Isabella of Angoulême
Queen of England, 1200-1216

Isabella, a luscious 14-year-old, jilts the French count to whom she’s betrothed and marries King John of England instead. Their infatuation with each other turns to distrust, betrayal, adultery. After a stormy 16-year marriage and the birth of five children, King John dies.

Still beautiful at 30, Isabella returns to her ancestral home and marries Hugh de Lusignan, the son of the count she’d rejected 20 years ago. In their ardor for each other and for power, they are obsessed with their desire to keep their vast joint realms intact. With every child born, they feel more assured of the continuity of their line.

Isabella becomes more power-hungry, ready to take on the King of France himself. She forces her reluctant husband and her eldest son, Henry III—now King of England—to join her in a disastrous rebellion against King Philip. Ignominy follows. Isabella’s next plot, to poison the king, is an even more spectacular failure.

Condemned by all, she turns against Count Hugh, her long-suffering husband, and retires to an abbey, still unremorseful. After a failed attempt to leave and resume her life with the count, she dies—embittered and maligned.

This is how history has seen Isabella, the famously beautiful thirteenth-century queen of King John of England, later Countess of Angoulême. The English called her “John’s Jezebel.” In France she was admired for her beauty and spirit and honored with burial in Fontevraud Abbey, near her husband King John and her mother-in-law Eleanor of Aquitaine.

Where is the truth? Could there be still another Isabella? Some historians believe this woman of strong passions and ambitions was innocent of many of the misdeeds ascribed to her, yet was motivated to rebellious actions by her fierce devotion to her land and her children.

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