BIOGRAPHICAL: «i»"The lady whom we saw has not uncomely hair, betwixt blue-black and brown. Her head is cleaned shaped; her forehead high and broad, and standing somewhat forward. Her face narrows between the eyes, and the lower part of her face is still more narrow and slender than the forehead. Her eyes are blackish brown and deep. Her nose is fairly smooth and even, save that is somewhat broad at the tip and flattened, yet it is no snub nose. Her nostrils are also broad, her mouth fairly wide. Her lips somewhat full and especially the lower lip…all her limbs are well set and unmaimed, and nought is amiss so far as a man may see. Moreover, she is brown of skin all over, and much like her father, and in all things she is pleasant enough, as it seems to us."«/i»
When she was nine the King of England, Edward II, decided that he would marry his son, the future Edward III, to her, and sent one of his bishops, a Bishop Stapeldon, to look at her, with the resulting description above. Four years later Prince Edward went to visit his bride-to-be and her family, and fell in love with her. She was betrothed to him and in 1327, when she was only 14, she arrived in England. The next year, when she was 15, they married and were crowned King and Queen in 1330.
BIOGRAPHICAL: is one of the most famous sculptures by Auguste Rodin, completed in 1888. It serves as a monument to an occurrence in 1347 during the Hundred Years War, when Calais, an important French port on the English Channel, was under siege by the English for over a year. The story goes that England's Edward III offered to spare the city if six influential men, wearing nooses around their necks, would turn over the keys to the city and castle, as well as their lives. To prevent any further loss of life, Eustache de Saint Pierre led an envoy of six influential men to surrender the city, which had been abandoned by Philip VI. Though the burghers expected to be executed, their lives were spared by the intervention of England's Queen, Philippa of Hainault.