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Hello and welcome to the Queens of England podcast.

Episode 19, Isabella of France, the first she-Wolf.

At the start of the last episode, we had a triumphant Edward and disppenser lauding it over a kingdom which had just suffered through yet another war.

By the end, Edward was in chains, Dispenser was executed,

and it was Isabella who was triumphant along with her lover Mortimer.

But, by the end of this episode, Isabella would have been sidelined and Mortimer himself executed.

To quote the saying from Battlestar Galactica,

all of this has happened before and all this will happen again.

England was in a vicious cycle of violence and repression,

and now her so-called saviour Isabella was going to follow the road trodden by her husband and his favourites.

This was the first time that a king had been overthrown since Empress Matilda overthrew King Stephen,

but of course that was only for about six months.

She had left the king alive, knowing full well that killing the anointed king would be a one-way ticket to losing any legitimacy she had gained.

But keeping the king alive made him a constant source of headaches,

and of course led to the downfall of her claim. Damned if she did, screwed if she didn't.

Now Isabella faced a very similar situation. Edward may have been comprehensively defeated,

but he was still a king, and Isabella was an adulterous queen. She would have to tread

very carefully. The first thing to do was to give her new regime of a near legality, and she did

this by seizing the great seal of the kingdom, the literal stamp of approval that any law or royal

decree needed from the sovereign. When Kings went abroad and campaign, he would give this seal to the

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