“My father was a historian, and most of all he liked the stories inside history,” Isabel Stilwell told The Portugal News. “He taught me history as something that was done by real people.” Later on, she went on to become a journalist and had already published a book covering teenagers when she was asked by her publisher to do another one. Instead, however, she took note of a shelf full of books written by foreigners about Portuguese heroes and was offered to write her own series of the type. The first name that came to mind was Philippa of Lancaster. “It makes a lot of sense,” she explained, “because she was the only English princess to become queen of Portugal and so as a British family in Portugal, we talked a lot about her.”


“I have always been a compulsive talker and writer,” Isabel responded to an inquiry on her affinity for literature. “My family thanks me when I’m in my writing phase because they have silence around. For me, writing is the best way to express what I know and in the end what I’m doing is telling a story in a way I think other people want to read.” She aims to make the stories clear and readable, which is “a big effort” when talking about history.


Philippa of Lancaster


Philippa of Lancaster only married at 28 years of age, which was quite old for the time, as people, especially women in labour, died as early as 20-30. This gave her “a bit of leverage in the sense that can have an education,” Stilwell explained.


Being the daughter of John of Gaunt, one of the most well-known knights of the Medieval age, she spent her upbringing in his court, one full of experts in science and art. Once she married and had children, the new queen of Portugal wanted “The illustrious generation, as Camões calls them” to have a good education, bringing teachers from abroad and teaching them herself. Her three children grew up to be D. Duarte of Portugal, Henry the Navigator, and the Duchess of Burgundy. “That is the secret, I think, of the discoveries,” Isabel stated. “It’s the secret of not starting everything from the beginning,” education-wise.


The book was recently translated into English by Martha d’Andrade, which Stilwell says is “an effort to bring history to people who come to Portugal, who are interested in Portugal, who live here and go by our monuments without really knowing the story and who have guides that talk about maybe 3 things and don’t go in depth. I was thinking not only of foreign people but of the English-speaking community in Portugal.”


Portuguese president Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa recently visited King Charles III in London to commemorate the 650th anniversary of the signing of the London Treaty, the agreement on which the centuries-old Anglo-Portuguese alliance is founded. The treaty’s origin dates to the life of Philippa, whose marriage set it in stone.


Stilwell spoke about the difficulty that can sometimes be had finding documents talking about the medieval queen’s life, pointing out that “women only appear in chronicles when they’re the mothers, sisters or daughters of someone important. With Philippa we’re lucky because she’s the daughter of John of Gaunt and he’s one of the most important of his time, his archives are very good. We’ve got the bills of the jewels he gave his daughter, bills of the horse he gave his son… If Philippa hadn’t been the daughter of such a man, we wouldn’t have known anything about her. When she marries D. João I, she comes back into Portuguese writing because she becomes queen, but the writing was done by men a lot of the time, by priests in convents, so they have no idea how women function and they normally don’t talk a lot about them.” To conduct research, Stilwell gathers all the historical evidence she can find about a given character or event and cross-examines them, like a chronicle by a foreigner to the country documenting what they saw. When there isn’t concrete proof behind an event, she will fill the gap with what she considers plausible.


Historical gaps


While gaps in historical records do occur, a surprisingly vast amount of information has been preserved over all these centuries. “John of Gaunt had thousands of sheep killed every year for their skins since parchments were all made of lamb skin, and he had about 10 or 15 people just writing letters,” Isabel explained. “For example, the palace in Sintra is the best maintained medieval palace in Europe, and we know exactly what part of it was there when Philippa and John lived there.” The couple also made changes to the palace, which were recorded by her son, King D. Duarte.


Philippa of Lancaster’s main goal in life, according to Stilwell, was “having children and educating them,” but she also used her influence to shape the court. “She found out women eat separately from men, she also wanted the ladies of the court to learn to read and write, and she had 8 children,” the last one being born when she was 42, “and that’s a good thing. I mean, the king, her husband, didn’t have children outside the marriage and that says a lot about her controlling character.” She also served as the ambassador from England to Portugal, as being queen-consort comes with diplomatic responsibilities. Most importantly, she negotiated peace between Portugal and Castile with her sister, the latter’s queen, ending the former kingdom’s first succession crisis.


“I think that you’ll find in Portugal there’s a very sort of bipolar relationship with England,” Stilwell admitted. “On the one hand, we have this alliance, all this friendship, we all have relationships with England, we admire England. On the other, we sometimes react in a strange way, saying the alliance only worked for the English side, that we didn’t gain as much as the English did, and so people forget that these alliances were done for political reasons – there are always two interests, it’s always a selfish move that makes you ally with another country.” She recalls how England aided the Portuguese cause in the Restoration War and helped fight back against France in the Napoleonic Invasions. “Everybody will tell you about the ultimatum,” referring to the 1910 ‘Pink map’ ultimatum that saw Portugal give up their claims to the African lands between Angola and Mozambique to Britain so that they could build their Cape to Cairo railroad, which they never finished. “That’s what you call a stone in the shoe, something the Portuguese will always tell you when you talk about these things.”


Isabel Stilwell has recently released her latest novel, covering Philip the 1st of Portugal, or 2nd of Spain, responsible for pushing the Spanish Empire to its territorial peak. Meanwhile, an English translation of her book on D. Manuel, symbolic of the Discoveries, will be released at an unspecified date “soon.”


“Portugal is very creative,” Stilwell summed up, “in its history, it’s a poor country, when we talk about the discoveries, we sometimes forget people went on these boats because there was no hope here. Emigration hasn’t started now; it’s always been in Portugal. Of course, it turned to the sea, and even now I think the sea is one of our greatest interests and we should study and explore it more.”

Author

Star in the 2015 music video for the hit single “Headlights” by German musician, DJ and record producer Robin Schulz featuring American singer-songwriter Ilsey. Also a journalist.

Jay Bodsworth