Christopher Marlowe's play Edward II (c. 1592) and thereafter has been frequently used as a character in plays, books and films, often portrayed as beautiful but manipulative or wicked. Thomas Gray, the 18th-century poet, combined Marlowe's depiction of Isabella with William Shakespeare's description of Margaret of Anjou (the wife of Henry VI) as the "She-Wolf of France", to produce the anti-French poem The Bard (1757), in which Isabella rips apart the bowels of Edward II with her "unrelenting fangs". The "She-Wolf" epithet stuck, and Bertolt Brecht re-used it in The Life of Edward II of England (1923). Film In Derek Jarman's film Edward II (1991), based on Marlowe's play, Isabella is portrayed (by actress Tilda Swinton) as a "femme fatale" whose thwarted love for Edward causes her to turn against him and steal his throne. In contrast to the negative depictions, Mel Gibson's film Braveheart (1995) portrays Isabella (played by the French actress Sophie Marceau) more sympathetically. In the film, an adult Isabella is fictionally depicted as having a romantic affair with the Scottish hero William Wallace. However, in reality, she was nine years old at the time of Wallace's death. Additionally, Wallace is incorrectly suggested to be the father of her son, Edward III, despite Wallace's death being many years before Edward's birth. Issue Edward and Isabella had four children, and she suffered at least one miscarriage. Their itineraries demonstrate that they were together nine months prior to the births of all four surviving offspring. Their children were: Edward III, born 1312 John of Eltham, Earl of Cornwall, born 1316 Eleanor of Woodstock, born 1318, married Reinoud II of Guelders Joan of the Tower, born 1321, married David II of Scotland Arms Ancestry Isabella was descended from Gytha of Wessex through King Andrew II of Hungary and thus brought the bloodline of the last Anglo-Saxon king of England, Harold Godwinson, back into the English royal family. See also Geoffrey the Baker Hundred Years' War Vita Edwardi Secundi Notes Sources Ainsworth, Peter. (2006) Representing Royalty: Kings, Queens and Captains in Some Early Fifteenth Century Manuscripts of Froissart's Chroniques. in Kooper (ed) 2006. Boutell, Charles. (1863) A Manual of Heraldry, Historical and Popular. London: Winsor & Newton. Carpenter, David. (2007a) "What Happened to Edward II?" London Review of Books. Vol. 29, No. 11. 7 June 2007. Carpenter, David. (2007b) "Dead or Alive." London Review of Books. Vol. 29, No. 15. 2