Her son might have acted against her because of the way she'd ruled, but Isabella was still his mother. She had to surrender her vast estates, but Edward gave her an income of £3,000 a year. She could no longer intervene in politics but she would have a sumptuous, if compulsory, retirement. Isabella had an extraordinary life. She showed, for a brief moment, that female leadership could represent the legitimacy of the Crown forcefully enough to depose an anointed King. But the exercise of power by a woman turned out to be a different matter, and particularly a woman like Isabella, who enriched herself rather than nurturing her people. In retrospect, the death of her husband came to define Isabella not as the saviour of England, but, in the words of the poet Thomas Gray, as the "She-wolf of France, with unrelenting fangs "That tears the bowels of thy mangled mate".


他的儿子也许会因为她统治的方式不当来反抗她，但伊莎贝拉仍旧是他的母亲。她不得不交还她拥有的大量土地。不过爱德华每年赐给她1000英镑的收入，她再也无法干预政治。但她可以有个奢华安逸的万年。 伊莎贝拉的一生精彩非凡。她向人们证明，在短时间内，女性统治者可以代表王权的合法性，甚至有权利罢黜一名受膏的君王。不过，女人掌权最终被证明完全是另一码事儿，特别是 像伊莎贝拉这样的女人，她更在意的是使自己更富有，而不是反哺她的人民。回顾始末，她丈夫的死没能让伊莎贝拉成为英格兰的救世主。但在诗人托马斯·格雷的诗中，他这样描述她“法兰西的母狼，长着无情的爪牙，只为伴侣的惨死留了几滴鳄鱼眼泪。”