The Freedom of Widowhood: Isabella of Gloucester

Isabella of Gloucester was the first wife and debated queen consort of a real piece of shit work, John of England. History has largely forgotten hear but they shouldn't have!

✨ Throwback supplemental episode to pair with this week’s main Isabella episode.

Sold into wardship as a child, married to John in a deeply questionable cousin situation, ignored, annulled, imprisoned, and eventually sold off (yes, literally sold) to another husband, Isabella’s life reads like a case study in how disposable noblewomen could be in the 12th century. And yet, in the small window after her second husband’s death, she styled herself “Countess of Gloucester and Essex in the freedom of widowhood.”

It’s heavy. It’s rage-inducing. It’s fascinating.

Cheers to the women who survived anyway.