Isabeau of Bavaria

Isabeau of Bavaria (1371–1435), a daughter of Duke Stephen III of Bavaria-Ingolstadt, became queen of France through her marriage to Charles VI in 1385. The couple had a large royal family that included Catherine of Valois and the future Charles VII. After Charles VI began suffering recurrent episodes of severe mental illness in the 1390s, the ordinary mechanisms of monarchy became unstable and Isabeau assumed an unusually visible political role, participating in regency government and in negotiations among competing royal princes.

Her career unfolded amid the Armagnac–Burgundian civil conflict and the renewed English invasion under Henry V. Isabeau shifted among factions as the political balance changed and in 1420 was a party to the Treaty of Troyes, which recognised Henry V and his heirs as successors to Charles VI rather than the dauphin Charles. That decision made her a target for hostile propaganda. Later chroniclers and popular histories often portrayed her as sexually corrupt, greedy or unnaturally hostile to her son, but many of those claims derive from partisan and misogynistic traditions and should not be repeated as settled fact.

Deryn Lake’s The King’s Women places Isabeau among the powerful women surrounding Charles VII and gives her a strongly dramatic role in the dynastic crisis that shapes his early life. The novel draws on the long tradition of Isabeau as a dangerous or morally compromised queen. Her regency activity and involvement in the Treaty of Troyes are historical, but the more sensational characterization belongs to a contested later reputation rather than secure evidence.