ARTICLES ET MÉLANGES ARTIKELEN EN MENGELINGEN
Isabelle d'Angoulême, By the Grace of God, Queen (*)
William Chester Jordan
Few women were in a position to play as important a role in the politics of both England and France in the thirteenth century as the Poitevin countess, Isabelle d'Angoulême — first as the wife of King John of England and later as the wife of the powerful French baron, Hugues de Lusignan, count of La Marche. Indications of her role are plentiful in the surviving sources ; yet, no one has written a satisfying biography of her. There are helpful words in Powicke's massive study of thirteenth-century politics in England, but for a biographical treatment worthy of the name one has to read the old and terse sketch in the Dictionary of National Biography (!). The late nineteen- forties and early nineteen-fifties saw a cluster of short articles debate the precise chronology of events leading up to and following King John's "abduction" of Isabelle in the year 1200 (2). But since then scholars have paid very little
(*) This paper has benefitted from the friendly criticisms of Professor Reid Mitchell of the Department of History, Princeton University. I want to take this opportunity to thank him publicly. I want also to acknowledge the valuable criticism of the Johns Hopkins History Department Seminar where a version of this paper was discussed on 31 January 1990.
(1) F. Powicke, The Thirteenth Century (Oxford, 1953), especially pp. 89-90 ; Dictionary of National Biography, ed. L. Stephen and S. Lee, 63 vols. (London, 1885-1900), X, 500-01.
(2) S. Painter, Feudalism and Liberty, ed. F. Cazel (Baltimore, 1961), pp. 165- 77, reprints his and Cazel's original contributions. They attacked H. G. Richardson's now completely discredited views of the absolutely unrelieved bias of the narrative
