Queen Isabella
Alison Weir
Ballantine Books
<p>Isabella arrived in London in 1308, the spirited twelve-year-old
daughter of King Philip IV of France. Her marriage to the heir to
England's throne was designed to heal old political wounds between the
two countries, and in the years that followed, she would become an
important figure, a determined and clever woman whose influence would
come to last centuries. But Queen Isabella's political machinations led
generations of historians to malign her, earning her a reputation as a
ruthless schemer and an odious nickname, “the She-Wolf of France.”<br><br>Now
 the acclaimed author of Eleanor of Aquitaine, Alison Weir, reexamines
the life of Isabella of England, history's other notorious and
charismatic medieval queen. Praised for her fair looks, the newly wed
Isabella was denied the attentions of Edward II, a weak, sexually
ambiguous monarch with scant taste for his royal duties. As their
marriage progressed, Isabella was neglected by her dissolute husband and
 slighted by his favored male courtiers. Humiliated and deprived of her
income, her children, and her liberty, Isabella escaped to France, where
 she entered into a passionate affair with Edward II's mortal enemy,
Roger Mortimer. Together, Isabella and Mortimer led the only successful
invasion of English soil since the Norman Conquest of 1066, deposing
Edward and ruling in his stead as co-regents for Isabella's young son,
Edward III. Fate, however, was soon to catch up with Isabella and her
lover. <br><br>Many mysteries and legends have been woven around
Isabella's story. She was long condemned as an accessory to Edward II's
brutal murder in 1327, but recent research has cast doubt on whether
that murder even took place.<br><br>Isabella's reputation, then, rests
largely on the prejudices of monkish chroniclers and prudish Victorian
scholars. Here Alison Weir gives a startling, groundbreaking new
perspective on Isabella,  in this first full biography in more than 150
years. In a work of extraordinary original research, Weir effectively
strips away centuries of propaganda, legend, and romantic myth, and
reveals a truly remarkable woman who had a profound influence upon the
age in which she lived and the history of western Europe.<br><br>Engaging,
 vibrant, alive with breathtaking detail and unforgettable characters,
Queen Isabella is biographical history at its finest.</p>