The two fought bitterly over the throne for years. Even though her father named Matilda his heir, Stephen had the backing of the English Church. While Isabella’s campaign was won through her work off the battlefield, Matilda led a decade-long campaign for the English throne against her cousin Stephen of Blois in what became known as The Anarchy that stretched from 1135 to 1153. While there, she met and fell in love with Roger Mortimer, with whom she built a mercenary army and dethroned Henry and the Despensers in 1327, installing her son on the throne and ruling through him until he came of age. Under the guise of a diplomatic mission, she took her eldest son back to France as a political hostage. When Hugh Despenser grew bold enough to seize Isabella’s lands, she decided to fight back. He lavished extravagant gifts and estates upon Hugh Despenser, his likely lover, and gave the Despenser family leave to seize land, imprison enemies, and order executions, leading to resentment and fear across England. The title She-Wolves comes from Isabella of France, who earned that title after recognizing her husband, Edward II, who was made King of England in 1307, was an unstable and incompetent king. Eleanor also was young - only 15 years old - when her father died and she became the wealthiest bachelorette in Europe, forcing her to fend off kidnapping attempts from men who wanted to force her hand in marriage.Īll four women survived when they shouldn’t have, and because of that, history hasn’t treated them kindly. Margaret was somewhat luckier - she married 23-year-old old Henry VI of England when she was 15. Matilda and Isabella were child brides, married to men more than twice their age and shipped away to foreign countries where they knew no one and didn’t speak the language. Jarringly, many of these women were extremely young when they became pawns in political games they didn’t understand.
All four women were vilified in their times, but in her research, Helen Castor picked through the rumors and propaganda in order to write nuanced, empathetic portraits of the women. My favorite is She-Wolves by Helen Castor, which details the lives of four women who ruled England, in various capacities, before Elizabeth I: Empress Matilda, Eleanor of Aquitane, Isabella of France, and Margaret of Anjou.
These books were my gateway into the historical nonfiction I now read an adult.
It was how I first learned about Elizabeth I and her dad issues, and Mary, Queen of Scots and her complicated relationship with Catherine de Medici. Like a lot of girls who grew up in the 1990s-2000s, I was obsessed with the Royal Diaries books, a series with gold pages and ribbon bookmarks that introduced infamous royal women through a fictional diary kept during their tween years.
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