The Plantagenets

It isn’t easy being the son of famous parents. Especially if you’re gay.

On hand today is The Plantagenets by Dan Jones, the same author who gave us the history of the Templars reviewed elsewhere on this site. My dilemma with the Plantagenets is that they’re among my favorite dynasties and they reigned in one of my favorite historical periods, but unfortunately that family opens with what should be the Big Finish: Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, Richard the Lionheart, and the union of England and most of France under one crown. It’s a tough act to follow, although Jones tries to make a case for Edward III. But by Edward’s time much of France had been lost, and let’s face it: Ed was married to a mere woman…Henry had Eleanor of Aquitaine.

I freely confess that Eleanor is my hands-down favorite character in history. I’ve read a good bit about her over the years, but you always pick up new tidbits. Like in the current volume, where we find that Bernard of Clairvaux wrote to Pope Eugene III saying Eleanor was “capable of taking a strong political stance.” The names may sound familiar, these are the same Bernie and Eugene who put together the Templars, and the same Bernie who engineered the papal succession after Eugene’s death. For those two to comment on anyone’s political acumen would be a compliment; Eleanor was a teenage girl at the time. An incredibly rich one, since her personal lands before marriage were three times the size of the Kingdom of France, holdings she retained through both her marriages. When Eleanor’s first husband, King Louis VII of France (“poor, pious Louis” was her actual and withering assessment) set her aside, she rode on horseback across France in two days to get word to Henry to drop what he was doing and come marry her. He was in the middle of a war, but he came immediately. Years and four sons later, Eleanor became disturbed that her dear husband Henry was infringing on her personal prerogative to raise taxes and transfer noble titles in her lands in France, so she and the boys banded together with her ex-husband Louis and led a war against Henry. It was so bad that Pope Eugene wrote to Eleanor personally to remind her of her wedding vows and to ask her to knock off the war.

Eleanor ignored him.

She lost the war of course, and Henry sealed her up for twenty years, no one knows where although Salisbury is the best guess. She outlived him, and their son, Richard the Lionheart, now King Richard I of England, succeeded to the throne. He released Eleanor from captivity and sent her on a tour of the country. To receive fealty, and also to collect taxes…Eleanor was always great at collecting taxes. Shortly thereafter Eleanor, now of some years, had herself carried on a litter across the Pyrenees…why? To steal for Richard the betrothed bride of King Philip II Augustus of France, the son of her former-conspirator, now-dead, ex-husband Lou. Philip and Richard had had an affair, but it wasn’t that Eleanor held a grudge over a failed romance. Since she and Richard ruled England and most of France, plus a fair hunk of the Holy Land, it just made sense to her to add northern Spain to the portfolio. It was great from the expense side.

And it would have worked, too, except for the inconvenient fact that after six years of marriage to the fair Isabella of Castile, Richard was killed in battle and had neglected to make any heir. Oops. Eleanor had taken the veil by then, which of course didn’t stop her from turning around the civil war that followed. She pinned up her wimple, raised an army, relieved a siege (relations with Philip remained frosty at best), helped defeat an annoying pretender, and handed over the whole affair to her younger son, John. Then went back to praying.

As to Richard, he’s a story unto himself, and I should be completely clear that our author, Dan Jones, takes no stand on Richard’s sexuality. Jones does note the rumor, which was current during Richard’s lifetime, that he was gay. Jones also lists other reasons that one of the most eligible men in Europe might not have produced offspring. Or even rumors of offspring. Curmudgeons take stands, however, and I am absolutely convinced Richard was not only gay, he’s an example of why one needs more homosexuality in the monarchy. Consider Sicily…as Richard sailed off on the Third Crusade he stopped in Sicily along the way. The King of Sicily had locked up Richard’s kid sister for a while, so he laid siege and conquered the island, mainly to make her feel better. The former king’s terms of surrender included that he not be held in irons. Ever the gentleman Richard agreed…and then had manacles and chains cast from sterling silver, and bound him up that way. (The exact pattern, regrettably, is lost to history.) He then turned around and sold the entire island and kingdom off to his (and our) old friends the Templars, the sale price considerably fattened by the presence of a highly ransom-able prisoner now held in sterling. You got to love a monarch who can fix a place up like that, you know?

There was more to the Plantagenets than gossip, of course. They created much of the English state, and by that influenced those of us who either are or started out as English possessions. The Plantagenets had a particular interest in the law, and happily that seems to be one of the author’s professional interests as well. Henry II was famous for popping up all over the place in England and France, it was more than just flattery, if you look at his travel schedule it truly was inhuman. Much of that travel was to fight off invasions, put down uprisings, and squelch general disorder among the rabble. But he also sat in a traveling court, using the law as a sort of charm offensive: Henry offered important guarantees of property and legal rights to the local nobles in exchange for loyalty to the crown.

Henry and Eleanor’s younger son, John, may have had the greatest influence on us of them all. He is, you recall, the one who pissed the barons off to the point they rebelled and forced him to accept Magna Carta. And all snark aside, the principles of Magna Carta really do flow into most legal systems of the English-speaking world. I am indebted to Jones for resetting my image of King John. As the loser at Runnymede, he is sometimes portrayed as slow or unintelligent, in addition to evil. In fact, John was an excellent military commander, weak only in comparison to the brilliance of his father and elder brother, Richard. As to being evil, he certainly could be, but as Jones points out, so could the rest of his family. By the time John ascended, much of the Plantagenet holdings in France had been lost, and as a result, John spent nearly all of his time in England. Familiarity with that family did not breed affection, it seems.

The Plantagenets ruled for another two hundred years or so, and it really is true that Edward III may have been the best of the bunch: he recaptured significant portions of the family’s former French holdings and established a more sustainable government than the highly personal reigns of his ancestors. But dreadful people that they were, my heart still belongs to Henry, Eleanor, and Richard. Especially Eleanor…yeah, I know: gay man falls for unattainable diva. It’s not exactly a new story.

And it isn’t just for Cher.