page_title: Stephen, King of England
section_title: Popular representations
hierarchical_section_title: Stephen, King of England / Legacy / Popular representations
caption_attribution_description: King Stephen, by unknown artist. See source website for additional information. This set of images was gathered by User:Dcoetzee from the National Portrait Gallery, London website using a special tool. All images in this batch are listed as "unknown author" by the NPG, who is diligent in researching authors, and was donated to the NPG before 1939 according to their website.
context_page_description: Stephen, often referred to as Stephen of Blois, was King of England from 22 December 1135 to his death. He was Count of Boulogne from 1125 until 1147 and Duke of Normandy from 1135 until 1144. His reign was marked by the Anarchy, a civil war with his cousin and rival, the Empress Matilda, whose son, Henry II, succeeded Stephen as the first of the Angevin kings of England.
  Stephen was born in the County of Blois in central France; his father, Count Stephen-Henry, died while Stephen was still young, and he was brought up by his mother, Adela, daughter of William the Conqueror. Placed into the court of his uncle, Henry I of England, Stephen rose in prominence and was granted extensive lands. He married Matilda of Boulogne, inheriting additional estates in Kent and Boulogne that made the couple one of the wealthiest in England. Stephen narrowly escaped drowning with Henry I's son, William Adelin, in the sinking of the White Ship in 1120; William's death left the succession of the English throne open to challenge.
context_section_description: Stephen and his reign have been occasionally used in historical fiction. Stephen and his supporters appear in Ellis Peters' historical detective series The Cadfael Chronicles, set between 1137 and 1145. Peters' depiction of Stephen's reign is an essentially local narrative, focused on the town of Shrewsbury and its environs. Peters paints Stephen as a tolerant man and a reasonable ruler, despite his execution of the Shrewsbury defenders after the taking of the city in 1138. In contrast, he is depicted unsympathetically in both Ken Follett's historical novel The Pillars of the Earth and the TV mini-series adapted from it.
caption: Imaginary portrait of King Stephen, about 1620
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