Three Queens Who Refused to Behave (And Why History Punished Them For It)

History has a word for queens who had opinions and refused to be managed. Today we're looking at three of them across three centuries - Eleanor of Aquitaine, Empress Matilda, and Isabella of France - and asking whether "scandalous" means what history wants us to think it means. Eleanor governed, went on crusade, backed her sons against her husband, and got locked in a tower for sixteen years. Henry II never divorced her because Aquitaine went with her. That one fact tells you everything. Matilda had a legitimate claim to the English throne, backed by three sworn oaths from the English nobility. She fought a civil war for six years, won the decisive battle, and came within weeks of her coronation before London rioted and drove her out. History called her arrogant. The chronicles used language for her they would never use for a king doing the same things. Isabella spent twenty years being publicly humiliated by Edward II, had her lands confiscated, watched her children taken from her household -- then went to France on a diplomatic mission and simply didn't come back. She raised an army, removed a failing king, and installed her son on the throne. History called her the She-Wolf of France. That label was borrowed from Shakespeare, applied originally to a completely different queen, and stuck on Isabella by a single poem written four hundred years after her death. Three queens. Three centuries. One verdict: too much. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Three Queens Who Refused to Behave (And Why History Punished Them For It) is an episode from Renaissance English History Podcast: A Show About the Tudors by Heather Teysko.

This episode is 33:42 long.

This episode was published on Mar 31, 2026.

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