Behold the Bird in Flight
Isabelle of Angoulême, like many women in medieval royal marriages, dwells in the shadows of history, valued only for producing heirs, and for bringing power and land to their royal husbands. Isabelle’s life is brought into the light in Lewis’s new exploration – a 12-year-old beauty married to King John (yes, the ‘bad’ one) who gave him five children, all of whom survived childhood. Isabelle first caught my attention almost forty years ago in Penman’s Here Be Dragons trilogy. John and Isabelle’s meeting is similarly worked, although historical details are vague, and in aid of a smoother plot, Lewis betroths Isabelle to Hugh X of Lusignan. History indicates it was his father, Hugh IX to whom the betrothal was made. However, after John’s death, Isabelle, now 28, returned to France, married Hugh the younger, and bore him nine children between 1220 and 1229, although the novel does not cover this marriage.
Life during the reign of King John (1189-1216) would have been tumultuous even for a queen, and the tense times are well drawn. John and his barons bickered constantly, and England’s disputes with Philip of France must have been very unsettling for the very young and French Isabelle. Lewis crafts an intriguing story, giving her words a young-adult feel at the start, when Isabelle is a carefree eleven-year-old, and moving to more serious tone as her story progresses. At times it veers marginally too far into romance for me, but Lewis fulfills her mission to bring Isabelle’s royal life to the forefront. It does not solve the question of whether she was complicit in her abduction by John, but some historical mysteries are best left unaccounted for, and modern-day morals and values don’t apply to 13th-century life. Lewis gives an overdue voice to a passionate and remarkably resilient woman.
