A tale of three medieval mothers

On May 31, 1246, Isabelle d’Angouleme, former Queen of England, “John’s Jezebel,” as the historian Nicholas Vincent colorfully calls her, died at the abbey of Fontevrault. After John’s death, she left England and wed Hugh de Lusignan, son of the man to whom she’d once been betrothed, before John had swooped down on her like a hawk on a pigeon. Her second husband was betrothed to Isabella’s own young daughter at the time, and Isabelle and Hugh apparently held the little girl as a hostage until the Pope angrily intervened and insisted upon her return to England. I think my portrayal of Isabelle in Here Be Dragons was too kind, but in my defense, there had not been much written about her when I was researching and writing Dragons more than 25 years ago. She had a very turbulent second marriage and embroiled herself in dangerous political intrigues, motivated to some degree by hostility toward the French queen-regent, John’s niece, Blanche of Castile. The chroniclers are almost unanimously hostile to her, so it is difficult to sift truth from rumor; but she does not seem to have been a happy woman, very beautiful, but sharp-tongued and prideful and manipulative, at least during her marriage to Hugh de Lusignan. John apparently kept her on a shorter leash.
May 31, 1443, was the birthdate of one of my least favorite medieval women, Margaret Beaufort, mother of you-who-who. For a fun read, I recommend Brian Wainwright’s hilarious spoof of the Wars of the Roses, the Adventures of Alienore Audley; Alienore’s account of the birth of Henry Tudor is not to be forgotten. Brian is a man of many talents, for he is also the author of a serious historical novel set during the reign of the first Lancastrian king, Within the Fetterlock. I recommend this one, too.
Lastly, on May 31st, 1495, Cecily Neville died, having outlived eleven of her thirteen children, a sad epitaph for any mother. Only five of those thirteen survived to adulthood, six if you count 17 year old Edmund of Rutland. By the time of Cecily’s death at age 80, only her daughters Elizabeth and Margaret still lived. Anne Easter Smith’s Queen by Right tells Cecily’s story.
Say what you will of Margaret Beaufort, she was devoted to the interests of her only child; she’d been wed at twelve and impregnated almost at once, with the result that she could bear no other children after Henry. I will resist the temptation to say snarkily that one Henry Tudor was more than enough. Actually, I sympathize with Margaret, the child-bride, and find it admirable that she later argued against child marriages for her granddaughters. She serves as a stark example of the reason why-- although the medieval nobility often wed their daughters at very young ages-- such marriages were rarely consummated until the girl reached puberty, which occurred later in the MA than in modern times.
Cecily Neville was also a devoted mother. She’d have to be, to have forgiven George of Clarence’s follies. Isabelle seems to have been the odd woman out in this maternal grouping. Or maybe she just didn’t care much for John’s children, for once she sailed for France, she never looked back. Henry III rather sadly seems to have yearned for her love and approval and rashly heaped favors and titles upon his numerous half-siblings from her marriage to de Lusignan. The English looked upon them as a foreign plague of greedy locusts and naturally blamed Henry for their bad behavior. As a general rule, medieval kings fared better if they were only children.