The son of John the Gaunt, Henry was seen as a confident, well-educated, generous, and spiritually fervent young man. And, in 1399, having ousted the insecure tyrannical Richard II, he was enthusiastically greeted as the new King of England. Most of us, however, not having grown up with English kings and queens as part of our national history, can only name a few of them. There's good old King George, of course. And Henry VIII. And the king from Robin Hood. And the guy in Shakespeare's play... And, umm.... no, King Arthur doesn't count. Look, English kings are a long string of Henrys and Edwards and Richards and Johns. Who can differentiate between them?

The Plantagenets: book II): one The Revolt of the Eaglets: (The Plantagenets: book II): one

The author and I can at least agree on one thing: we both admire Edward III, whom I described in a recent English Standard article as the real father of the English nation. Although his ambitions in France were fruitless his time saw great innovations in both military and parliamentary affairs. It was a time that saw the beginning of the end of the old England of humble peasants and hungry barons, never the twain to meet. A drunken outing, a ship sinks and a future kiing is dead leaving the country without a clear successor. The result? Twenty years of Civil War. This is how this well written well researched book begins. It then takes us through 250 years of Plntagenet rule. The good, not too much of that, the bad, alot of that, and the ugly. So glad I did not live in the Middle ages. I knew quite a bit of this history going in, but I have always had a fascination with Eleanor of Aquitaine, queen twice, the mother of two Kings, and the women that led her sons in a revolt against her husband. Of course she was imprisoned in various castles for many years, but eventually she once again became a politcal force. She lives into her seventies. In assessing the 8 Plantagenet kings, the author pretty much accepts the standard judgment of who was a good king and who was not. The good kings include Henry II, Richard I, Edward I and Edward III while John, Edward II and Richard II are listed as bad kings. The primary determiner of who was a good or bad king seems to be whether they were good generals or not. Maybe Henry just didn't know there were other names for girls because Matilda was also the name of: his mother/one-time Queen of England, Matilda of Flanders; his first wife, Matilda of Scotland; and the daughter they had, who became Empress Matilda. After William's death (FYI, his wife was also named Matilda), Henry appointed his only other legitimate child (the aforementioned Empress Matilda) as his heir. However, her cousin and his wife, Matilda of Boulogne, took over leaving us with King Stephen (not to be confused with Stephen King). Our next Edward, Edward of Caernarfon, had a BFF by the name of Piers Gaveston. It's not clear whether Gaveston was a “brother figure,” as Edward claimed, or if there was something more to their relationship, but everyone thought the Edward-Gaveston bromance was just too much.As for the effective ones, John’s grandson Edward I, in his restless imperial ambitions, was to poison relations between England and Scotland for centuries. Before that we have the example of Richard I, who cared little for England, other than as a mortgageable asset, to be used in financing the pursuit of a crusading chimera. THE PLANTAGENETS, THE WARRIOR KINGS AND QUEENS WHO MADE ENGLAND is a marvelous read. Full of intrigue, drama, and human emotion it is a pretty darn good overview of the 245 years of the Plantagenet dynasty and the politics of medieval Europe. The woman laughed. 'I would hardly compare Adrian Moody to a royal line! How would I overlook the name Moody? Why, that's like overlooking Hanover, or—or Plantagenet.'

The Plantagenet Prelude: (The Plantagenets: book I): the The Plantagenet Prelude: (The Plantagenets: book I): the

Also interesting is how Jones points out that the bloody violence we associate with the Tudors began with a few pivotal executions during this time period that forever changed the way the monarchy interacted with the peers of the realm. This book also makes obviously clear that the Plantagenet rulers as a collective were key players (not always willingly) in the idea that “the king should govern within his own laws and with the advice of the worthiest men of his kingdom.” It is no small task to give adequate coverage to prolific characters such as Henry II, Richard I, Edward III, and all who came in between in one installment. Jones does so with just enough detail of each king to understand their reign without including so much as to overwhelm the reader who is looking for an overview of the dynasty.

To boil it down, Henry II created the vast Plantagenet empire and his heirs spent their reigns losing it through ineptitude and hubris, with a comparatively brief hiatus during the reign of Edward III. But in the meantime, in those Plantagenet years between 1154 and 1485, Jones writes

The Plantagenets: The Kings Who Made England - Wikipedia

I would have loved to learn more about the powerful spouses and confidants behind each reign, but this book has done well in whetting my appetite for more. One of Jones's strengths is an eye for the small but enlightening detail of character. Edward I, or "Longshanks", persecuted all who disagreed with him, whether it be his expulsion of the Jews in 1290 or his conquest of Scotland in 1296. He was so dominant in person that he was said to have scared a man to death, unlike his son Edward II, whose incompetent rule, bedevilled with military defeats and unwise adherence to his favourites, ended with his murder in 1327. Jones notes that the method of his death, traditionally held to be by a rectally inserted red-hot poker, "is almost certainly quite untrue". The medieval wheel of fortune is ever-present. The greatest of all the Plantagenet kings, Edward III, is succeeded in 1377 by one of the very worst, Richard II, and the whole process of civil war begins again. I don't think a single Plantagenet died without a certain amount of dramatic irony, or some variety of contention over the succession. I don't know that I entirely agree with the blurb of Dan Jones' The Plantagenets. Compelling and fascinating are certainly accurate, but gripping and vivid are a bit of a stretch. I mean no offense to Jones, his work is really very interesting, but we are talking about a piece that covers more than three hundred and sixty years of history. It's a lot to absorb and doesn't lend itself to edge-of-your-seat, obsessive, got-to-know-what-happens-next, must-finish-this-chapter-before-going-to-bed type reading.Brilliant and entertaining . . . a set of fine vignettes relating dynastic life, death, war, peace, governance, and palace intrigues. The result is a history book that frequently reads like a novel and can be opened to any chapter.” Edward's inability to empathize with the pressures brought to bear on his opponents was the cause of most of the rebellions and crises of his reign. In 1295 he managed to drive together two enemies that were to remain in each other's arms for the following 365 years. In February 1296 the Scottish government ratified a treaty of friendship with France. The Auld Alliance was born. There are so many points in the Plantagenet era when they should have lost power. John, Henry III, Edward II, and Richard II are all legitimately bad kings who could have ended the reign of the Plantagenet family. Fortunately, there are strong kings, such as Henry II, Richard I, Edward I, and Edward III, who prove to be powerful, capable rulers who, especially in the case of the two Edwards, overcome the incompetencies of their immediate predecessors. Beginning with the loss of the White Ship in 1120, Jones details the rise of the Plantagenets to power through Matilda, daughter of Henry I. Covering the war for supremacy between Matilda and Stephen would have seemed enough for some authors, but Jones takes on the charismatic kings all the way to the usurpation of Henry IV.

The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made…

of the most beautiful and powerful men and women of England and Normandy board The White Ship to travel from Normandy to England. They are exuberantly drunk, and the crew of the ship is also three sheets to the wind. Out of all of these important people, there is one who is head and shoulders more important than the rest...William the Aetheling, named for his grandfather William the Conqueror. He is the heir apparent to the throne of England.

And then there is William Gold. A cook's boy - the lowest of the low - who had once been branded as a thief. William dreams of being a knight, but in this… He spent the rest of the day and also the whole of the following night in bitterness of soul, given over to prayer and sleeplessness, and continuing his fast for three days...With this extraordinary show of public penance Henry had won the most important propaganda battle of the war. Jones is also guilty of filling his text with speculation and phrases divulging what figures “thought”. Unless he has access to top-secret diaries, he does NOT know what anyone thought. Not to mention, information which does sound solid is not properly sourced with facts mentioned similar to, “A contemporary stated…” but the contemporary is never detailed. To say the least, much of “The Plantagenets” is an overview and one which doesn’t even feel credible.