Isabella

About the Book

In Isabella, Rachel Bard reveals the untold story of one of England’s most beautiful and least-known queens — and one of the most reviled. To this day, historians accuse Isabella of jilting her French fiancé in order to marry King John of England and of plotting to murder the King of France. Back in France after John's death, she and her second husband, the Count of Lusignan, were far from beloved. They were obsessed with their desire to keep their vast realms intact, whether by intrigue or by rebellion against the king himself.

In her own time, Isabella was called a Jezebel, a seductress, an adulteress, even a murderess. What is the truth? Was she guilty as charged? Isabella probes the life and times of this complex woman to uncover the motivations that made her one of history’s most fascinating and enigmatic queens.

Like Bard’s previous novel, Queen Without a Country, based on the life of the queen of King Richard of England, Isabella takes place during the turbulent twelfth and thirteenth centuries when France and England were struggling for control of most of western France. In Isabella, you’ll meet the kings and queens, warriors and courtiers, popes and prelates who were the power players in the struggle. You’ll also become intimately acquainted with Queen Isabella, a woman of strong passions and ambitions, aware of the power of her beauty, impelled to dare all in order to be — and be seen as — a Queen.

About the Author

Rachel Bard had written eight nonfiction books —from cookbooks to travel guides to histories— when she began her series of historical novels about medieval queens. Her first, Queen Without a Country, was about Berengaria, wife of King Richard the Lionheart. In Isabella, she examines the life of Isabella of Angoulême, who succeeded Berengaria on the English throne. Her next, A Reed in the Wind, stars Joanna, Queen of Sicily, sister of Richard. Research for her novels has taken the author to England, France, Cyprus, Sicily, Spain — the whole panorama of medieval Europe.

Her careers include advertising, journalism education and travel writing. She currently lives on Vashon Island, near Seattle.