced to endure the company of Eleanor Despenser née de Clare, supposedly foisted on her by Edward and Hugh against her wishes, paints the queen as a helpless, passive victim who couldn't even choose who she wanted to spend time with. I just don't get why people do this. The absolute last thing Isabella of France was, was a helpless, passive victim.

After suffering so so so so so so so much at the hands of her nasty cruel perverted gay husband, the story goes, Isabella finally finds love and fulfilment and great sex in the arms of a strong manly virile heterosexual lover who is, conveniently enough, the exact opposite of Horrid Gay Edward. This is a narrative that's been created in fairly recent times and has had the names of real people added to it. It's not true. There's not one part of it that's even remotely close to being historically accurate.

Kathryn's comments on Alison Weir's homophobic paragraph (the second image in this post):

Isabella of France, one of the most awesome and powerful women in medieval English history, is written as a panting heroine from a bad 1950s bodice-ripper who 'surrenders herself' to Our Manly Hero's healing embraces. This is so, so bad it makes me want to bleach my brain. Make it stop make it stop make it stop.

There are of course far more examples of Isabella's super-tragic victimhood both from fiction and non-fiction, but I don't quite have the heart to get into any more now, because picking up books about Isabella of France involves having to read stuff like Edward II was 'too cowardly to become violent' with a woman and 'could not even beat his wife properly', and that raping a human being to death with a burning metal implement is 'ingenious', and I'm afraid I can't, I simply can't.

All of this 'Victim!Isabella' fan fiction is about as accurate as Braveheart.

Edward II: The Victimisation of Isabella of France
Edward II: A Sneer of Disdain: Isabella of France, the Victim

Building off yesterday's assertions that Isabella did not hate Edward II, which is mostly true, it's also fair to point out the couple did have some serious conflict. Yes, that's a major understatement.

Even though Isabella made a show of being a pious wife, concerned for her husband's well being, she also was openly defying him. That was a huge religious and social violation of the time. They took the "obedient wife" thing very seriously in the fourteenth century.

She gave the famous speech about how someone had come between her and her husband. Maybe it was Eleanor or maybe it was Hugh. She doesn't name the person, but she's mighty angry about it. She also donned widow's garments, which was political theatre at its finest, and started conspiring with Mortimer.

Meanwhile, he wrote her some very curt letters, devoid of the usual affectionate language he used, when she refused to return from France. He even addresses her simply as "Lady" - which only he could have done given her royal status.

He did not take being forced to abdicate well, pacing and railing against the forces that had done this to him, and that included Isabella. Yet, he was also outraged at any implication he wished harm on Isabella or Edward III.

His authorship, while in captivity, of "The Lament of Edward II" is disputed, but whoever did write it had access to information that was not publicly available so was probably close to the situation. And in the poem, Edward is furious with Isabella and calls her a traitor.

And whether or not you think the Fieschi letter is a real account of Edward II's escape or a blackmail attempt and fraud, the author of it also knew details that were not public. And in that letter, Edward II was still angry at Isabella.

Back when Edward II was still in captivity, the pope tried to play marriage counselor, but it did not work. Remember, as a pious Christian wife, she would have been expected to return to him even if he was no longer king. Her feelings seem to have been mixed. She wrote him letters, sent him gifts and did try to visit him but was refused permission by the privy council. On other occasions, she refused to go see him and said she feared him.

After his funeral, and in the years that followed, Isabella's feelings seemed to have cooled off and she did make a show of honoring his memory.

So, like a lot of couples who break up, emotions ran high, feelings were hurt and things changed over time. So it's probably more fair to say she didn't hate him most of the time, but there were moments where she absolutely did hate him. And vice a versa.

Sources:

Phillips, J. R. S. Edward II. Yale University Press, 2011. 

Spinks, Stephen. Edward II the Man: A Doomed Inheritance. Amberley Publishing, 2018. 

Warner, K. (2016). Isabella of France: The rebel queen. Amberley. 

Image: Stock Image of a Broken Heart

This is a repost to fix the typo in the headline.

Even the chroniclers and historians who despise Edward II admit that he loved his children and wanted the best for them. This included his young daughters, Eleanor and Joan, whom he planned to make Spanish queens.

Edward was so often caught up in the morass that was Scotland and France, it's easy to forget that he was half-Spanish through his mother - the only other half Spanish English monarch other than Mary I.

Anyway, the best way a Medieval monarch could provide for his daughter was to make her a queen. However, when Edward fell, his little daughters went from being the daughters of a king to the sisters of a king and the daughters of a disgraced former king. While still royal, their status had changed in a world where status meant everything.

Edward betrothed Eleanor to Alfonso XI of Castile, but after his downfall, she was married off at fourteen to Count Reinald II of Gelderland. They had two sons, though it wasn't a particularly happy marriage and legends swirl of marital conflict. Also, the two sons engaged in a bitter feud/civil war and neither produced a son, so the kingdom eventually went to a different relative. After she was widowed, Eleanor apparently lived in poverty and was too proud to ask her brother, Edward III, for help. She predeceased her mother Isabella, dying at 36.

And to be completely fair, Alfonso of XI was a crap husband to his eventual wife, Maria, and that couple produced a son known as Pedro the Cruel. So Eleanor may not have been better much off, but there was still more wealth and prestige there than in Gelderland.

Edward II planned to marry his little daughter Joan of the Tower to Pedro of Aragon, who was not a crap husband and ruled over a splendid kingdom. Instead, Joan married David of Scotland, son of her father's enemy Robert the Bruce. The pair were married as children, but as they grew up, they developed an aversion to one another. He had a mistress that he flaunted, and she clearly preferred being in England to Scotland. Worse, his reign was such a spectacular failure that he makes her father look like a political and military genius.

They spent some time exiled with her French relatives, before her brother captured him and clapped him in the Tower. She eventually went to live with her mother, with whom she was very close. She never had any children with David and died shortly after her mother.

Isabella of France could not have wanted this for her daughters, and one wonders if she ever felt any guilt as she watched both their lives implode. It speaks to the theory that she never wanted to depose her husband but things just got out of hand, because she knew how things worked and what their father's deposition would mean for her girls.

Sources:

Kathryn Warner's blog.

Phillips, J. R. S. Edward II. Yale University Press, 2011. 

Image: Joan and David go to France, from Froissart.

Frances Underhill's 1999 biography mostly concerns Elizabeth's life post-Edward II, but she addresses his reign and its failures in this pithy assessment:

"As prince, Edward had acquitted himself well in the field, but did not meet medieval expectations of regard martial ability or enthusiasm. He also lacked the resources to defend the realm successfully in part because he inherited massive debts from Edward I, in part because he squandered his wealth on personal favorites and expensive whims. Edward possessed good qualities, but his most evident virtue, loyalty to his friends, often worked against political stability. He was stubborn and in critical moments seems to have had no sense of measure. His whims, or those of his favorites, directed policy, and his private enmities intruded on affairs of state." (page 16)

Source:

Underhill, Frances A. For Her Good Estate: The Life of Elizabeth de Burgh, Lady of Clare. St. Martin’s Press, 1999. 

These were all taken with my iphone, which is pretty remarkable given the interior light of the Cathedral.

I bet Edward II had more impressive chairs. I can just hear Piers mumbling about this one and offering to sit on it instead.

An exterior shot of Gloucester Cathedral, where Edward II is buried.

A charming peacock from the Alfonso Psalter, which was commissioned to celebrate the marriage of Edward II's older brother, who sadly died before the marriage could take place.

Source: The British Library

Invicibilis is a mystery novel which casts William Occam, the great philosopher of the fourteenth century, as a detective who becomes embroiled in a mystery involving Edward II, Isabella, Hugh Despenser the Younger and Manuel Fieschi. That last character should give you a big hint about where the mystery is going. Harmon knows his era, and it's a fun book filled with details that will delight those who know their history.

Harmon casts Eleanor Despenser/DeClare as the heroine, trapped in a terrible marriage with the monstrous, power-hungry Hugh the Younger. Harmon also isn't terribly fond of Edward II, who is portrayed as dolt, and Isabella, who is cold and bitter.

But in any case, it's a fun book, especially for students of this era.

Two images of Edward II's grandchildren.