Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Manky listener Discretion advised. One night in twelve forty two, Louis the ninth King of France was settling in for an ordinary dinner when the Royal food taster began doing the thing you never want to see the royal food taster do. After taking a bite of food, he began hacking and coughing. It seemed that food taster earned his paycheck with that meal. Somebody had poisoned the King's meat and wine. The guards sprang into action and began searching the royal grounds. By chance, they stumbled upon two suspicious peasants who happened to be lurking near the kitchens. Two peasants were tortured until they delivered a confession, and it was a startling one. Not only had they would be assassins poisoned the King's meal, they also confessed that they had been hired to do so by a former Queen of England, who had promised them riches and status in return for their services. The entire botched poisoning was a massive success for the French on all counts. The French king had avoided death, they had caught the villains, and as a bonus, an English queen was implicated. That, at least was the story that passed around the French court in the summer of twelve forty two. The truth of the events probably looked more like this. One night in twelve forty two, two peasants were found rummaging through King Louis supplies while the king was out campaigning against some rebellious barons. These two peasants were most likely caught trying to take some food and drink, and they were hanged according to martial law. News of local thieves somehow transformed, through rumor and storytelling, into news about local assassins. Rummaging in the royal stores of mead and meat turned into an attempted poisoning, and an otherwise ordinary crime turned into a geopolitical plot of the highest order. So who was this Queen of England who was so reviled that what may very well have just been the honest crime of two poor souls evolved into her elaborate conspiracy against the French king. If it wasn't already clear, Isabelle of ANGLEM Dowager Queen of England was not exactly beloved by King Louis the Ninth or court. She was rather, as powerful women often are, the perfect candidate for the rumor mail. After the supposed assassination attempt, some believed that Isabel attempted suicide as the culmination for her life sins. Others believed that she fled to a nearby abbey for sanctuary from Louis's reprisals. All agreed that she would do whatever it took to avoid losing a trial, to hold on to whatever crumbs of power she had left after decades of losing ground to an aggressive French kingdom. The history of the rumor of the attempted poisoning is frankly a minuscule part of Isabel's life story, but it illustrates the problem with uncovering the historical Isabel quite well. Whatever the medieval chronicles say about her is distorted by dynastic drama and political biases. They paint her as a scandal inducing affair having Jezebel who drove two kingdoms into turmoil, first England and then Western France. But if we cut through the gossip, what would we actually find a heartless mother, or exactly the type of ruthless parents that medieval politics rewarded, a cunning and deceitful sorceress, or a dowager queen so relentless in her pursuit of freedom from both the English and the French that she earned a bad reputation in both kingdoms. Isabel tried, but ultimately failed to establish a dynasty of her own. But if she hadn't rocked the foundations of England and France, why would she ever have been worth the elaborate smear campaign in the first place. This is the story of a queen turned nun who, in trying to play both sides, ended up playing herself, a rogue royal who, even when stripped of her titles, lands and reputation, refused to stop signing her name as Dowager Queen of England. I'm Danish schwartz and this is noble blood. In the month of October twelve sixteen, Isabelle of Angoulem learned that her husband, the King of England and patriarch of the House of Plantagenet, had died. King John had spent the past year embroiled in a war against his barons, who raised demands in a little treaty called the Magna Carta, which John had absolutely no intention of accepting. The vain king marched from county to county, pillaging as he went along, all the while his wife remained confined to a castle in the city of Bristol. When she heard the news that dysentery took John, she probably felt a weight lift from her shoulders. For context, this is the King John, who was the younger brother of Richard the Lionheart, the guy who's the villainous Prince John in several adaptations of robin Hood. Upon the death of his brother Richard, John inherited not only the Kingdom of England, but also a vast swathe of territory in western France, encompassing Normandy, Brittany, and Aquitaine together called the Anchovin Empire. John's queen, Isabel, was originally from the French city of Angoulem, part of the land that she was technically supposed to inherit from her father account, but Isabel never spent much time with her inheritance, owing to the fact that she married John when she was only twelve. By all accounts, their marriage was considered scandalous from the start. In twelve hundred, Isabel was already betrothed to a French count. The union of their lands in central and western France would have cut off the northern part of John's empire in Normandy from the southern part in Aquitaine. As any conniving king would do, John made a back room deal to cut off Isabel's betrothal to that count, and he promptly married the girl himself. From twelve hundred to twelve sixteen, Isabel reigned as the Queen of England, but in fact she resided in what amounted to a golden cage, let out at the whims of her husband. According to the terms of their marriage, Isabel was entitled to rents from royal estates, but her husband frequently intercepted these funds to spend on his own lavish wardrobe. Instead of lodging Isabel in her own household as was customary, John thought it fit to put her up in the apartments of his former wife, the Countess of Gloucester, and then in the household of his mistress, the Lady de Neville. Most disturbingly, after Isabel bore her first child, Henry, in twelve oh seven, the Canterbury chronicles refer to her as being quote in custody. A few historians have speculated that Isabel was under some kind of house arrest, and this seems corroborated by the relative absence of her name among contemporary letters and court records. Either way, what's certain is that Isabel's husband humiliated her, stole her in, and confined her to a handful of castles. At some point in the sixteen years of her English captivity, Isabel decided she would no longer take being upawn in other people's politics. When her husband died, she may have mourned he was, after all, the father of her four children. We know that she made three offerings for the salvation of her husband's soul in the months that followed, but she never again mentioned her husband in any of her correspondents for the remaining thirty years of her life. This feeling of indifference was probably reciprocal. Considering that John invested the care of his heir henry in the hands of an esteemed earl and not the boy's own mother, Isabel had little to no chance of assuming any power in England. She was pushed out of the Regency council and the very men that made up that council seemed to have purchased a well chartered ship for Isabel to be on her merry way off of English shores and back to France. Isabel left behind her young sons, Henry and Richard, and took only her daughter Joan with her as she set sail for the continent. Was it ruthless for a mother to have abandoned her children upon the death of their father. The medieval chronicles certainly say so, and while they certainly overexaggerate Isabel's egomania and irresponsibility, her actions suggest that she was, if anything, opportunistic, and her husband's death just so happened to present an opportunity to reclaim her inheritance and establish her own little kingdom in western France. In the year twelve seventeen, Isabel entered the French city of Angoulem to great fanfare by the local populace, So much fanfare that the mayor of Angoulem even bestowed upon Isabel the keys to the city. Only a few years before Isabelle's arrival, King John had assigned a group of administrators and barons to oversee the county of Angoulem oversee its principal estates revenues and defense. Isabel planned to rest political control back from her late husband's group, but there would be serious obstacles in her path. From twelve seventeen to twelve nineteen, those barons launched rebellious campaigns against Isabel's rule. She used every ruthless strategy in her playbook to subdue her vassals. In one case, she took the two sons of one baron hostage until capitulated, a tactic considered so extreme that a bishop in a nearby city threatened Isabel with excommunication. Isabel, leveraging her prestige as a dowager Queen of England, sent a letter to the Pope about her discontent with the local bishop, sort of the equivalent of going directly to the manager. By twelve eighteen, the Pope wrote back and proclaimed that Isabel could not be excommunicated except by a direct order from Rome. Isabel used every tool in her arsenal to exert control over her inheritance, brute force against the barons, ride diplomacy among the bishops, even deceit occasionally to win the favor of her powerful children, Isabel needed deeper pockets to continue her war against the barons, so she sent please for finance shall help to her son in England, King Henry the Third. Technically Isabel owned a variety of dower estates in England, but Henry's Regency Council withheld the income from those estates out of fear that Isabel would use them to create her own base of power, which was in fact exactly what she was doing. In her letters to her son Henry, Isabel persuasively explained that her takeover of western France wasn't about personal interest, but instead was about maintaining the Anjevin Empire. She blamed the barons for collaborating with the King of France, and so she needed additional resources to squash their resistance before it turned into a crisis. Wouldn't Henry help his poor mother as she defended his empire. The letters worked, but even with the additional coin, Isabelle had to face the fact that she was in a pretty weak position. She was sandwiched in between the two massive kingdoms of England and France, operating on a paltry budget, and she had even failed to fully establish her claim over Angoulem. Her cousin Matilda, was also claiming those ancestral lands. Isabelle needed an ally, or alternatively a new husband. Back in twelve fourteen, isabel had betrothed her baby daughter Joan to a count named Hughes of Lusignan, a twenty four year old who ruled over the lands just north of Angoulem. The countess had originally intended for the powerful Lucignon family to act as allies of the English crown, but in twelve twenty, with John, King of England dead and Isabelle desperately needing support for her own government, she began to see Hughes, her would be future son in law in a new light. This now thirty year old count was dashing, a bachelor, and most important of all, in control of large and wealthy estates in some of the most hotly contested French territories. Isabelle broke off her daughter's engagement to Hughes and took the count for herself. It's also highly likely that the two had an affair leading up to the actual exchanging of vows, to make matters even more complicated. Before Isabelle had married King John of England twenty years earlier, she had originally been betrothed to Hugh's father, So in effect, the Countess ended up marrying the son of her former fiance and the former fiance of her daughter. Messi is an understatement, you can imagine what the thanksgivings would have been like. Even before this Messi second marriage, the chroniclers of the day already despised Isabel. They believed her wicked, adulterous, and manipulative, the very source of England's instability during her husband John's reign. In fact, this character portrait has no real basis. In reality, we have no evidence to suggest that Isabel had any say in matters of her husband's government, nor evidence that she had an affair while her husband was alive. The chroniclers did not take too kindly to her second marriage, seeing it as further proof of her depravity. One contemporary historian wrote that news of the marriage quote really stimulated conversation. Indeed, rumor got around that Isabel not only stole away her own daughter, Joan's future prospects, but also that she was keeping her daughter captive in order to extract a ransom from her son, King Henry the Third in England. These accusations eventually made their way to Rome, where the Pope furiously wrote to Isabel in twelve twenty one that her son had ultimate authority over his sister Joan. This in no way deterred Isabel from refusing to send her daughter to England. The Regency Council in England retaliated by confiscating Isabel's English estates, but when Isabel threatened to ally with the French king, the council relented. Of course. In letters to King Henry, her son, Isabel pretended all of this was in his best interest. Her marriage to Hughes was in service of the English crown, as she wrote in one letter, God knows we did this more for your sake than four hours. It was clear to all passers by that Isabel seemed willing to do almost anything in her pursuit of dynastic power, or at least control over her own lands. Many accounts describe her as vain, glorious, or megalomaniacal. She demanded a court befitting a queen, but operated on the income of three counties. She always expected to be taken seriously as a political actor, even when her power waned At the same time, she learned to try her best, and she often succeeded in switching sides between the English plantagenets and the French copetions when it was convenient for the growth of her own territory. For example, when the French King Louis the eighth died prematurely in twelve twenty six, Isabel sought an opportunity to win broader privileges from the fragile French kingdom, despite the fact that she technically owed full fealty to her son Henry in England. The King of England was sent into a spiral at this betrayal. He refused to send any more of the income from his mother's dower land, and no more imploring letters from Isabel would ever change his mind. This, of course, would pose quite the challenge for Angoulem, as it depended so much on English coin. This then, would have been the perfect time for Isabel to deepen her relationship with the new French king, now that she had all but ruined her relationship with her son Henry in England. The new king in France, Louis the ninth, was just a twelve year old boy when he took the throne, meaning most of the kingdom's affairs were vested in the hands of his mother and regent, Blanche of Castile, granddaughter of Eleanor of Aquitaine and sister to Isabel's late husband, King John. Unfortunately for Isabel and her grand designs at her own independent kingdom, Blanche, her previous sister in law, would prove to be more of a thorn in her backside than a stepping stone to power. To begin with, Blanche was everything that Isabel was not. Where Isabel's husband, King John had refused to invest the future of his heir in the hands of his wife Isabel, the old French king had entrusted Blante with the full stewardship of young Louis. Where Isabel had needed to remarry under scandalous circumstance in order to expand and hold her reach, Blanche had been able to preserve her widowhood and her reputation, all while commanding France's ruling Copetian dynasty. Contemporary accounts usually frame Isabelle as selfish and promiscuous and Blanche as sage and chaste, though we should be wary about those subjective and highly political and totalizing characterizations. Either way, Isabel undoubtedly agonized over the Queen consort and what Isabel considered Blanche's wicked brood of French princes. Isabelle was by no means impervious to jealousy, and it's exactly when she attempted to hurl down Blanche that the Countess of angouleem sealed her own fate. Well into the twelve thirties, Isabel continued signing her letters as the Queen of England, despite the fact that she hadn't stepped onto English soil for over a decade, and also despite the fact that she was taking every measure to actively ingratiate herself with France, the full enemies of the English crown. In twelve thirty, when Blanche foremented unrest among King Henry of England's vassals in Brittany, Isabel agreed to support Blanche's insurrection on the condition that one of her newborn children that she had with her second husband would be betrothed to one of Blanche's children. In other words, she was siding against her own oldest son, Henry, but there would be no better way of securing Isabel's dynasty than by using her newest children to mix in with the Kapecians sick Isabelle fashion, though her tactics changed as the winds of opportunity blew from one direction to the other. The agreement fell through, and by twelve thirty six, Isabelle was convincing the King of Navarre to wage war against the French King Louis on a promise of military aid. It took no time at all for the French to repel that attack, win the pope to their side, and disgrace Isabelle and Hughes for their treachery. The following years saw Isabelle and Hughes begin to lose their grip on the lands of Angoulem and Lucignan in the face of a prosperous and well governed French kingdom edging them out. Isabelle and her second husband simply didn't have the revenue, the military might, or the allies to compete with King Louis and his mother Blanche one on one. Isabel's worst fears culminated in a nighting ceremony that would go on to haunt isabel for the rest of her life. Before he died, the late King Louis the Eighth had dictated a comprehensive will. Among his stipulations was a decree that his and Blanche's son, Alphonse would receive the title to the County of Poitier when he came of age. Poitier overlapped with much of the territory that was formally controlled by Isabel and Hughes at the time of the late king's decree. That wasn't much of a problem. The French king was distracted with too many other things to really focus on consolidating his power in the west. Not to mention those western lands were also at the time occupied by baron's loyal to the English crown. But by twelve forty one, the political landscape was looking a lot worse for Isabelle. Prince Alphonse was angling to marry a princess from the County of Toulouse, which would threaten to create a block of southern territories that could easily all but absorb the land that Isabel had worked so tirelessly to make independent. A knighting ceremony where she would be expected to show fealty to Alphonse would only solidify that horrible state of affairs. Needless to say, Isabel went into that ceremony looking for trouble. The account we have of Alphonse's oath swearing ceremony was told by a baron to Queen Lance, who already hated jealous Isabel. So with that disclaimer, take the following events as I described them, with a grain of salt. There was a great feast in Poitier to celebrate the ceremony, and nobles from all over France streamed into the city for a cornucopia of savory meats, courtly games, and joyous camaraderie. King Louis, his younger brother Alphonse, and their entourage brought all of these festivities into the city, where Hughes was obligated to host and entertain his honored guests in preparation for the oath swearing. But during the actual ceremony there must have been some sort of mistake. Isabelle arrived to the oath swearing finding that Queen Blanche and several French countesses all had seats, while Isabelle, the Countess of Agoulem, and must she remind you, Dowager Queen of England, was somehow expected to stay. And the indecency outraged isabel so much that she apparently tore down the tapestries hanging over Hugh's throne, packed up the fine dinnerware, and even removed quote image of the Blessed Mary, along with the altar cloth and all the ornaments from the chapel. Isabel took everything fifty miles away to her own castle in Angoulem, in a fit of rage that could only have been meant to signal her anger at her husband, Hughes, who she blamed for failing to stand his ground in the face of their combined enemy. Hughes, understandably embarrassed, finished up the oath swearing, and then rushed off to confront Isabel, at which point she immediately scolded him, get away, get out of my sight. You are viler and baser than anybody else, and a reproach to everyone you've honored, the very people who disenhaet you. I'll never look at you again. Isabel refused to see her husband Hughes for three days, and, according to the writer of the letter that gives us that quote, what finally spurred Hughes to action was his wife's insistence that she wouldn't bed him until he rebelled against Queen Blanche. That most certainly is apocryphal, and it's worth noting that this detail both confirmed popular perceptions of Hughes as meek and Isabel as manipulative, exactly the sort of gossip that Blanche and the French court would have relished. What isn't apocryphal is that isabel played a major role in convincing Hughes to organize a rebellion against the French crown. It may have been symbolically sparked by Blanche's disrespect at court, but it was actually Isabelle's life last ditch effort to exert control over her inheritance. Hughes and isabel managed to recruit the Count of Toulouse as an ally, and they mustered every noble in the North that already resented Louis. In a familiar turn of events, Isabel reached out to the only person who wanted to see the ruin of the French more than she did. Her son. Henry, the King of England, looked past his rocky relationship with his mother in the face of this opportunity, and he gathered funding in late twelve forty one and early twelve forty two for an army. One chronicle relates the encounter between King Henry and his mother Isabel. When they finally met in France after decades of mutual vitriol apart, Isabel tenderly kissed her first born and in the sweetest tone, said to him, dear son, you have such a good character to help your mother and your brothers, whom the sons of Blanche of Spain want so wickedly to crush and keep under their feet. Tender maternal words. Notwithstanding, the invasion fell apart as soon as it began. The Count of Toulouse pulled his support. Henry wasn't able to raise a force large enough to compete with King Louis, and even Hughes only halfheartedly went about the whole rebellion thing, maybe hoping for an escape plan just in case. When the French and English armies met at Talburg in July twelve forty two, a French cavalry charge decimated the English forces. King Louis handed Henry a defeat so horrendous that the English king would have been captured had it not been for the diplomatic intervention of Henry's brother Richard. Hughes switched sides, to the chagrin of his wife in less than a week of fighting. According to a popular myth, one that we can't verify or completely disprove, Isabel made a last stand by hiring out two serfs to poison the French king. Promised vast estates and noble titles. The two paupers managed to poison the meat and drink of Louis and Alphonse, but as we know, they were caught in the act and hanged for their treason. One rumor circulating claimed that isabel tried and failed to commit suicide when she heard the news of the serf's hangings. Another source says that she broke down beyond consolation. As punishment for their betrayal, King Louis forced Isabelle and Hughes to finance three French garrisons in their own territories. He also took Isabelle's titles and cut her off from any pensions the French crown may have allotted her in the past. Isabel and Hughes signed a joint charter to dissolve and disseminate their holdings across their nine children in medieval royal customs that effectively amounted to a divorce twenty years of scheming, building, maneuvering, and fighting all gone to waste. Isabel, at fifty three years old, was almost exactly where she had started when she left England as a widow at twenty five, cut off from the royal family and without a state of her own. Contemporary chronicles regularly depict Isabel as a heartless mother and an unfaithful wife. Many of these chronicles were themselves written from the perspective of the French monarchy, so we'd be right to question their characterizations. Certainly, Isabel is the villain of the story. From that perspective, There's no doubt that Isabel had grand ambitions and took extreme measures, going so far as to side against her children to get what she wanted. But at the end of the day, she was a fairly intelligent political schemer and a competent administrator, who, like all members of the aristocracy, angled to conserve her estates and increase her own lavish income. She may have flown to close to the sun by the end, but twenty years of playing the English and French off one another was no simple task. One cannot tell a full story of the Countess of Angoulem without at least giving her that Hughes was the laughing stock of the French nobility for the rest of his life. In time, his reputation improved a little, especially as he died on a crusade to the Holy Lands in an act of political and spiritual penance. Isabel also found her own way to God in the final years of her life. Disgraced and despairing, she retreated to the abbey of Fontrevau and took holy orders in twelve forty three. Right before her death in twelve forty six, Isabel wrote a final plea, this time to the French King, begging him to look after her children that she had with Hughes, to ensure that they would receive their fair share of her inheritance. This letter was completely unlike every other that she wrote in her lifetime. The parchment is of inferior quality. It phrays at the edges. In it, she begs not from a position of high court, but from the lowly chambers of a nun's scriptorium. Yet still at the bottom of the page her same old signature Isabelle, Queen of England. That's the complicated story of Isabelle of Angoulem. But keep listening. After a sponsor break to hear a little bit more about her family legacy. Isabel ordered that she be buried in the common plots outside the Abbey of Fonteiveau when she died. These plots were reserved for the brothers and sisters of the Order, never ever for a noble let alone a member of the Plantagenet royal family. The abbey itself had deep ancestral ties to the Duchy of Aquitaine and the English royal family. Eleanor of Aquitaine, who was Isabel's mother in law, had patronized the abbey for over sixty years, funding a massive octagonal kitchen with multiple fireplaces. The abbey would also serve as Eleanor's base of power for the latter half of her life, and it was an ideal accommodation for anyone loosely affiliated with the royal family. While Isabel carried out penance by taking the veil, she most definitely lived with some degree of luxury at the end of her life. Being buried in the common plots, however, was too extreme an act of penance. When Isabel's son Henry visited the abbey in twelve fifty four and learned about his mother's unceremonious burial, he ordered her reinterment in the abbey itself, next to the remains of Henry the Second and Eleanor of Aquitaine. In another act of grace towards the memory of his mother, Henry the third invited the five sons of Isabel's second marriage to England, understanding that their options in France were limited by the poor reputation of their parents. If you went to the abbey today, located near the French city of chinand you'd find a bust of Isabel situated atop what looked like a tomb, but her remains aren't there. During the French Revolution, after the nascent government of the Third Estate declared all monasteries property of the nation, radicals exhumed Isabel's bone bones in addition to the bones of Henry and Eleanor, and scattered them across the fields outside, never to be recovered. Noble Blood is a production of iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Manky. Noble Blood is created and hosted by me Dana Schwartz, with additional writing and researching by Hannah Johnston, Hanna Zwick, Mira Hayward, Courtney Sender, and Lori Goodman. The show is edited and produced by Noemi Griffin and rima Il Kahali, with supervising producer Josh Sayin and executive producers Aaron Manke, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Manky listener Discretion advised. One night in twelve forty two, Louis the ninth King of France was settling in for an ordinary dinner when the Royal food taster began doing the thing you never want to see the royal food taster do. After taking a bite of food, he began hacking and coughing. It seemed that food taster earned his paycheck with that meal. Somebody had poisoned the King's meat and wine. The guards sprang into action and began searching the royal grounds. By chance, they stumbled upon two suspicious peasants who happened to be lurking near the kitchens. Two peasants were tortured until they delivered a confession, and it was a startling one. Not only had they would be assassins poisoned the King's meal, they also confessed that they had been hired to do so by a former Queen of England, who had promised them riches and status in return for their services. The entire botched poisoning was a massive success for the French on all counts. The French king had avoided death, they had caught the villains, and as a bonus, an English queen was implicated. That, at least was the story that passed around the French court in the summer of twelve forty two. The truth of the events probably looked more like this. One night in twelve forty two, two peasants were found rummaging through King Louis supplies while the king was out campaigning against some rebellious barons. These two peasants were most likely caught trying to take some food and drink, and they were hanged according to martial law. News of local thieves somehow transformed, through rumor and storytelling, into news about local assassins. Rummaging in the royal stores of mead and meat turned into an attempted poisoning, and an otherwise ordinary crime turned into a geopolitical plot of the highest order. So who was this Queen of England who was so reviled that what may very well have just been the honest crime of two poor souls evolved into her elaborate conspiracy against the French king. If it wasn't already clear, Isabelle of ANGLEM Dowager Queen of England was not exactly beloved by King Louis the Ninth or court. She was rather, as powerful women often are, the perfect candidate for the rumor mail. After the supposed assassination attempt, some believed that Isabel attempted suicide as the culmination for her life sins. Others believed that she fled to a nearby abbey for sanctuary from Louis's reprisals. All agreed that she would do whatever it took to avoid losing a trial, to hold on to whatever crumbs of power she had left after decades of losing ground to an aggressive French kingdom. The history of the rumor of the attempted poisoning is frankly a minuscule part of Isabel's life story, but it illustrates the problem with uncovering the historical Isabel quite well. Whatever the medieval chronicles say about her is distorted by dynastic drama and political biases. They paint her as a scandal inducing affair having Jezebel who drove two kingdoms into turmoil, first England and then Western France. But if we cut through the gossip, what would we actually find a heartless mother, or exactly the type of ruthless parents that medieval politics rewarded, a cunning and deceitful sorceress, or a dowager queen so relentless in her pursuit of freedom from both the English and the French that she earned a bad reputation in both kingdoms. Isabel tried, but ultimately failed to establish a dynasty of her own. But if she hadn't rocked the foundations of England and France, why would she ever have been worth the elaborate smear campaign in the first place. This is the story of a queen turned nun who, in trying to play both sides, ended up playing herself, a rogue royal who, even when stripped of her titles, lands and reputation, refused to stop signing her name as Dowager Queen of England. I'm Danish schwartz and this is noble blood. In the month of October twelve sixteen, Isabelle of Angoulem learned that her husband, the King of England and patriarch of the House of Plantagenet, had died. King John had spent the past year embroiled in a war against his barons, who raised demands in a little treaty called the Magna Carta, which John had absolutely no intention of accepting. The vain king marched from county to county, pillaging as he went along, all the while his wife remained confined to a castle in the city of Bristol. When she heard the news that dysentery took John, she probably felt a weight lift from her shoulders. For context, this is the King John, who was the younger brother of Richard the Lionheart, the guy who's the villainous Prince John in several adaptations of robin Hood. Upon the death of his brother Richard, John inherited not only the Kingdom of England, but also a vast swathe of territory in western France, encompassing Normandy, Brittany, and Aquitaine together called the Anchovin Empire. John's queen, Isabel, was originally from the French city of Angoulem, part of the land that she was technically supposed to inherit from her father account, but Isabel never spent much time with her inheritance, owing to the fact that she married John when she was only twelve. By all accounts, their marriage was considered scandalous from the start. In twelve hundred, Isabel was already betrothed to a French count. The union of their lands in central and western France would have cut off the northern part of John's empire in Normandy from the southern part in Aquitaine. As any conniving king would do, John made a back room deal to cut off Isabel's betrothal to that count, and he promptly married the girl himself. From twelve hundred to twelve sixteen, Isabel reigned as the Queen of England, but in fact she resided in what amounted to a golden cage, let out at the whims of her husband. According to the terms of their marriage, Isabel was entitled to rents from royal estates, but her husband frequently intercepted these funds to spend on his own lavish wardrobe. Instead of lodging Isabel in her own household as was customary, John thought it fit to put her up in the apartments of his former wife, the Countess of Gloucester, and then in the household of his mistress, the Lady de Neville. Most disturbingly, after Isabel bore her first child, Henry, in twelve oh seven, the Canterbury chronicles refer to her as being quote in custody. A few historians have speculated that Isabel was under some kind of house arrest, and this seems corroborated by the relative absence of her name among contemporary letters and court records. Either way, what's certain is that Isabel's husband humiliated her, stole her in, and confined her to a handful of castles. At some point in the sixteen years of her English captivity, Isabel decided she would no longer take being upawn in other people's politics. When her husband died, she may have mourned he was, after all, the father of her four children. We know that she made three offerings for the salvation of her husband's soul in the months that followed, but she never again mentioned her husband in any of her correspondents for the remaining thirty years of her life. This feeling of indifference was probably reciprocal. Considering that John invested the care of his heir henry in the hands of an esteemed earl and not the boy's own mother, Isabel had little to no chance of assuming any power in England. She was pushed out of the Regency council and the very men that made up that council seemed to have purchased a well chartered ship for Isabel to be on her merry way off of English shores and back to France. Isabel left behind her young sons, Henry and Richard, and took only her daughter Joan with her as she set sail for the continent. Was it ruthless for a mother to have abandoned her children upon the death of their father. The medieval chronicles certainly say so, and while they certainly overexaggerate Isabel's egomania and irresponsibility, her actions suggest that she was, if anything, opportunistic, and her husband's death just so happened to present an opportunity to reclaim her inheritance and establish her own little kingdom in western France. In the year twelve seventeen, Isabel entered the French city of Angoulem to great fanfare by the local populace, So much fanfare that the mayor of Angoulem even bestowed upon Isabel the keys to the city. Only a few years before Isabelle's arrival, King John had assigned a group of administrators and barons to oversee the county of Angoulem oversee its principal estates revenues and defense. Isabel planned to rest political control back from her late husband's group, but there would be serious obstacles in her path. From twelve seventeen to twelve nineteen, those barons launched rebellious campaigns against Isabel's rule. She used every ruthless strategy in her playbook to subdue her vassals. In one case, she took the two sons of one baron hostage until capitulated, a tactic considered so extreme that a bishop in a nearby city threatened Isabel with excommunication. Isabel, leveraging her prestige as a dowager Queen of England, sent a letter to the Pope about her discontent with the local bishop, sort of the equivalent of going directly to the manager. By twelve eighteen, the Pope wrote back and proclaimed that Isabel could not be excommunicated except by a direct order from Rome. Isabel used every tool in her arsenal to exert control over her inheritance, brute force against the barons, ride diplomacy among the bishops, even deceit occasionally to win the favor of her powerful children, Isabel needed deeper pockets to continue her war against the barons, so she sent please for finance shall help to her son in England, King Henry the Third. Technically Isabel owned a variety of dower estates in England, but Henry's Regency Council withheld the income from those estates out of fear that Isabel would use them to create her own base of power, which was in fact exactly what she was doing. In her letters to her son Henry, Isabel persuasively explained that her takeover of western France wasn't about personal interest, but instead was about maintaining the Anjevin Empire. She blamed the barons for collaborating with the King of France, and so she needed additional resources to squash their resistance before it turned into a crisis. Wouldn't Henry help his poor mother as she defended his empire. The letters worked, but even with the additional coin, Isabelle had to face the fact that she was in a pretty weak position. She was sandwiched in between the two massive kingdoms of England and France, operating on a paltry budget, and she had even failed to fully establish her claim over Angoulem. Her cousin Matilda, was also claiming those ancestral lands. Isabelle needed an ally, or alternatively a new husband. Back in twelve fourteen, isabel had betrothed her baby daughter Joan to a count named Hughes of Lusignan, a twenty four year old who ruled over the lands just north of Angoulem. The countess had originally intended for the powerful Lucignon family to act as allies of the English crown, but in twelve twenty, with John, King of England dead and Isabelle desperately needing support for her own government, she began to see Hughes, her would be future son in law in a new light. This now thirty year old count was dashing, a bachelor, and most important of all, in control of large and wealthy estates in some of the most hotly contested French territories. Isabelle broke off her daughter's engagement to Hughes and took the count for herself. It's also highly likely that the two had an affair leading up to the actual exchanging of vows, to make matters even more complicated. Before Isabelle had married King John of England twenty years earlier, she had originally been betrothed to Hugh's father, So in effect, the Countess ended up marrying the son of her former fiance and the former fiance of her daughter. Messi is an understatement, you can imagine what the thanksgivings would have been like. Even before this Messi second marriage, the chroniclers of the day already despised Isabel. They believed her wicked, adulterous, and manipulative, the very source of England's instability during her husband John's reign. In fact, this character portrait has no real basis. In reality, we have no evidence to suggest that Isabel had any say in matters of her husband's government, nor evidence that she had an affair while her husband was alive. The chroniclers did not take too kindly to her second marriage, seeing it as further proof of her depravity. One contemporary historian wrote that news of the marriage quote really stimulated conversation. Indeed, rumor got around that Isabel not only stole away her own daughter, Joan's future prospects, but also that she was keeping her daughter captive in order to extract a ransom from her son, King Henry the Third in England. These accusations eventually made their way to Rome, where the Pope furiously wrote to Isabel in twelve twenty one that her son had ultimate authority over his sister Joan. This in no way deterred Isabel from refusing to send her daughter to England. The Regency Council in England retaliated by confiscating Isabel's English estates, but when Isabel threatened to ally with the French king, the council relented. Of course. In letters to King Henry, her son, Isabel pretended all of this was in his best interest. Her marriage to Hughes was in service of the English crown, as she wrote in one letter, God knows we did this more for your sake than four hours. It was clear to all passers by that Isabel seemed willing to do almost anything in her pursuit of dynastic power, or at least control over her own lands. Many accounts describe her as vain, glorious, or megalomaniacal. She demanded a court befitting a queen, but operated on the income of three counties. She always expected to be taken seriously as a political actor, even when her power waned At the same time, she learned to try her best, and she often succeeded in switching sides between the English plantagenets and the French copetions when it was convenient for the growth of her own territory. For example, when the French King Louis the eighth died prematurely in twelve twenty six, Isabel sought an opportunity to win broader privileges from the fragile French kingdom, despite the fact that she technically owed full fealty to her son Henry in England. The King of England was sent into a spiral at this betrayal. He refused to send any more of the income from his mother's dower land, and no more imploring letters from Isabel would ever change his mind. This, of course, would pose quite the challenge for Angoulem, as it depended so much on English coin. This then, would have been the perfect time for Isabel to deepen her relationship with the new French king, now that she had all but ruined her relationship with her son Henry in England. The new king in France, Louis the ninth, was just a twelve year old boy when he took the throne, meaning most of the kingdom's affairs were vested in the hands of his mother and regent, Blanche of Castile, granddaughter of Eleanor of Aquitaine and sister to Isabel's late husband, King John. Unfortunately for Isabel and her grand designs at her own independent kingdom, Blanche, her previous sister in law, would prove to be more of a thorn in her backside than a stepping stone to power. To begin with, Blanche was everything that Isabel was not. Where Isabel's husband, King John had refused to invest the future of his heir in the hands of his wife Isabel, the old French king had entrusted Blante with the full stewardship of young Louis. Where Isabel had needed to remarry under scandalous circumstance in order to expand and hold her reach, Blanche had been able to preserve her widowhood and her reputation, all while commanding France's ruling Copetian dynasty. Contemporary accounts usually frame Isabelle as selfish and promiscuous and Blanche as sage and chaste, though we should be wary about those subjective and highly political and totalizing characterizations. Either way, Isabel undoubtedly agonized over the Queen consort and what Isabel considered Blanche's wicked brood of French princes. Isabelle was by no means impervious to jealousy, and it's exactly when she attempted to hurl down Blanche that the Countess of angouleem sealed her own fate. Well into the twelve thirties, Isabel continued signing her letters as the Queen of England, despite the fact that she hadn't stepped onto English soil for over a decade, and also despite the fact that she was taking every measure to actively ingratiate herself with France, the full enemies of the English crown. In twelve thirty, when Blanche foremented unrest among King Henry of England's vassals in Brittany, Isabel agreed to support Blanche's insurrection on the condition that one of her newborn children that she had with her second husband would be betrothed to one of Blanche's children. In other words, she was siding against her own oldest son, Henry, but there would be no better way of securing Isabel's dynasty than by using her newest children to mix in with the Kapecians sick Isabelle fashion, though her tactics changed as the winds of opportunity blew from one direction to the other. The agreement fell through, and by twelve thirty six, Isabelle was convincing the King of Navarre to wage war against the French King Louis on a promise of military aid. It took no time at all for the French to repel that attack, win the pope to their side, and disgrace Isabelle and Hughes for their treachery. The following years saw Isabelle and Hughes begin to lose their grip on the lands of Angoulem and Lucignan in the face of a prosperous and well governed French kingdom edging them out. Isabelle and her second husband simply didn't have the revenue, the military might, or the allies to compete with King Louis and his mother Blanche one on one. Isabel's worst fears culminated in a nighting ceremony that would go on to haunt isabel for the rest of her life. Before he died, the late King Louis the Eighth had dictated a comprehensive will. Among his stipulations was a decree that his and Blanche's son, Alphonse would receive the title to the County of Poitier when he came of age. Poitier overlapped with much of the territory that was formally controlled by Isabel and Hughes at the time of the late king's decree. That wasn't much of a problem. The French king was distracted with too many other things to really focus on consolidating his power in the west. Not to mention those western lands were also at the time occupied by baron's loyal to the English crown. But by twelve forty one, the political landscape was looking a lot worse for Isabelle. Prince Alphonse was angling to marry a princess from the County of Toulouse, which would threaten to create a block of southern territories that could easily all but absorb the land that Isabel had worked so tirelessly to make independent. A knighting ceremony where she would be expected to show fealty to Alphonse would only solidify that horrible state of affairs. Needless to say, Isabel went into that ceremony looking for trouble. The account we have of Alphonse's oath swearing ceremony was told by a baron to Queen Lance, who already hated jealous Isabel. So with that disclaimer, take the following events as I described them, with a grain of salt. There was a great feast in Poitier to celebrate the ceremony, and nobles from all over France streamed into the city for a cornucopia of savory meats, courtly games, and joyous camaraderie. King Louis, his younger brother Alphonse, and their entourage brought all of these festivities into the city, where Hughes was obligated to host and entertain his honored guests in preparation for the oath swearing. But during the actual ceremony there must have been some sort of mistake. Isabelle arrived to the oath swearing finding that Queen Blanche and several French countesses all had seats, while Isabelle, the Countess of Agoulem, and must she remind you, Dowager Queen of England, was somehow expected to stay. And the indecency outraged isabel so much that she apparently tore down the tapestries hanging over Hugh's throne, packed up the fine dinnerware, and even removed quote image of the Blessed Mary, along with the altar cloth and all the ornaments from the chapel. Isabel took everything fifty miles away to her own castle in Angoulem, in a fit of rage that could only have been meant to signal her anger at her husband, Hughes, who she blamed for failing to stand his ground in the face of their combined enemy. Hughes, understandably embarrassed, finished up the oath swearing, and then rushed off to confront Isabel, at which point she immediately scolded him, get away, get out of my sight. You are viler and baser than anybody else, and a reproach to everyone you've honored, the very people who disenhaet you. I'll never look at you again. Isabel refused to see her husband Hughes for three days, and, according to the writer of the letter that gives us that quote, what finally spurred Hughes to action was his wife's insistence that she wouldn't bed him until he rebelled against Queen Blanche. That most certainly is apocryphal, and it's worth noting that this detail both confirmed popular perceptions of Hughes as meek and Isabel as manipulative, exactly the sort of gossip that Blanche and the French court would have relished. What isn't apocryphal is that isabel played a major role in convincing Hughes to organize a rebellion against the French crown. It may have been symbolically sparked by Blanche's disrespect at court, but it was actually Isabelle's life last ditch effort to exert control over her inheritance. Hughes and isabel managed to recruit the Count of Toulouse as an ally, and they mustered every noble in the North that already resented Louis. In a familiar turn of events, Isabel reached out to the only person who wanted to see the ruin of the French more than she did. Her son. Henry, the King of England, looked past his rocky relationship with his mother in the face of this opportunity, and he gathered funding in late twelve forty one and early twelve forty two for an army. One chronicle relates the encounter between King Henry and his mother Isabel. When they finally met in France after decades of mutual vitriol apart, Isabel tenderly kissed her first born and in the sweetest tone, said to him, dear son, you have such a good character to help your mother and your brothers, whom the sons of Blanche of Spain want so wickedly to crush and keep under their feet. Tender maternal words. Notwithstanding, the invasion fell apart as soon as it began. The Count of Toulouse pulled his support. Henry wasn't able to raise a force large enough to compete with King Louis, and even Hughes only halfheartedly went about the whole rebellion thing, maybe hoping for an escape plan just in case. When the French and English armies met at Talburg in July twelve forty two, a French cavalry charge decimated the English forces. King Louis handed Henry a defeat so horrendous that the English king would have been captured had it not been for the diplomatic intervention of Henry's brother Richard. Hughes switched sides, to the chagrin of his wife in less than a week of fighting. According to a popular myth, one that we can't verify or completely disprove, Isabel made a last stand by hiring out two serfs to poison the French king. Promised vast estates and noble titles. The two paupers managed to poison the meat and drink of Louis and Alphonse, but as we know, they were caught in the act and hanged for their treason. One rumor circulating claimed that isabel tried and failed to commit suicide when she heard the news of the serf's hangings. Another source says that she broke down beyond consolation. As punishment for their betrayal, King Louis forced Isabelle and Hughes to finance three French garrisons in their own territories. He also took Isabelle's titles and cut her off from any pensions the French crown may have allotted her in the past. Isabel and Hughes signed a joint charter to dissolve and disseminate their holdings across their nine children in medieval royal customs that effectively amounted to a divorce twenty years of scheming, building, maneuvering, and fighting all gone to waste. Isabel, at fifty three years old, was almost exactly where she had started when she left England as a widow at twenty five, cut off from the royal family and without a state of her own. Contemporary chronicles regularly depict Isabel as a heartless mother and an unfaithful wife. Many of these chronicles were themselves written from the perspective of the French monarchy, so we'd be right to question their characterizations. Certainly, Isabel is the villain of the story. From that perspective, There's no doubt that Isabel had grand ambitions and took extreme measures, going so far as to side against her children to get what she wanted. But at the end of the day, she was a fairly intelligent political schemer and a competent administrator, who, like all members of the aristocracy, angled to conserve her estates and increase her own lavish income. She may have flown to close to the sun by the end, but twenty years of playing the English and French off one another was no simple task. One cannot tell a full story of the Countess of Angoulem without at least giving her that Hughes was the laughing stock of the French nobility for the rest of his life. In time, his reputation improved a little, especially as he died on a crusade to the Holy Lands in an act of political and spiritual penance. Isabel also found her own way to God in the final years of her life. Disgraced and despairing, she retreated to the abbey of Fontrevau and took holy orders in twelve forty three. Right before her death in twelve forty six, Isabel wrote a final plea, this time to the French King, begging him to look after her children that she had with Hughes, to ensure that they would receive their fair share of her inheritance. This letter was completely unlike every other that she wrote in her lifetime. The parchment is of inferior quality. It phrays at the edges. In it, she begs not from a position of high court, but from the lowly chambers of a nun's scriptorium. Yet still at the bottom of the page her same old signature Isabelle, Queen of England. That's the complicated story of Isabelle of Angoulem. But keep listening. After a sponsor break to hear a little bit more about her family legacy. Isabel ordered that she be buried in the common plots outside the Abbey of Fonteiveau when she died. These plots were reserved for the brothers and sisters of the Order, never ever for a noble let alone a member of the Plantagenet royal family. The abbey itself had deep ancestral ties to the Duchy of Aquitaine and the English royal family. Eleanor of Aquitaine, who was Isabel's mother in law, had patronized the abbey for over sixty years, funding a massive octagonal kitchen with multiple fireplaces. The abbey would also serve as Eleanor's base of power for the latter half of her life, and it was an ideal accommodation for anyone loosely affiliated with the royal family. While Isabel carried out penance by taking the veil, she most definitely lived with some degree of luxury at the end of her life. Being buried in the common plots, however, was too extreme an act of penance. When Isabel's son Henry visited the abbey in twelve fifty four and learned about his mother's unceremonious burial, he ordered her reinterment in the abbey itself, next to the remains of Henry the Second and Eleanor of Aquitaine. In another act of grace towards the memory of his mother, Henry the third invited the five sons of Isabel's second marriage to England, understanding that their options in France were limited by the poor reputation of their parents. If you went to the abbey today, located near the French city of chinand you'd find a bust of Isabel situated atop what looked like a tomb, but her remains aren't there. During the French Revolution, after the nascent government of the Third Estate declared all monasteries property of the nation, radicals exhumed Isabel's bone bones in addition to the bones of Henry and Eleanor, and scattered them across the fields outside, never to be recovered. Noble Blood is a production of iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Manky. Noble Blood is created and hosted by me Dana Schwartz, with additional writing and researching by Hannah Johnston, Hanna Zwick, Mira Hayward, Courtney Sender, and Lori Goodman. The show is edited and produced by Noemi Griffin and rima Il Kahali, with supervising producer Josh Sayin and executive producers Aaron Manke, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.