The Sister Queens: Isabella and Catherine de Valois

Isabella de Valois was 3 years old when, on a hot August day in 1392, her father suddenly went mad. Less than four years later, she was married by proxy to the English King Richard II and arrived in England with a French retinue and her doll’s house. Richard’s humiliating deposition and brutal murder by his cousin, the future Henry IV, forced Isabella’s desperate return to France where she found her country fatally divided.Isabella’s sister, Catherine de Valois, became the beautiful young b...