Born: circa 1187, France
Died: 1246
Country most active: United Kingdom
Also known as: Isabelle
This biography, written by Gabby Storey, is shared with permission from Team Queens, an educational history blog run by a collective of historical scholars. All rights reserved; this material may not be republished without the author’s consent.
Isabella (c.1186/1188-1246) was the sole heiress to Ademar, count of Angoulême, and Alice de Courtenay, granddaughter of Louis VI of France. Isabella was a prized heiress due to her familial connections and was betrothed to Hugh IX de Lusignan.
This betrothal was not to last, as John, king of England, arranged his own betrothal with Isabella and married her in August 1200, making her queen consort of England. Isabella faced competition with her mother-in-law and sister-in-law for access to revenues.
John’s control over her dower lands and finances leaves little trace of Isabella’s time as queen and countess during her first marriage. She produced five sons and daughters between 1207 and 1215, thus fulfilling her role to bear royal heirs.
Following John’s death in 1216, Isabella returned to France in 1217. Excluded from the regency council and Angevin politics, Isabella had little opportunity but to re-establish herself as countess. She married Hugh X of Lusignan in 1220, a marriage not without controversy.
From the 1220s onwards, Isabella and Hugh regularly petitioned the English crown for funds and lands, and changed alliances between the Plantagenets and Capetians to achieve these ends. She and Hugh produced nine children.
This political rivalry continued into the 1240s. Isabella’s refusal to pay homage in 1241 to French king Louis IX’s brother Alfonso of Castile, amongst political tensions, led to rebellion, which resulted in Isabella being sidelined by all.
Isabella was undoubtedly more active in her dowager period, and exercised power more effectively as countess in her dowager period than as a consort. She retired to Fontevraud and died on 4 June 1246, and was later buried at the abbey alongside some of the other Plantagenet rulers.
Recommended Reading
Gabriel Biancotto, Robert Favreau and Piotr Skubiszewski, eds., Isabelle d’Angoulême: comtesse-reine et son temps (Poitiers: CESCM, 1999)
Louise J. Wilkinson, “Maternal Abandonment and Surrogate Caregivers: Isabella of Angoulême and Her Children by King John,” in Virtuous or Villainess? The Image of the Royal Mother from the Early Medieval to the Early Modern Era, eds., Carey Fleiner and Elena Woodacre, 101-124 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016)
Nicholas Vincent, “Isabella of Angoulême: John’s Jezebel,” in King John, New Interpretations, ed. S. D. Church, 165-219 (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1999)
Sophie Fougère, Isabelle d’Angoulême, reine d’Angleterre (Paris: Edit-France, 1998).
The following is excerpted from the Dictionary of National Biography, originally published between 1885 and 1900, by Smith, Elder & Co. It was written by William Hunt.
ISABELLA of Angoulême (d. 1246), queen of John [q. v.], daughter and heiress of Aymer, count of Angoulême, by Alicia, daughter of Peter of Courtenay, a younger son of Louis VI of France, was by the advice of Richard of England solemnly espoused to Hugh of Lusignan, called ‘le Brun,’ eldest son of Hugh IX, ‘le Brun,’ count of La Marche, and lived under the care of her betrothed husband’s family, though the marriage was not completed on account of her youth. When John was in France in 1200 he agreed to marry her, and, her father having obtained the custody of her by craft, she was married to the king at Angoulême by the Archbishop of Bordeaux on or about 26 Aug. John’s marriage with her led to the loss of nearly all his continental possessions [see under John]. She accompanied her husband to England, and was crowned with him by Archbishop Hubert at Westminster on 8 Oct. The crown was again placed on her head at the court held at Canterbury at Easter, 25 March 1201. In May she went with her husband to Normandy, where she shared his idle, luxurious life, his carelessness about the loss of his dominions being in some measure ascribed to his fondness for her (Wendover, iii. 171, 181). She bore her first-born son, afterwards Henry III [q. v.], on 1 Oct. 1207. In 1213 she inherited Angoumois, and early in the next year sailed with her husband to Rochelle and visited her city of Angoulême. John was an extremely unfaithful husband, but it is said that she also was guilty of infidelities, and that the king put her lovers to death. In December 1214 John ordered that she should be kept in confinement at Gloucester, and she was probably there at the time of his death. In 1217 she returned to her own country, and wrote several letters asking for help from England against the French king. In May 1220 she married her old lover Hugh, who had succeeded his father as count of La Marche, and was betrothed to her daughter Joanna. She demanded her dowry and especially Niort, the castles of Exeter and Rockingham, and 3,500 marks. Her demands not being granted, she stirred up her husband and his house to acts of hostility against her son’s subjects in Poitou, for which she was threatened with excommunication by Honorius III, and she seems to have been disposed to detain Joanna, who was to marry Alexander of Scotland; but Honorius wrote decidedly to Hugh on the matter, and a severe illness caused him to send Joanna back to her brother in November. Relying on help from England, Isabella, in December 1241, persuaded her husband to refuse to do homage to Alfonso, brother of Louis IX, as count of Poitou; she was present at the count’s court at Christmas, when Hugh defied Alfonso, and rode off with her husband and his men-at-arms through the midst of Alfonso’s troops. Henry made alliance with Hugh and his mother as countess of Angoulême, and when Louis and Alfonso invaded La Marche brought an army over to help them. Hugh played him false at Taillebourg, and declared that his change of conduct was entirely due to his wife’s intrigues. They both submitted unreservedly to Louis and were pardoned. Isabella is said to have sent two servants to poison the French king and his brother, and when the attempt was discovered to have tried to stab herself in a rage, and to have fallen in a severe sickness from mortification (William de Nangis; Chron. de St.-Denys). The attempt probably belongs to the time when the king and his brother were overrunning La Marche, and its discovery may be connected with the charge brought against Hugh in 1243 by a French knight who challenged him to combat. Alfonso spoke bitterly of Hugh’s misdeeds, and on hearing this Isabella fled to Fontevraud and dwelt with the nuns there (Matt. Paris). She died at Fontevraud in 1246, hated both by English and Poitevins, and was buried in the cemetery of the house. In 1254 Henry III visited her grave, caused her body to be moved into the church, and placed a tomb over it. The effigy on her tomb is still to be seen at Foutevraud; an engraving of it by Stothard has been partly reproduced for Miss Strickland’s ‘Queens of England.’
Isabella was a beautiful and mischievous woman. By John she had two sons and three daughters [see under John], and by Hugh le Brun five sons (Hugh of Lusignan who succeeded his father; Guy, lord of Cognac; William of Valence; Geoffrey of Lusignan, lord of Châteauneuf; and Aymer of Valence, bishop of Winchester [see Aymer]; the four younger were of note in England) and probably three daughters, of whom Margaret married Raymond VII, count of Toulouse, and Alicia married John, earl of Warren.