The confrontation came at Nottingham.
In October 1330, Edward III and a group of allies moved against Mortimer. The king seized control of his own government and had Mortimer arrested.
The political partnership that had overthrown Edward II was finished.
Mortimer was subsequently condemned for treason and executed.
English Heritage summarizes the reversal starkly: Edward III “assumed control in his own right in 1330,” removed his mother from power and executed her lover.
Less than four years after Isabella and Mortimer invaded England together, Mortimer was dead.
Isabella survived.
And that survival complicates the popular image of her later life.
What Happened to the “She-Wolf of France”?
Later generations often remembered Isabella through a dramatic nickname: the “She-Wolf of France.”
But the label was not a contemporary description attached to her during the overthrow of Edward II.
English Heritage notes that the famous epithet emerged much later. An English poet used it of Isabella in 1757, borrowing language associated with Shakespeare’s characterization of another queen, Margaret of Anjou.
The nickname helped create a durable image: Isabella as a ruthless foreign queen, adulteress and destroyer of her husband.
Her real historical position was considerably more complicated.
She certainly participated in the overthrow of Edward II.
She allied herself with Mortimer and invaded England.
Her enemies were killed or removed.
And after Edward’s deposition, she and Mortimer exercised enormous influence during the minority of Edward III.
But reducing the entire crisis to the vengeance of an adulterous wife obscures the political conditions that made her invasion possible.
Edward II had suffered years of conflict with powerful members of his aristocracy. His devotion to royal favorites had repeatedly destabilized his reign. Hugh Despenser’s accumulation of wealth and influence created bitter enemies. Isabella herself had lost lands and access to members of her household and family.
When she landed in 1326, the speed with which Edward’s support disintegrated demonstrated that the rebellion was larger than a private marital dispute.
Isabella did not overthrow a secure and universally supported king through personal determination alone.
She struck a government already dangerously isolated.
Nor did Edward III treat his mother as he treated Mortimer.
After the coup of 1330, Isabella lost political control, but she was not executed. She continued to live as a wealthy royal widow and spent considerable time on her estates, including at Castle Rising and Eltham. English Heritage records that she remained part of the extended royal world for decades afterward.
She died on August 23, 1358.
By then, Edward III had transformed himself into one of medieval England’s most celebrated warrior kings.
The teenage prince whose mother had helped place him on the throne had ultimately destroyed the political partnership that had controlled his early reign.
And Isabella had lived long enough to see it all.