Interior Design and Queenly Display in the Household of Isabella of France

Isabella of France, daughter of King Philip IV of France, widow of King Edward II of England, and mother of King Edward III, has been remembered primarily for her role in the deposition and murder of her husband in 1327 and her subsequent brief reign before Edward III took control of his crown in 1330. Many scholarly and popular publications on the history of fourteenth-century England have depicted her as a dramatic figure, wronged by her husband’s proclivities and responsible for his murder. A different picture emerges when we consider Queen Isabella’s material environment as it was recorded in a half-century of documents, from the record of the trousseau that accompanied her to her marriage in 1308, to the post-mortem inventory of her moveable goods in 1358. The items that accompanied this complex woman across the decades – or were purchased at the very end of her years – included the tapestries and hangings that surrounded her, and the jewels and clothing that moved with her body. While all of Isabella’s contemporaries moved in these sumptuous spaces, and wore rich clothing and jewels, the role of a queenly body as a “matrix of future kings” provided additional meaning to such wealth. This article considers such issues in the context of recent research into the material holdings of Isabella’s elite contemporaries, like her fellow queens Marie of Brabant, Clementia of Hungary, and Jeanne of Evreux, who were all part of her familial and social networks. While I cannot argue that Isabella personally selected each of the objects that surrounded her, they all worked together to reflect the royal lineage of her past and the elite connections of her present, and to solidify her memory in the royal lineages of the future.