The Plantagenets
Subtitle: the warrior kings and queens who made England
By: Dan Jones
Published: 2014
Language: eng
Number of pages: 534
ISBN-13: 9780143124924
Subjects: Politics and government; Kings and rulers; Biography; History
Other titles: Warrior kings and queens who made England
Description: The first Plantagenet king inherited a blood-soaked kingdom from the Normans and transformed it into an empire stretched at its peak from Scotland to Jerusalem. In this history, Jones resurrects this fierce and seductive royal dynasty and its mythic world. 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.
Notes: Originally published: Great Britain : Harper Press, 2012.

Previously published: [New York] : Viking Penguin, 2013.

"First published in the United States of America by Viking Penguin, a member of the Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2013"--Title page verso.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 511-517) and index.
Table of contents: title: Age of shipwreck (1120-1154) : The White Ship ; Hunt for an heir ; The shipwreck ; Ambition ; A scandalous wife ; Henry the Conqueror; title: Age of empire (1154-1204) : Births and rebirth ; L'espace Plantagenet ; Unholy war ; Succession planning ; The eagle's nest ; Henry triumphant ; A world on fire ; King Richard ; Hero of the east ; Treachery ; An unexpected detour ; Return of the Lionheart ; Lackland supreme ; John Softsword ; Triumph and catastrophe ; Lackland undone; title: Age of opposition (1204-1263) : Salvaging the wreck ; A cruel master ; Beginning of the end ; To Bouvines ; The Magna Carta ; Securing the inheritance ; Kingship at last ; Holy kingship ; The provisions of Oxford ; The Battle of Lewes ; From imprisonment to Evesham ; The leopard; title: Age of Arthur (1263-1307) : King at last ; A new Arthur ; The final stand ; The king's castles ; The price of conquest ; The expulsion of the Jews ; The great cause and French trickery ; The conquest of Scotland ; Crisis point ; Relapse; title: Age of violence (1307-1330) : The king and his brother ; The king restrained ; Manhunt ; Promise and disaster ; New favorites ; Civil war ; The king's tyranny ; Mortimer, Isabella, and Prince Edward ; Endgame ; False dawn; title: Age of glory (1330-1360) : Royal coup ; Glorious king of a beggared kingdom ; New earls, new enemies ; The Hundred Years War begins ; Edward at sea ; Dominance ; The death of a princess ; The Order of the Garter ; Decade of triumph; title: Age of revolution (1360-1399) : The family business ; Unraveling fortunes ; The good parliament ; New king, old problems ; England in uproar ; Return to crisis ; Treason and trauma ; The reinvention of kingship ; Richard revenged ; Richard undone ; Richard alone ; Epilogue.