Hi everyone. Welcome to Bibliophilia Book Review. Today I will be reviewing The Plantagenets by Dan Jones.
This book relates 245 years of English history and warfare as the country transforms from an Anglo-Norman realm to one of the most powerful and sophisticated realms in Europe of the Middle Ages. However, the subtitle of this book is a little misgiving. There were only two queens in the entire period of English history that this book relates that can be said to have been significant players in the politics of their age; the first was Empress Maude, the mother of Henry II, and the second Eleanor of Aquitaine, the wife of two kings and the mother of two kings. Any other queen mentioned in this book did not stand out from behind her husband’s shadow and they were all quite forgettable to tell the truth.
The kings, on the other hand, all shone in their own way. From the usurper King Stephen to the tyrant Richard II, each one of these kings helped shape England into what it was in 1399 somehow or other. I learned two things with this book, even though they might seem fundamental to any aficionado and connoisseur of English Medieval history. First, William The Conqueror was the duke of Normandy, a territory located in what today is modern France, that conquered Anglo-Saxon England in 1066 after the battle of Hastings and that is why the aftermath of this battle is also called The Norman Conquest. Pretty fundamental, right? Yeah. And two, this territory, which included Normandy, Maine, Anjou, Poitou, and Gascony at its zenith and only Gascony at its nadir, was at the root of all the subsequent wars between England and France, most notably among them The Hundred Years War, that this book talks about.
“Henry I was, as one contemporary chronicler put it, “the man against whom no one could prevail except God himself.” The fourth son of William the Conqueror, he enjoyed an exceptionally long, peaceful, and prosperous reign of thirty-five years, in which royal authority in England reached new heights. After his father’s death in 1087, England and Normandy had been split apart. Henry ruthlessly reunited them.”
Because this is what this book is all about, mostly. The wars that each one of these kings waged with one another. Truth be told, it was a little hard to keep track of all of them. However, the way this book is organized did help me differentiate the kings from one another more easily than it would have had the author decided to organize the book in a different manner. The book begins with the civil war between King Stephen and Empress Maude, the heir of Henry I, William The Conqueror’s son, whose throne was usurped from her on account of her biological sex. Empress Maude’s heir, Henry II, was one of the most important kings of Medieval England and his reign was indeed the establishment of an empire. He was the second husband of Eleanor of Aquitaine and the father of Richard The Lionheart and John Lackland, also known as one of the cruelest kings of England. And here, I will highly recommend Sharon Kay Penman’s trilogy Plantagenets if you want to read a fictional account of this king’s reign. Richard I was the crusader king and perhaps one of the most famous kings of England, however I don’t think he loved it as much as he loved Aquitaine, the duchy he inherited from his mother, and he is known for having put a price on each one of its titles and lands. He sold everything he put his hand on, and that was rather disenchanting. His brother, John, is probably the most hated king of England in the Middle Ages and the one that lost Normandy and other French territories of his mother’s inheritance to the king of France. This made him the first Plantagenet king to stay in England full time, instead of going back and forth between the island and the mainland (where Normandy was located), and he did much to change the laws of the country despite it all. However, he was also ruthless and shameless at extorting his own barons and subjects. Henry III was one the least capable kings of Medieval England who inherited the throne at 9 years old and was never able to wrest power from others. Eventually he was deemed unfit to rule and was replaced by his son Edward I, who styled himself a New Arthur and waged war against the Scots. Under his rule, Scotland became a part of the English kingdom and stripped of its autonomy. Edward II, on the other hand, was not a warrior king and he suffered a devastating defeat at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314 by Robert the Bruce in Scotland. The king had favorites, most notably Piers Gaveston and Hugh Despenser, both Elder and the Younger. And like his predecessor Henry III, Edward II was forced to relinquish the crown in favor of his son Edward III.
Edward III is probably the most notable monarch of the House of Plantagenets. He reigned for 50 years, and is known for creating the Duchy of Cornwall, which provides the heir of the throne with an income independent of the sovereign or the state, and the Order of the Garter in 1348. He is also the only king of England of the House of Plantagenets that survived his heir, Edward The Black Prince. I did not know this, and the crown went to the Black Prince’s son, Richard II, when Edward III died a year later. Edward III is known for fighting the Scots and winning battles such as Halidon Hill in1333 and Neville’s Cross in 1346. He also claimed the French crown and initiated the Hundred Years War. The Peasant’s Revolt in 1381, on the other hand, broke out when a young Richard II was king. The uprising was caused by heavy taxation. The aristocracy was also unhappy with Richard’s reign years later due to his high-handed behavior and his extravagant household. He was deposed by his cousin Henry Bolingbroke, who became Henry IV of the House of Lancaster, and Richard II is known today both as the last king of the House of York and Plantagenet dynasty.
The subsequent wars for the throne of England between the Houses of York and Lancaster are known as the Wars of the Roses.
Yeah, this book is a lot. I liked it and will probably read the author’s sequel to this one aptly called The War of the Roses. However, if you are not someone who enjoys reading about the history of the kings of England you probably won’t enjoy this book as much as I did. In part because this book is a plethora of information. But the author is passionate about the topic, and you can tell. I also found out that he turned this book, and the subsequent one, into a Netflix series, which I am watching and enjoying a lot as well. And it got me thinking, is there a similar book about the Tudors? I’ve yet to find one.
