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21 August, 2014

Blog Break

I'm on holiday as of this afternoon, so this will be the last post until early September.  And you're going to have to wait till 28 October for my biography of Edward II, too.  :-)

In the meantime, here are some nice pics to look at.  :) Take care and see you in a little while!

One of my favourite churches ever: All Saints at Old Byland, North Yorkshire, which originally dates to Anglo-Saxon times.

Rievaulx Abbey, North Yorkshire.

Sutton Bank, North Yorkshire, site of the battle of Byland on 14 October 1322.

Rievaulx Abbey.


Fountains Abbey, North Yorkshire.

Merchant Adventurers' Hall, York, built in the 1360s.
Lower Brockhampton, Worcestershire, built in the 1390s.

One of my favourite place names in the UK: Giggleswick, in North Yorkshire.


Parish Church of St John the Baptist, Knaresborough, North Yorkshire, founded around 1100.

Knaresborough, railway bridge over the River Nidd, with the castle ruins out of sight behind it.

Knaresborough Castle.
Weobley, Herefordshire.
Weobley, Herefordshire.
Pembridge, Herefordshire.
Pembridge, Herefordshire.
Hereford Cathedral.
Hereford Cathedral.
Stokesay Castle, Shropshire.
Ludlow Castle, Shropshire.

Knaresborough Castle.





15 August, 2014

John of Eltham, Edward II's Son

Happy Birthday today to Edward II and Isabella of France's second son John of Eltham, who was born on 15 August 1316 at the palace of Eltham in Kent (hence his name).  Roughly nine months before his birth, the king and queen had been staying together at the royal hunting-lodge of Clipstone in Nottinghamshire.

It seems likely that Edward II knew of Isabella's pregnancy by 22 February 1316, about twenty-five weeks before the birth, on which date he asked the dean and chapter of the church of St Mary in Lincoln to pray for himself, the queen and "Edward their first-born son."  The reference to 'first-born son' seems to indicate that Edward knew there would be a second child.  On 27 March, Edward gave twenty pounds to John Fleg, horse dealer of London, for a bay horse "to carry the litter of the lady the queen" during her pregnancy.  He also paid the Lucca banking firm the Ballardi almost four pounds for pieces of silk and gold tissue, and flame-coloured silk, to make cushions for Isabella's carriage so that she could travel in greater comfort.

John of Eltham was the only one of Edward II and Isabella's children whose birth Edward missed by not being nearby.  In November 1312, the king was at Windsor Castle when Edward III was born there; he was at the palace of Woodstock in June 1318 when their elder daughter Eleanor was born; he was in London in July 1321 when Joan of the Tower was born.  Edward, and probably Isabella as well, spent most of June and July 1316 at Westminster.  On the 23rd, they travelled to Eltham, which had been given to Edward by his late friend Anthony Bek, bishop of Durham and patriarch of Jerusalem, and which he gave to Isabella in 1311.  On the 26th, Edward left the queen there and began to travel north towards York, intending to take part in a campaign in Scotland which he (entirely unsurprisingly) later cancelled.  In York, he stayed at the Franciscan convent with his niece Margaret Gaveston, née de Clare, and met and had a furious row with his cousin Thomas, earl of Lancaster.

Isabella, meanwhile, gave birth to their son on 15 August.  It would have been conventional to name him after her father, Philip IV of France, but instead she called him John, most probably in my opinion in honour of the new pope, John XXII.  John was elected in Lyon on 7 August, and the news reached Edward II in York on 17 August, when he gave a messenger a pound for informing him.  Isabella, 230 miles south in Kent, must have heard the news a few days previously.

The queen sent her steward Eubolo Montibus north to inform her husband, and Montibus reached Edward on or just before 24 August, on which date the king asked the Dominicans of York to say prayers for himself, Isabella, their son Edward of Windsor, "and John of Eltham our youngest son, especially on account of John."  Edward had a piece of Turkey cloth and a piece of cloth-of-gold delivered to Eltham to cover the font in the chapel during John’s baptism, and ordered Isabella's tailor Stephen of Falaise to make her a robe from five pieces of white velvet for her churching ceremony.

John of Eltham was cared for by his nurse, Matilda Pyrie or Perie, later also the nurse of his sister Joan of the Tower (born 1321). In March 1319, Edward II granted to his son "all lands and tenements" north of the river Trent "which have fallen into the king’s hands by reason of the hostility of the Scots and others who have adhered to them, or which shall henceforth fall in," and in October that year ordered that John and his sister Eleanor of Woodstock (born June 1318) were to remain "in the company" of their older brother Edward of Windsor, earl of Chester, "at his expenses." This implies that the two children lived at Wallingford Castle with the young earl and his household, and that Edward II and Queen Isabella visited them there occasionally. The king granted Queen Isabella the castle and honour of High Peak in Derbyshire and other manors, castles and rents "to hold in aid of the expenses of John, the king’s son, and Eleanor his sister, the king's daughter" on 1 May 1320, which perhaps suggests that the household of the younger royal children was then formally attached to the queen's. It is difficult to be sure where and with whom the younger royal children lived, and it may have varied: sometimes with their parents at court, sometimes with their elder brother the future king, sometimes perhaps in their own independent household.

At some point, John's much older first cousin Eleanor Despenser, née de Clare - twenty-four years his senior - looked after him. Contrary to what is usually asserted nowadays, there is no reason to suppose that this must have happened in September 1324 or that Eleanor's care of the boy was intended by Edward II and Hugh Despenser to hurt and punish Queen Isabella.  The only evidence that Eleanor had the care of John is 1) a roll of expenses now held in The National Archives in Kew (see here) which is undated and might belong to any time between John's birth in August 1316 and Edward II's downfall in October 1326, and 2) an entry I myself found in Edward's last chamber account.  This is a payment of twelve pounds to Eleanor Despenser on 8 June 1326, reimbursing the expenses of herself and John (then aged not quite ten) for travelling together from the palace of Sheen to Kenilworth Castle and staying at Kenilworth for eighteen days. These two pieces of evidence are a remarkably thin basis for declaring that Edward II cruelly and nastily removed John from Isabella's custody in September 1324, but then, not a few writers have been willing to put two and two together to make 97 in the interests of finding fault with everything Edward did and turning Isabella into a victim.  Yet again, I remind these people that Isabella of France was a royal of the fourteenth century, not a modern person whose familial and cultural norms were the same as ours and not a person who expected to be the full-time primary carer of her children.

Entry in Edward II's chamber account of June 1326, stating that John of Eltham and Eleanor Despenser had travelled from Sheen to Kenilworth together.
I am unaware of any negotiations carried out by Edward II for John's marriage, or rather his potential future marriage, though Edward did arrange betrothals for his other children. John's brother Edward III in later years attempted to find him a bride, but John was destined to die unmarried. He died at the age of only twenty on 13 September 1336, at Perth in Scotland, and was buried at Westminster Abbey, where his tomb still exists. There is no reason whatsoever to believe the tall tale of a Scottish chronicler that Edward III had his brother killed, and indeed it is on record that the king suffered from bad dreams as a result of John's sudden death. As John died young and had no children (that we know of), and therefore has no descendants alive today, his existence has often been overlooked. In fact, the existence of all Edward II and Isabella of France's three younger children is often overlooked!

08 August, 2014

Isabella, the She-Wo...no, I refuse to use that damn word again

I was watching Helen Castor's BBC4 documentary She-Wolves on Youtube recently (again), the episode about Isabella of France and Henry VI's queen Margaret of Anjou.  The title of the documentary and book irritates me.  This absurd nickname was first given to Margaret of Anjou by Shakespeare, and first applied to Isabella in a poem by Thomas Gray in 1757, almost exactly 400 years after her death.  Why do writers (or publishers) keep perpetuating it?  That's three books I can think of published in the twenty-first century about or partly about Isabella with 'she-wolf' in the title, the others by Alison Weir and Elizabeth Norton.

I'm not a big fan of Castor's Isabella episode and the chapters about Isabella in her book, which present the queen, in usual modern fashion, as a victim who miraculously becomes strong and empowered with the help of a properly manly man and Twu Wuv 4Ever, but then is attacked as a SHE-WOLF!!11!!!1 because people, or rather men, just can't deal with strong empowered women, apparently. Here are a few statements she made, and my reactions.

- Isabella was "little more than a pawn in the power-play between England and France."  I am sick of seeing royal women of the Middle Ages, but not men, described as 'pawns' because their marriages were arranged.  It's such a tired cliché.  Edward II had no more choice in the marriage than Isabella did, and before he was betrothed to her had been betrothed to three other girls (Margaret of Norway, queen of Scotland; Blanche of France; Philippa of Flanders) in furtherance of his father's foreign policy and according to what best suited England at the time.  He was first betrothed when he was five.  If Isabella was a 'pawn', how was Edward not as well?  And besides, Isabella was royal to her fingertips, the proud daughter of two crowned monarchs in their own right, the king of France and the queen of Navarre.  Of course she would only have wanted to marry and have children with a man as royal as she herself was.  Edward of Caernarfon, future king of England, son of a king, grandson of two more kings, fitted the bill perfectly.  Given the choice, do people really think Isabella would have said to her father "Oh no, I don't want to marry the king of England, but there's this yummy latrine-cleaner I've got my eye on"?  Who on earth else was she going to marry, seriously?  It makes me shake my head, this turning Isabella into some kind of helpless victim of uncaring male machinations when in reality there was no-one else in Europe, except perhaps a king of another powerful country, she would have wanted to marry and sleep with.  Everyone else in the world was beneath her as a potential husband.  Why impose our attitudes on her, as though she was a time traveller to the fourteenth century with our modern western ideas of choosing your own spouse and marrying for love?  Why pity Isabella for something which was entirely normal in her world and something which she herself would certainly have wanted?

- At the coronation of 25 February 1308, "Isabella should have taken centre stage, but her place was taken by a handsome young man," i.e. Piers Gaveston, and "her rightful place had already been taken," and again, after Piers' murder in 1312: "Isabella thought that Gaveston's removal would allow her to take her rightful place at her husband's side."  That makes it sound to me as though Piers was actually crowned as Edward's consort while Isabella was shoved aside and forgotten.  I've looked at Edward's discourteous behaviour at the coronation banquet (not, let it be noted, at the coronation itself) before, but let's not get too carried away; Isabella was, indeed, crowned as queen of England at Edward's side, and was still centre stage, with her husband, as one half of the royal couple.  Edward talked to Piers more at the banquet afterwards than he did to her, yes, but I hardly see how that can be described as Piers 'taking Isabella's place'.  Her place was queen of England as Edward's wife, and no-one, certainly not a man, could take that from her.  It wasn't part of the arrangement that Edward wasn't allowed to talk to other people in public or to be in love with someone else, and Isabella was a very long way from being the only queen or noblewoman in history whose husband had a lover or lovers - yet she does seem to be one of a vanishingly small number on whose behalf great offence is taken 700 years later on this account.  This argument about her 'rightful place' seems to be mere indignation that Isabella wasn't, at least at this point in 1308, the most important person in Edward II's emotional life.  She did have her rightful place as his wife and queen, but it's not the place her modern fans think she should have had, Number One Person in Edward's heart.  I pick up this kind of aggrieved tone quite often in modern writing about Isabella, as though Edward is to be condemned for not recognising Isabella's amazing specialness, even when she was twelve, and dropping all contact with Piers immediately.  As though the presence of a pre-pubescent, even as one as bright and attractive as Isabella, generally causes adults to fall out of love with their partner.  You could argue rather more convincingly that Philippa of Hainault, for the first two years and nine months that she was married to Edward III, had her 'rightful place' as queen taken by her mother-in-law, Isabella, but I've yet to see anyone moan about that.

- Piers was "Isabella's rival."  Ah yes, the usual statement that somehow Piers and Isabella were rivals for the king's affections.  Not sure I see that, actually.  In fact, no, I don't see it at all.  I've written about this before: Edward II's heart was not a cake that he portioned out, and Piers' large slice meant that Isabella therefore only had the crumbs which fell from Piers' table.  This is not how human beings and human relationships work.  Edward adored Piers, this is beyond all doubt, but in many ways Piers could not possibly rival Isabella: her royal birth, her status as Edward's wife and queen, and future mother of his royal children and his heir.  There's really nothing to suggest beyond a letter faked many decades later by Thomas Walsingham that Isabella ever disliked Piers or thought of him as her 'rival' or believed that he had deprived her of her 'rightful place'.  The notion that she did is merely an assumption, stated frequently in novels and lately, sadly, increasingly also in non-fiction.  I find it a rather simplistic notion, one which doesn't allow for the complexity of love and human emotion.  And I am truly convinced that Edward loved Isabella.  Less than he loved Piers?  Perhaps.  In a different way, certainly.  But that doesn't mean he didn't love her or care about her, as though it was a black and white case of he either loved and cared about Piers or he loved and cared about her, but it couldn't possibly be both.  I suppose to some writers, Isabella hating Piers and being determined to see him dead just makes a better and more melodramatic story, however feeble the foundation of this idea is, than the notion that she might not have disliked him even a tiny little bit and might even - le gasp! - have been fond of him. It's really nothing more than imposing our own feelings (or what we think we might feel in the situation) on people of the remote past and declaring that they must have felt this way.

- Isabella's uncles the counts of Valois and Evreux "went home in a rage, insulted that Edward had given some of their wedding presents to Gaveston."  Siiiigh, that old chestnut yet again.  Actually the Annales Paulini say (about a quarter of a century later) that Valois and Evreux went back to France and complained to Philip IV that Edward frequented Piers' couch more than the queen's.  Although it is likely that Valois and Evreux did give wedding gifts to Edward and Isabella, no record of them survives, let alone that Edward gave any of them to Piers, so I assume this is a reference to the aforementioned old chestnut which writers who haven't actually looked at the Annales Paulini repeat over and over.

- (from the book, p. 237) "Concern for her youth might well have kept Edward away from her bed for some time after their wedding, whatever the circumstances, but his attentions were so ostentatiously engaged elsewhere that he could claim little credit for such consideration."  Oh, absolutely.  Edward II must never be given credit for anything.  My goodness, a lot of modern writers really are terribly determined to find fault with Edward II whatever he did or didn't do, aren't they?  Other kings don't get the same criticism.  The future Edward I seems to have consummated his 1254 marriage to Eleanor of Castile immediately, so that she miscarried a child at seven months' gestation when she was still only thirteen.  Does that somehow make Edward I a better husband than his son, because he didn't delay consummation?  Is making a girl pregnant at twelve or thirteen considered better now than waiting until she's fifteen or sixteen?  Do people complain that Henry III was a neglectful husband because Eleanor of Provence only gave birth for the first time three and a half years after their wedding?  Is there some kind of 'correct' amount of time which should have passed between marriage and consummation which would make Isabella not a victim of Edward's marital neglect or cruelty?   Then again, the existence of the child born to Edward I and Eleanor of Castile in 1255 is not entirely certain, and their first child whose existence is undisputed wasn't born until at least 1261, perhaps 1264.  That's at least seven years and perhaps even an entire decade after their wedding.  Gosh!  Let's all join hands to condemn Edward I for neglecting his young wife so horribly for so long.

- In 1312, when the queen became pregnant: "Isabella had clearly spent at least one night with her husband."  An important part of the modern Victim!Isabella narrative is to make out in any way you can that she and Edward had an unsatisfactory and sporadic sex life, and that Isabella suffered as a result of this because she was, according to Alison Weir, "highly sexed."  Good grief, I still boggle that anyone could write a sentence like that about a person nearly 700 years dead who never wrote or spoke a single word in public about her sexuality or her desires.  Weir's biography of Isabella includes this kind of stuff too, including the astonishing rhetorical question asking if Edward II had "at last played the man" when he consummated the marriage.  Jaw-dropping.  We know nothing at all about Edward and Isabella's sex life, of course, except that they obviously had intercourse on four occasions which resulted in their children, or five times if Isabella had a miscarriage in or just before November 1313 (when pennyroyal was bought for her).  For all we know, they thoroughly enjoyed having sex together and did it regularly.  I don't see writers making these kind of judgemental remarks about other men, not even, say, John of Gaunt, who had only one child with his second wife Constanza of Castile but produced four with his mistress Katherine Swynford during the marriage.  No-one seems to care how many nights John spent with Constanza or that he was merrily producing children with another woman.

- When Edward and Isabella were visiting Paris in 1313, the rhyming chronicler Geoffrey of Paris says that they overslept one morning, and smilingly relates that their, ahem, night-time activities were the likely cause.  But according to Castor (p. 254), "Isabella's failure to wake her notoriously tardy husband may, in fact, have been the result of circumspection rather than the previous night's excesses," with reference to her and Edward's vow to go on crusade, which apparently she didn't really want to do.  So, on this reading, Isabella deliberately didn't wake Edward up or get out of bed so as to avoid having to take a pledge to go on crusade.  Even though she took it only a day or two later anyway.  Huh.  We know Edward and Isabella were having sex in the 1310s and early 1320s because children resulted from it.  Why is it so strange to think that they might have been having sex in Paris, and contradict a primary source who saw them during the visit?  (Though Geoffrey didn't actually see the couple having sex, obviously.)  I wonder if this had been any other couple, whether a writer would still feel the need to jump in and say, oh no no, they can't really have been tired because they'd been awake half the night making love, we simply must find another explanation.

Castor doesn't mention that at Pontoise soon afterwards, Edward and Isabella were 'totally naked' - toute nue, says Geoffrey - in bed together when a fire broke out in their pavilion and Edward saved Isabella's life by scooping her up in his arms and rushing outside with her.  No doubt being naked in bed together had nothing whatsoever to do with intimate marital relations, though.  Nooooo, of course not.  This is all another part of the 'Edward was rubbish at fulfilling Isabella's sexual needs' notion, which as far as I can tell is based on setting up Isabella's sex life to be hopelessly unsatisfactory as possible to make it all the more fabulous and amazing and dramatic later when she begins her passionately sexual love affair with Roger Mortimer.  And never mind that there isn't a shred of evidence that she and Roger ever had a passionately sexual love affair.  Maybe Isabella enjoyed sex with Edward II more than she did with Roger.  Now there's a thought to conjure with.  We sure as heck can't prove that she didn't.

Edward and Isabella had four children together. OK, not a terribly high number in comparison with Edward I and Eleanor of Castile or Edward III and Philippa of Hainault.  Maybe Isabella had more miscarriages (she may have had one in November 1313), or maybe one or both of them wasn't particularly fertile.  Edward II's grandparents Henry III and Eleanor of Provence had five children too, the first born three and a half years after their wedding, but you don't see writers making sneery comments about Henry 'at last playing the man' or speculating that they'd only spent one night together.  Using the number of children to gauge the success or otherwise of a marriage strikes me as rather odd, anyway.  Edward II's niece Eleanor de Clare and his chamberlain and favourite Hugh Despenser had at least ten children together, but for seven or eight years of their marriage he was her uncle's 'favourite' and may have had a sexual relationship with him.

- Talking of Hugh Despenser, it's claimed that he "doesn't seem to have been the king's lover."  This has been stated before: see Jonathan Sumption claiming that "Edward's relationship with his next favourite, Hugh Despenser the Younger, was certainly not sexual, and on a personal level may not even have been particularly close."  Clearly, Sumption has full 24/7 video footage of the entire eight years or so of Edward and Hugh's relationship to be able to make this statement with such confidence.  The annals of Newnham Abbey wrote in 1326 of "the king and his husband" (rex et maritus eius), and Hugh was later said to have been a "sodomite, even with the king," so I wouldn't be too sure that their relationship wasn't sexual.  Certainly Edward seems to have been infatuated with Hugh, their relationship lasted a long time, and Edward refused to send Hugh away from him even when the future of his kingdom depended on it.  I can't say for sure that they were lovers, of course, but I think it's astonishing to claim as a certain fact that they weren't.

In 1312, "Isabella was dragged around the country as Edward tried to keep his lover safe."  There's no reason to suppose that Isabella travelled to the north of England against her will in February 1312, when she left Westminster to be reunited Edward - who had gone north to meet the newly-returned Piers Gaveston - in York.  In early May 1312, Edward, Isabella and Piers left Tynemouth and travelled to York, then the royal couple went on to the royal manor of Burstwick, where they were staying on the day Piers was killed, then went back to York.  Edward left her there when he travelled south at the end of June 1312, to keep her out of the way of danger.  I'm not seeing a lot of 'dragging' here.  Even Paul Doherty, who normally goes out of his way to find fault with Edward II, points out that in 1312 "Isabella adhered to her husband."  I suppose a far more accurate account such as "Isabella met her husband in York, stayed there with him and conceived their child, then travelled with him to a couple of other places, mostly the royal manor of Burstwick," doesn't make such a melodramatic story as being 'dragged around', or make her look like such a pitiable victim.

"As a young bride, she'd been little more than a decorative accessory to a diplomatic alliance."  Hmmm yes, Isabella and just about every other royal and noble bride, and of course groom, who ever lived.  This is the kind of thing that I get impatient about in discussions of Isabella; as though somehow she was different from every other royal of the Middle Ages (the 'Isabella Exception', as I've been known to call it).  Modern writers applaud her courage and cleverness when arranging her son's marriage to Philippa of Hainault in 1326 and never seem to dream of calling the young Edward III or his fiancée a 'pawn' of Isabella's need to find an ally in order to invade England, but when her own marriage was arranged, somehow Isabella is a victim, an 'accessory'.  I've never seen anyone call Eleanor of Castile a 'pawn' or a mere 'decorative accessory' either.  Eleanor, who may not yet have reached her thirteenth birthday at the time of her 1254 marriage, had never previously set eyes on Lord Edward (the future Edward I), and her marriage was arranged between her brother Alfonso X and Edward's father Henry III to settle the dispute between England and Castile over Gascony, which was ruled by Henry III and to which Alfonso was laying claim.  Eleanor had no choice but to marry Edward.  Edward had no choice but to marry Eleanor.  The young Marguerite of France had no choice but to marry a widower three times her age (Edward I) in 1299, in the same treaty that arranged the future marriage of Edward and Isabella.  Philippa of Hainault was only about twelve in August 1326 when Isabella negotiated with her father about a marriage to Edward of Windsor.  But you never see anyone complaining that Marguerite or Eleanor or Philippa were 'pawns' or 'decorative accessories' in political alliances beyond their control.  What makes Isabella so different?  I simply don't understand why people who profess to like and admire her are so determined to make her into a victim when she herself would never have thought in such a way.

- Isabella was a peace-making queen, but "almost immediately her husband undermined her efforts" by losing at Bannockburn.  Yeah, obviously he totally did that on purpose, just to annoy her.

- "Edward and Isabella [were] alone for once" in York in May 1312 when Piers was left at Scarborough Castle.  Actually the royal couple were together almost all of the time.  For example, they spent the entire winter of 1310/11 at Berwick, while Piers Gaveston was in and around Roxburgh, Perth and Dundee.  The idea that Piers was permanently with them, or that Edward was always with Piers and ignoring Isabella, is simply a myth.

- About Isabella and Roger Mortimer (p. 288): "Isabella and Mortimer had begun not only a political partnership but a passionate affair...Physical attraction there clearly was...it is clear that this was no idle dalliance but an all-consuming personal bond."  Hmmmmm.  There's no evidence at all for any of this, and it should be stated as the speculation and assumption that it is.  The "emotional logic" of the relationship is said to have been "instantly recognisable."  Perhaps, but that doesn't make it necessarily true.  You could say exactly the same thing about Edward II's relationships with Piers Gaveston or Hugh Despenser if you wanted to romanticise them as much as Isabella and Roger's affair has been exaggerated and romanticised, but this isn't a novel, it's non-fiction.  It made me laugh out loud, much as Eleanor Herman's breathless scene in Sex with the Queen depicting Marie Antoinette and Fersen in bed together did, and is about as accurate.  The fact that Mortimer was married is barely mentioned, but as I've commented here plenty of times before, apparently some men's adultery is far more acceptable than others'.  No comment is made on Isabella usurping Joan Geneville's 'rightful place' at her husband's side.

Needless to say, it's stated as fact that Edward and Hugh Despenser "separated Isabella from her children" in 1324.  This is an invention of Paul Doherty in his 1977 thesis about Isabella.  Read any book at all about or even partly about Edward II and Isabella written before the late 1970s; it won't mention this tall tale.  If Castor or any other modern writer had researched it before they repeat it as 'fact', they'd have seen that Doherty bases the idea on an issue roll of Edward II's household dating from July 1322 to July 1323.  Castor doesn't repeat the red-hot poker story as though it's certain fact, but doesn't mention any other explanation of what may have happened to Edward in 1327.

To me, this kind of narrative is only looking at how Edward II and Isabella of France's marriage ended and what happened in 1326/27, and extrapolating backwards that their relationship must always have been a tragic unhappy disaster.  It's interpreting everything that happened between them, everything that Edward did or didn't do, in the most negative and critical way possible.  Let's remember: in 1308 Edward and Isabella didn't have the slightest notion what would happen to them nearly twenty years in the future.  As far as they knew, they would be married for decades and it was in their own interests to make their relationship work as best they could.  You'd think Edward II was the only king in history not madly in love with his wife at first glance, the only king or nobleman who ever had an outside love interest.  And yes, maybe in 1308 Edward wasn't exactly doing all he could to make his marriage successful.  But his wife was twelve, for heaven's sake.  I really can't believe that modern writers would prefer if it if Edward had made Isabella pregnant when she was twelve or thirteen.  This popular view of events ignores all the quieter points of Edward and Isabella's marriage, that they spent most of their time together, that they became parents together four times, that they sent each other letters and gifts on the rare occasions that they were apart, that Isabella addressed Edward even in 1325 and 1326 as her "very sweet heart" and her "very dear and very sweet lord and friend."  I'm not entirely sensing her hatred and "profound revulsion" (Weir) for him there, to be honest.  And I'm pretty sick of reading the same old, same old stuff about their relationship.  Even when an eyewitness says Edward and Isabella were getting on really well during their visit to France in 1313, this is dismissed, oh no, they weren't being intimate and enjoying each other's company, no no, that can't be.  When Isabella talks of Edward in extremely affectionate terms, somehow people just 'know' that she didn't really mean it, she was only pretending, she hated him really.  They were never happy, not once, not ever, not even when they were enjoying a seemingly rather relaxing and pleasant trip and had recently become parents together.  They only ever felt contempt, hatred and disgust for each other for nearly twenty years.  Yup.  Isabella is only ever a tragic victim, Edward only a cruel oppressor, until Isabella finds a Real Man and takes her revenge.

I'll end this post by linking to my Rules For Writing A Novel About Edward II And Isabella, which I wrote on 31 March 2010, before Castor's She-Wolves was published on 7 October 2010 and nine months before I read the book that Christmas.  Time and time again as I wrote this post, I was reminded of this one.  It's rather sad to see a non-fiction book following the rules.

03 August, 2014

Other European Rulers (2)

A continuation of this post, taking a look at rulers in Europe and a little farther afield in Edward II's era.  Today, I'm writing about Davit VIII, king of Georgia; Haakon V, king of Norway; Alexios II, emperor of Trebizond; Sancho, king of Majorca.

Davit VIII, king of Georgia (born 1273/1278; succeeded 1293; died 1311)

Edward II sent Davit a letter in May 1313, asking him to protect a friar passing through Davit's kingdom.  Unfortunately, Davit had died two years previously, sometime in 1311 (I've been unable to find the exact date).  This gives you a good idea of the speed and urgency with which news travelled from Georgia to England 700 years ago.

Davit came from the Bagrationi dynasty which ruled Georgia for many centuries.  His father was Demetre or Demetrius II 'the Self-Sacrificing' - what a great name! - and his mother, name unknown, was a daughter of Manuel I, emperor of Trebizond (for more info, see below).  Demetre was beheaded by the Mongols in 1289, but despite this, Davit married a Mongol woman: Oljath, daughter of Abaqa Khan (see also below).  Oljath was a great-niece of Kublai Khan and a great-great-granddaughter of Genghis Khan.  Davit's only child, however, was born to his second wife, a Georgian noblewoman of the Surameli family.  When he died in 1311, he was succeeded by his son, still only a child, the aptly-named Giorgi VI the Little.  Giorgi died in 1313 and was succeeded by his uncle, Davit's brother Giorgi the Brilliant.

Haakon V, king of Norway (born c. 1270; succeeded 15 July 1299; died 8 May 1319)

Another king to whom Edward II unknowingly sent a letter after his death, though in this case barely a month.  Haakon would have been Edward's uncle-in-law if Margaret the 'Maid of Norway', the young queen of Scotland, had lived long enough to marry Edward.  Haakon was a younger son of Magnus VI of Norway and Ingeborg, daughter of Eric IV of Denmark.  His elder brother Erik II, known as the 'Priesthater', succeeded their father in 1280, and in 1281, still only thirteen, married twenty-year-old Margaret of Scotland, eldest child of Alexander III and his first queen Margaret of England, Edward I's sister.  Erik and Margaret's daughter Margaret (born 1283), Alexander III's only surviving heir, was proclaimed queen of Scotland and betrothed to her slightly younger cousin Edward of Caernarfon in 1289, but died suddenly aged seven in the autumn of 1290.  Her father King Erik II married secondly Isabel, one of the sisters of the Robert Bruce who became king of Scotland in 1306.  With Isabel Bruce, Erik had a daughter, Ingeborg - half-sister of Margaret 'the Maid of Norway' - who married Valdemar Magnusson of Sweden, duke of Finland.  Erik died in July 1299 at the beginning of his thirties, and as his daughter could not inherit the throne, he was succeeded by his brother, Haakon V.

Not long before his accession, Haakon married a German lady: Eufemia of Rügen, daughter of Günther, count of Arnstein in Bavaria and granddaughter of Witzlaw II, prince of Rügen.  Eufemia's maternal grandmother Agnes was the daughter of Otto I, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, nephew of Otto IV, Holy Roman Emperor (grandson of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine).  Haakon and Eufemia had one child, Ingeborg, the same name as her first cousin, the daughter of Erik II and Isabel Bruce.  Confusingly, the two cousins Ingeborg married brothers: Ingeborg daughter of Haakon married Erik Magnusson of Sweden, brother of Duke Valdemar, above.  Haakon V died on 8 May 1319, probably in his late forties; Edward II, unaware of this, sent him letters on 2 and 12 June regarding debts Haakon owed to several English merchants.  Haakon was succeeded by his toddler grandson Magnus VII, born in 1316 as the son of Ingeborg and Erik Magnusson.  Magnus also succeeded his uncle Birger, the eldest brother of Valdemar and Erik Magnusson, as Magnus IV, king of Sweden, in 1321.

Alexios II Megas Komnenos, emperor of Trebizond (born 1282; succeeded 1297; died 3 May 1330)

The empire of Trebizond was a successor state of the Byzantine empire between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, and was located on the shores of the Black Sea in modern-day Turkey.  It bordered the Mongol Ilkhanate mentioned in my previous post, and was one of three states thrown up in the aftermath of the capture of Constantinople in 1204, the others being the empire of Nicaea and the despotate of Epirus.  (Edward II's second cousin Philip of Taranto, king of Albania, was one of the despots of Epirus.)  Edward wrote to the Emperor Alexios II in 1313 asking him to protect the same far-travelling friar on whose behalf he also wrote to Davit VIII of Georgia, the difference being on this occasion that Alexios was actually still alive.

Alexios II Megas Komnenos's mother Eudokia Palaiologina was the sister of the Byzantine Emperor Andronikos II Palaiologos from my previous post.  Maria Palaiologina, sister of Eudokia and Andronikus, and Alexios II's aunt, married Abaqa Khan, one of the predecessors of Oljeitu (also from my previous post, and see above) as ruler of the Ilkhanate; Abaqa was Oljeitu's great-uncle and the nephew of Kublai Khan.  Another of Alexios's maternal aunts was the empress of Bulgaria, and he was a cousin of Davit VIII of Georgia, above.  His father was John II Megas Komnenos, emperor of Trebizond, and his grandfather was the Emperor Manuel I.  Alexios married a Georgian woman with the excellent name of Jiajak or Djiadjak or Jigda Jaqeli, half-sister of Davit VIII, and they had at least six children, including Andronikus III and Basil, emperors of Trebizond.  Andronikus III had two other brothers murdered.

Sancho, king of Majorca (born 1274; succeeded 29 May 1311; died 4 September 1324)

Edward II wrote to Sancho in early June 1323 on behalf of some sun-worshipping English tourists who had had too much to drink on their package holiday and robbed some of Sancho's subjects on the beach.  (OK, I made up all of that sentence except for 'Edward II wrote to Sancho in early June 1323 on behalf of some English people' and 'robbed some of Sancho's subjects'. They really did do that and Edward really did send Sancho a letter.)  Sancho was the son of Jaime or James II, king of Majorca, and Esclaramunda, daughter of Roger IV, count of Foix (a vassal of the kings of England).  Jaime II of Majorca was the second son of Jaime I of Aragon and Violante of Hungary, and brother of Pedro III of Aragon.  This makes Sancho of Majorca the first cousin of Jaime II of Aragon from my last post.  He married Maria of Anjou-Naples, one of the many sisters of Philip of Taranto, king of Albania and despot of Epirus, which meant that he was related by marriage to absolutely anybody who was anybody in the European royalty of the early fourteenth century.  Sancho's sister Sancha married Maria of Anjou-Naples and Philip of Taranto's brother Robert the Wise, king of Naples and titular king of Jerusalem, and was the grandmother of the famous and much-married Queen Joan (or Joanna) I of Naples.  Sancho died childless and was succeeded by his brother Fernando's son Jaime III.