King and Baronage (A.D. 1135-1327)

In 1135, the greatest king England had ever known died without a male heir, and the kingdom plunged into nineteen years of savage civil war. This is the story of how two claimants to the throne, the emperor's daughter and a usurping earl, tore medieval England apart while its barons grew fat on the chaos. Hutton, a Dean of Winchester and respected Victorian historian, traces the bloody thread from the Anarchy through the great Plantagenet kings: Henry II, who conquered an empire and was brought low by his own rebellious sons; Richard the Lionheart, the crusading legend who found England too small for his ambitions; John, who lost Normandy and nearly lost his head to his own barons; and the long, troubled reigns of Henry III and the first two Edwards. Throughout, the real drama lies not in the throne but in the tension between crown and baronage, as England's most powerful nobles learned to bend kings to their will or face the consequences. This is medieval England at its most visceral: a world of sieges, betrayals, and the slow, inexorable struggle over who truly rules.