 Isabeau's life is well documented, most likely because Charles' illness placed her in an unusual position of power. Nevertheless, not much is known about her personal characteristics, and historians even disagree about her appearance. She is variously described as "small and brunette" or "tall and blonde". The contemporaneous evidence is contradictory: chroniclers said of her either that she was "beautiful and hypnotic, or so obese through dropsy that she was crippled." Despite living in France after her marriage, she spoke with a heavy German accent that never diminished, which Tuchman describes as giving her an "alien" cast at the French court.
