[Sca-cooks] Edward and Piers, was: Hollywood gays

[Laura C. Minnick]

At 01:54 PM 4/11/02 -0400, you wrote:

>    Or perhaps the story of the first two Edwards as told from the
>perspective of Piers Gaveston? Though it would have a tragic ending by
>definition . . .

Could be interesting. I've done some work on Edward's Queen, Isabella (stop
it! I meant the official queen!) If Edward had put half an ounce into
treating Isabella (Daughter of teh King of France and not someone to be
trifled with!) decently, things might have been different. But he publicly
snubbed her to favor Piers, he gave *her* jewelery to Piers (including the
famed Charlemagne rubies!), and during what was likely a coup attempt, he
abandoned her, eight months pregnant with the future Edward III, and fled
to safety with Piers. I think I'd have been a bit hacked off.

I don't think Marlowe did justice to the situation, and he saddled Isabella
with a nickname- Isabella, the She-Wolf of France- that I could find no
evidence of existence before Marlowe wrote it down, despite having waded
through chronicles in Old French and Latin, a waist-high pile of books. I
still have not quite figured out how, with all of the other despicable
behaviour around her, she is the one defamed, and given an epithet to spit
on. Edward? the Despensers? Roger Mortimer? All culpable.

And the _Anonimalle Chronicle_ is the most boring document in the world- I
hold it against Marlowe that I had to read about 25 years' worth of it!

'Lainie
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It's never the same river once you've stepped into it.