The Plantagenets: How a French Count's Descendants Built and Nearly Lost an English Empire

A French count wearing a sprig of yellow broom in his cap could not have known he was founding a dynasty that would rule England for more than two centuries, build and lose an empire twice the size of France, and leave behind one of the most influential documents in the history of law.*The Plantagenets* traces the rise and fall of England's longest ruling royal house, from Geoffrey of Anjou's marriage into the English royal line to the final, bitter collapse of the dynasty on the battlefield of political betrayal in 1399. This is the story of Henry II, who assembled the vast Angevin Empire only to watch his own wife and sons turn against him. Of Richard the Lionheart, whose crusading legend outshone a reign spent largely away from the kingdom he ruled. Of King John, whose catastrophic failures in France forced him to accept Magna Carta at Runnymede, a document that would shape constitutional government for centuries after his death. And of the kings who followed, Henry III, Edward I, Edward II, Edward III, and Richard II, whose combined reigns carried England through conquest, plague, civil war, and one of the longest conflicts in European history, the Hundred Years' War.Written for readers with little or no prior background in medieval history, this book explains not only what happened but why it mattered, introducing each king, queen, and rival in turn and following the family rivalries, battlefield decisions, and political crises that shaped a nation still recognizable today. Readers will come away with a clear understanding of how Magna Carta came to exist, how Wales became permanently joined to England, how the Hundred Years' War began, and how a single family's internal conflicts repeatedly determined the fate of a kingdom.More than a chronicle of battles and coronations, this is a study of power and its limits, of how ambition built an empire and how the same ambition, left unchecked, tore it apart from within. It is a story of constitutional progress born from crisis, of loyalty and betrayal within the same royal household, and of a dynasty whose triumphs and failures still echo through English institutions today.Whether you are approaching medieval English history for the first time or looking for a narrative account that ties together two and a half centuries of Plantagenet rule, this book offers a clear, engaging, and historically grounded journey through one of the most consequential families ever to sit on the English throne.