The Plantagenets: The Kings Who Made England

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I know the Tudors have received more attention in recent years than their predecessors, the Plantagenets, mainly due to a strange fascination with Henry VIII and his numerous wives, but I think that most people will find this overview of the Plantagenets equally fascinating and might even discover themselves believing, as I do, that the Tudors are merely a ragtag band of usurpers to the true kings and queens who built England. Wonderful overview. Highly Recommended! This is where the wild ride starts, as Henry and his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine created the devil's brood, out of which arose Richard I and John (who doesn't need a numeral after his name because there will never be another King John). Here the book does try a bit to give John some credit for something, but boooo-hisss-snarl, he really was the Darth Vader of his time.

What a hot mess life could be in the Plantagenet empire! The best one can hope for is that we learn from the mistakes of the past. So, should anyone find themselves in any of the following situations, here are some bits of wisdom, courtesy of these “warrior kings and queen” of yore.great grandparents Matilda of Scotland and Henry I, 25th great grandfathers Geoffrey count of Anjou and King David I of Scotland, 24th great grandfather Henry II, 2nd cousin Edward I, 1st cousin Louis the Fat, and many more are colored in full context by way of Jones' informed storytelling. Their circumstances and living conditions might've been quite different compared to contemporary times, but their human natures are all too recognizable.

Larman, Alexander (3 June 2012). "The Plantagenets by Dan Jones – review". The Guardian . Retrieved 15 August 2020. A number of those decisions, and their consequences, have parallels here in our time and place. More than one took me to current events in an instant.

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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. 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. Dan Jones has done something with this book that is not usually achieved. He has taken almost three centuries of history and made them accessible and understandable to the non-historian. His style of narrative nonfiction was at times as captivating as any novel with brilliant analysis of what drove people to the roles that they played. 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.

The publishers have managed to stamp the book with the imprimatur of some impressive heavyweights, including David Starkey and Simon Sebag-Montefiore. These things always seem slightly over the top to me - clearly solicited in advance rather than drawn from a published review - , almost hysterical in their approbation. The latter, for example, describes The Plantagenets as ‘outstanding’, a judgement echoed by Helen Castor, the best-selling author of She Wolves. (It must be so: it says so on the cover!) Having said that he does admit that possibility esp in Edward’s case, his contempories certainly thought so - thus the legendary manor of his death The Plantagenet line ruled from 1154 (Henry II) to 1399 (Richard II) - the High Middle Ages, more or less. They were the immediate descendants of William the Conqueror. The line ended (or really, split) into the two branches of Lancaster and York, which led the War of the Roses a few generations later. While George R.R. Martin is known to have loosely based his epic on that conflict, you'll learn in this book that the Plantagenets and their rivals were playing a game of thrones long before then.Jones writes, “During 245 years of turbulent rule, the Plantagenets had forged England in their own image.” Yep, and once again history proves to be more interesting that any fantasy we could muster. This is wild stuff, and it is true! The text’s Epilogue is a great summation of Mr. Jones’ premise, mainly that the Plantagenet dynasty made and shaped what we know as England. After reading this, it’s hard to argue the point. These negative points roll into an overly-rushed conclusion which instead of detailing the drama between Richard II and Henry Bolingbroke in a memorable way; instead focuses more on Jones’s clear dislike for Richard. The epilogue of “The Plantagenets” also fails to sum-up the work in a resonating way. Following the death of William Aetherling, Henry I leaves his throne to his daughter, Matilda. Her husband, the handsome Geoffrey of Anjou, is the man who in legend inspired the Plantagent name: he wore a spring of yellow broom blossom (planta genista) in his hair. Four centuries before the advent of Mary Tudor, the question of whether or not England will accept a Queen regnant, has arisen. Matilda’s cousin Stephan of Blois, one of the few survivors of the white ship, seizes the crown, and so begins a long and grim civil war. Hardyment, Christina (26 May 2012). "The Plantagenets, By Dan Jones". The Independent. Archived from the original on 18 June 2022 . Retrieved 16 August 2020.