She married her first cousin in Lille. His mother had wanted an English bride. His father had insisted on Isabella.
On 30 October 1454, Isabella of Bourbon married Charles, Count of Charolais, who would become Charles the Bold. He was twenty, already a widower since boyhood, and the son and heir of Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy. Isabella was the daughter of the Duke of Bourbon and Agnes of Burgundy, Philip's sister. The bridegroom's father was also the bride's uncle. This was a family wedding with consequences well beyond the family.
Philip's territories stretched across parts of France and the wealthy Low Countries. A wife for his heir could strengthen his position with France or draw Burgundy towards England. Isabella's mother-in-law, Isabella of Portugal, favoured the English connection, and Charles supported her preference. Philip wanted a French bride. His niece, with Bourbon ancestry on one side and Burgundian ancestry on the other, supplied exactly the connections he required.
There was little room for Charles to treat this as a personal choice. Philip told him plainly: "If I knew you were making that marriage, I would throw you out of my lands." The son who would eventually command armies and terrify cities still depended upon his father's consent. For the moment, the future Duke of Burgundy could not choose his own wife.
Philip got his marriage.
Isabella entered it with a family and a life of her own. She belonged to one of the great French noble houses, and her mother linked her directly to the dynasty she was marrying into. That September, weeks before the wedding, the Complainte d'Hector was performed for her and Charles. The young woman who appears in the negotiations as the answer to a political problem had a life before she became Charles's wife.
The union was remembered as affectionate. Charles was described as strongly attached to Isabella, and credited with keeping faith with her through their years together. Philip had chosen the wife. Nobody had ordered the attachment.
On 13 February 1457, in Brussels, Isabella gave birth to a daughter, Mary. She would be their only child. The inheritance Philip had used to compel his son's obedience would eventually pass through this little girl.
As Countess of Charolais, Isabella kept an establishment of her own. Among those employed in it was a harper named Adrien Basin, whose wages can be followed through the household accounts from 1456. In 1458 a ducal ordinance regulated the households of the countess and her baby daughter together. It named Basin as harper and allowed him a hired horse whenever she travelled from place to place. By then his daily wage had been halved. Alongside the titles and the alliances were wages to be paid, journeys to be arranged and economies to be made. A grand marriage had become a working home.
For Isabella, there were eight years of motherhood.
In 1465 Charles was campaigning in France against Louis XI. Isabella fell seriously ill and died that September. Mary was eight. Among the books Isabella still owned at her death was an Ars moriendi, a guide to the art of dying well. The marriage made in Lille had lasted just under eleven years.
Isabella never became Duchess of Burgundy. Philip was still alive when she died; Charles inherited his father's title in 1467. The rank which had been the prospect of her marriage passed, as a consort's title, to another woman.
In 1468 Charles married Margaret of York, sister of Edward IV of England. The English alliance his mother had wanted was finally made. Margaret entered a household in which Mary, now eleven, was growing up, the daughter of the French bride Philip had chosen. There were no children from this third marriage. Isabella's daughter remained Charles's only child and heir.
Isabella had been buried at St Michael's Abbey in Antwerp. In 1475, ten years after losing her, Mary commissioned a monument for her there. She was eighteen, still two years away from inheriting her father's lands.
Isabella's effigy lay above twenty-four small bronze mourners, five generations of family and forebears. They proclaimed the lineage that had made Isabella a suitable bride at Lille and that now belonged to her daughter. A noblewoman's tomb could remember the dead and establish the standing of the living at the same time. The monument was installed in 1476, while Charles was still alive.
His father had insisted on Isabella at Lille. At Antwerp, five generations stood around her in bronze, fixed in permanent mourning. The daughter she had left behind at eight had ordered every one of them.
