![]() ![]() ![]() She identifies each wife of the reining monarch, then. Biographies of some of the better-known power-brokers, such as Eleanor of Aquitaine (whose ambitions eventually led to her imprisonment) and Eleanor of Castile, the avaricious wife of Edward I, could have dominated, but the story of Matilda of Flanders, the wife of William the Conqueror, shows a spirited descendant of French kings who initially refused marriage to her illegitimate husband, and might have had a mistress of William's put to death. Lisa Hilton has written a comprehensive study of nineteen queens of England spanning five hundred years. Still, Isabella is a good example of just how much power a medieval queen could wield. ![]() She also dispels another myth: the red-hot poker story may have inspired Derek Jarman and Christopher Marlowe, but it probably wasn't true. Isabella, who was considered responsible for the murder and the manner of it, largely escaped punishment even though she was, as Hilton notes, a queen who "had managed to do something practically unthinkable: to depose an anointed king". Probably the most notorious of England's medieval queens was Isabella of France, the wife of Edward II – few of us don't know about the red-hot poker murder that ended his life, a grisly death meant also to signify Edward's homosexual practices. ![]()
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