The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England
The New York Times bestseller, from the author of Powers and Thrones, that tells the story of Britain’s greatest and worst dynasty—“a real-life Game of Thrones” (The Wall Street Journal)
The first Plantagenet kings inherited a blood-soaked realm from the Normans and transformed it into an empire that stretched at its peak from Scotland to Jerusalem. In this epic narrative history of courage, treachery, ambition, and deception, Dan Jones resurrects the unruly royal dynasty that preceded the Tudors. They produced England’s best and worst kings: Henry II and his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine, twice a queen and the most famous woman in Christendom; their son Richard the Lionheart, who fought Saladin in the Third Crusade; and his conniving brother King John, who was forced to grant his people new rights under the Magna Carta, the basis for our own bill of rights. Combining the latest academic research with a gift for storytelling, Jones vividly recreates the great battles of Bannockburn, Crécy, and Sluys and reveals how the maligned kings Edward II and Richard II met their downfalls. This is the era of chivalry and the Black Death, the Knights Templar, the founding of parliament, and the Hundred Years’ War, when England’s national identity was forged by the sword.
The first Plantagenet kings inherited a blood-soaked realm from the Normans and transformed it into an empire that stretched at its peak from Scotland to Jerusalem. In this epic narrative history of courage, treachery, ambition, and deception, Dan Jones resurrects the unruly royal dynasty that preceded the Tudors. They produced England’s best and worst kings: Henry II and his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine, twice a queen and the most famous woman in Christendom; their son Richard the Lionheart, who fought Saladin in the Third Crusade; and his conniving brother King John, who was forced to grant his people new rights under the Magna Carta, the basis for our own bill of rights. Combining the latest academic research with a gift for storytelling, Jones vividly recreates the great battles of Bannockburn, Crécy, and Sluys and reveals how the maligned kings Edward II and Richard II met their downfalls. This is the era of chivalry and the Black Death, the Knights Templar, the founding of parliament, and the Hundred Years’ War, when England’s national identity was forged by the sword.
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Community Reviews
Another triumph for Dan Jones (and the narrator, Clive Chafer). The Plantagenet Dynasty is one of the least studied Franco-British lines of rulers. And, as Jones points out, the Plantagenet line of kings is one of the most tyrannical and conniving bloodlines to stretch across the English Channel and to have an heir to serve as both King of France and of England. Overall, Jones is a brilliant historian and storyteller. He brings together a lively biography of this little- known line of kings, who for the better part of 330 years, made one of the largest impacts on the futures of both England and France. Jones' works are all well-researched, academic--but not over the top--and the target audience can be anyone from the run-of-the-mill history buff or a graduate student who is studying the underpinnings of pre-Tudor British political-religious machinations. Highly recommend!
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