"A History of the English Monarchy" extract: Edward II and Piers Gaveston

As part of the series of extracts from my book A History of the English Monarchy: From Boadicea to Elizabeth I, this extract examines the love affair between the fourteenth-century's King Edward II and Piers Gaveston, Earl of Cornwall. Like Gaveston's biographer, J. S. Hamilton, I think most of the attempts to insist the relationship was some kind of heightened fraternal bond devoid of a sexual or romantic element are cumbersome, illogical and overwrought. While researching the book, I saw nothing that did not support the conclusion that the two men were romantically involved with one another. Edward II was king from his father's death in 1307 until he was deposed twenty years later. Equally, however, I found mountains of evidence to disproving the old canard that Edward II was not the biological father of his four legitimate children. The relevant footnotes and endnotes are available in the original book. 

Like his father, Edward II was tall and robust. The Vita Edwardi Secundi, which was an account of the King’s life written by a clerk who lived at Edward’s court and who recorded his experiences at the time, observed that the King was ‘a fine figure of a handsome man’, while Sir Thomas Grey, whose father fought in Edward’s army, wrote that ‘physically he was one of the strongest men in the realm’. Another thought Edward moved well despite his size: ‘elegant, of outstanding strength’. None of the eyewitness descriptions of Edward’s contradicts one chronicler’s description of him as ‘fair of body and great of strength’. There are no surviving accounts that mention his eye colour, but illustrations and his effigy all show wavy blond hair that fell either to his chin or his shoulders. Later in life, he grew a beard.

He had a ribald sense of humour. In a letter to a French prince, the Comte d’Évreux, he joked about the sexual prowess of the Welsh, or the ‘plenty of wild men’ in ‘our land of Wales’, as he put it. Growing up, he saw little of his parents and was only six when his mother, Eleanor of Castile, died, but he was close to his stepmother Marguerite and he took an interest in helping former servants of Eleanor. Queen Marguerite came to Edward’s aid in 1307 when Piers Gaveston, the prince’s favourite, was exiled on the old King’s orders. The exact nature of Edward’s relationship with Gaveston has perplexed scholars, with some cautioning against ‘anachronistic and futile’ attempts to impose modern concepts of sexuality on the medieval period. However, the contemporary accounts leave little room for reasonable doubt that it was a romantic relationship and while it will always be impossible to verify how far they went sexually or how often, what mattered was that it was a love affair, the great love affair of Edward II’s life. 

Piers Gaveston was the son of a Gascon knight, born a year or two before Edward II in 1284. His father, Arnaud, had served Edward I in the wars in Gascony, Wales and Scotland, although it was through his mother, Claramonde, that the family acquired most of their wealth. Piers was barely a teenager when he joined his father in combat, where he apparently impressed the King with his manners and skills as a soldier. Shortly after that, Edward I appointed him as one of ten young men to attend on the Prince of Wales to provide him with some suitable company. Gaveston seems to have been the oldest of the ten and that, coupled with his good looks – one contemporary wrote that Gaveston was ‘graceful and agile in body, sharp witted, refined in manners [...] well versed in military matters’ – his prowess as a jouster and the fact that he had already experienced the battlefield, perhaps explain young Edward’s initial infatuation with him.

Infatuation quickly turned into obsession. A clerk in Edward’s service wrote, ‘I do not remember to have heard that one man so loved another. Jonathan cherished David, Achilles loved Patroclus.’ Another chronicle wrote that after a short separation, Edward ran over to Piers ‘giving him kisses and repeated embraces; he was adored with a special familiarity’. In an age when embracing and kissing, even on the lips, was an accepted form of greeting within the upper classes, it was not so much Edward’s actions that caused offence as the effusiveness with which they were bestowed. During the last years of the old man’s life, Longshanks grew so concerned about the two men’s intimacy that he sent Gaveston abroad, still well-provided for but abroad nonetheless, and it was Edward’s request to provide Gaveston with an overly generous amount of land that prompted his father to scream, ‘You bastard son of a bitch! Now you want to give lands away – you who never gained any? As the Lord lives, were it not for fear of breaking up the kingdom, you would never enjoy your inheritance!’ And he began viciously beating him. In a ruthless and mercenary age, the Earl of Pembroke would later remark, ‘he perishes on the rocks that loves another man more than himself’. It was a lesson that Edward II never learned. 

... Gaveston was witty and his tongue cut like a scythe. Cocksure, charismatic and eye-wateringly rude, he was clever but he was not wise. He gave scornful nicknames to the earls, the most powerful members of the aristocracy, a closed blue-blooded group of eleven who did not take kindly at having their corpulence mocked, as he did with the rotund Earl of Lincoln, or being publicly referred to by his nicknames for them, including ‘the Jew’, ‘the Actor’ or ‘the Black Dog’. Piers turned up to the coronation wearing purple, a colour associated with royalty, and he was left in charge of the government when the King visited France in 1308. In a world obsessed with rank and precedence, Gaveston constituted an offensive anomaly. At the coronation banquet, the King’s two brothers-in-law, Charles de Valois and Louis d’Évreux, left in protest at the upsetting of etiquette in Gaveston’s favour. Further anger came when Edward arranged for Piers to be married to his niece, Margaret de Clare, a more-than advantageous match for the son of a knight. 

In 1308, Edward himself was married to his stepmother’s niece, Princess Isabella of France. Although she had only just passed the age of consent, it was already clear that Isabella would grow to inherit the good looks of the French royal family ...  Three months after his marriage, Parliament presented Edward with a declaration asking for Piers Gaveston to be banished and stripped of his title. Faced with united opposition from his peers, Parliament and family, Edward had to acquiesce, but he did so begrudgingly and with minimal sincerity. In return for losing the earldom of Cornwall, Gaveston was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, a job he executed with great success. ... In the summer of 1309, he was brought back to England and two years later, Edward took him with him on campaign against Scotland. Here Gaveston was far less successful. Edward II is often blamed for losing the Scottish Wars of Independence, but while he was an infinitely less talented general than his father it is unlikely that Longshanks himself would have won even if he had lived longer. 

... But how to account for the extraordinary venom Piers Gaveston provoked in the other earls while he lived? The most obvious answer is what we would now call homophobia. That was the interpretation taken by Derek Jarman when he directed the 1991 movie Edward II, with Steven Waddington and Andrew Tiernan playing the couple opposite Tilda Swinton as Edward’s malicious wife, who allies herself with the worst elements of the puritanical Far Right in order to gain power. The film dramatised Christopher Marlowe’s play of the same name and, in order to make the modern parallel work, the nobles surrounding Edward II were shown to be disgusted by his sexuality. As a director, Jarman was less interested in historical accuracy and more in the applicability of the story to Thatcherite Britain, dedicating the film to the repeal of the country’s anti-gay laws, which were then so pernicious that they prohibited the discussion of homosexuality in schools even if a child’s mental health was at risk.The idea that Gaveston died because he was Edward II’s lover is a popular one and it enjoys some support academically. However, medieval attitudes to sexuality were not as simplistic as is commonly supposed and a case could be made for arguing that the problem was the background and prominence, rather than the gender, of the royal favourite. 

Gaveston also had the bad luck to be the favourite of a King who inherited a tainted throne from an awe-inspiring father. Surrounded by military failure, economic problems and diplomatic stalemate, the barons and earls vented their frustration on the most convenient scapegoat, the King’s right-hand man. Jealousy too must have played a part in what happened, for royal largesse always brings out the green-eyed monster in those excluded from it. That is why the most successful monarchs try to balance their favour between different factions, but Edward II, as the contemporary Vita attests, was incapable of moderation. There were many men and women in history who paid for royal friendship with their lives – Robert Cochrane, favourite of King James III of Scotland, was frog-marched to his own hanging by a group of earls much like Gaveston had been; Philibert Le Vayer, confidante of the future King Henri III of France, was found murdered in an alleyway near the Louvre, possibly with the connivance of the fretful Queen Mother; Mary, Queen of Scots’ faithful secretary, David Riccio, was dragged screaming from her presence and stabbed to death by her husband and his aristocratic allies. There was also Concino Concini, a favourite of Marie de Medici, the Duke of Buckingham under Charles I, Dr Johann Streunsee in eighteenth-century Denmark, Marie-Antoinette’s beloved Princesse de Lamballe and, of course, Grigori Rasputin, hounded to his death in the last days of Imperial Russia. Gaveston may be one of many royal intimates who was undone not because of what he did, but because he had access to something others wanted. 

Finally, personal blame cannot be discounted. The victim’s actions may not make the crime excusable, but they may help render it explicable and in Gaveston’s case, his arrogance and his insensitivity to others may have helped hasten his end. A palace clerk who witnessed his rise and fall wrote later, ‘I therefore believe and firmly maintain that if Piers had from the outset borne himself prudently and humbly towards the magnates of the land, none of them would have opposed him’.Today, a private dining club at the University of Oxford still bears his name but his daughter died young and by the time the earldom of Cornwall was revived, it was once again given to a member of the royal house. The Duchy of Cornwall is now part of the traditional inheritance given to the heir to the throne, an unintentional merging of the titles once held by Edward II and Piers Gaveston. 

Edward II did his duty by fathering four children with Queen Isabella who, as she grew older and became a mother, was given more of a say in her husband’s government...

---

[1] In the Old Testament, the future King David was the friend of the Israelite prince Jonathan, who ultimately saved his life, while in Greek myth the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus was usually presented as a romance. The ambiguity continues elsewhere in the Vita, with the clerk saying that there was no evidence to prove that Edward and Gaveston had ever been ‘immoderate’ with one another, then going on to say that in this case, Edward seemed incapable of moderation. A platonic example is supplemented by a conclusion with one that suggests romance.

"A History of the English Monarchy" extract: The men of Wales

My most recent book A History of the English Monarchy covers the English Crown from Roman rule to the death of Elizabeth I in 1603, when the monarchy began to shift into a British institution. Over the next few weeks, I'm posting short extracts from each of the book's seven chapters.

The book's third chapter is called Diluted Magnificence and it focuses on the thirteenth-century monarchy, including the birth of Parliament, the conquest of Wales and the Scottish Wars of Independence. The chapter covers the reigns of three generations of kings between 1199 and 1307 - John, Henry III, and Edward I. This section discusses Edward I's feud with Prince Llywelyn of Wales, which ultimately resulted in an end to the principality's independence. 

The resurgence of so-called ‘Celtic nationalism’ in the twentieth century and the inescapable romance of a lost cause saw Llywelyn ap Gruffudd cast as the heroic leader of a lost golden age, but this Gone with the Wind-esque rehabilitation of Llywelyn has more to do with Edward’s vices than Llywelyn’s virtues. By the time Edward I came to the throne in 1272, Llywelyn’s rule in Wales was detested. His military skills and long run of good luck when it came to the internecine incompetence of the neighbouring government in England meant that he was begrudgingly respected, but his attempts to modernise the Welsh economy and his bullying demands for money from his subjects did not make him popular. Wales was, and is, one of the most beautiful countries in the world. However, Llywelyn was sufficiently astute to realise that its stunning hills and mountains made agriculture difficult – in a moment of admirable honesty from any country’s leader, he compared the ‘fertile and abundant land’ of Edward’s kingdom with the ‘barren and uncultivated land’ of Wales. This agricultural shortfall meant that the entire principality relied on a few pockets of arable land for its subsistence, namely the island of Anglesey. The economy and trade networks, drastically underdeveloped in comparison to England’s, were the focus of much of Llywelyn’s reforming zeal, and an indicator of the disparity between the two countries can be gauged by comparing the revenue generated by customs for Llywelyn, estimated at about £17 per annum, against roughly £10,000 for the King of England. The assessment of one modern historian, that despite its internal difficulties England remained ‘a thirteenth-century superpower’, particularly in relation to its neighbours, is fair. 

In the centuries after the Norman conquest, English domination over Wales had increased greatly. Nowhere was this more obvious than with the Marcher Lords, English aristocrats who held sway in the disputed borderlands between the two countries. Llywelyn quarrelled with them often and it was their most recent spat that provided him with the excuse he needed to decline his invitation to Edward’s coronation. He must have been desperate to find a reason, because had he gone Edward would almost certainly have kept him there until he could bully him into undoing the Treaty of Montgomery. 

Tensions boiled over when Llywelyn’s devious and stupid youngest brother, Dafydd, fled to England after a family quarrel. Edward granted him sanctuary, much to Llywelyn’s anger since it violated the spirit, if not the letter, of previous Anglo-Welsh agreements about political refugees from the two countries. When Edward reiterated his demand for Llywelyn to perform homage before him for his power in Wales, Llywelyn refused. Relations took a further tumble when Edward’s navy intercepted a ship just off the Isles of Scilly carrying Simon de Montfort’s daughter back from exile in France. Llywelyn had proposed marriage to her and she was travelling to Wales to accept. The captured de Montfort girl was taken to Windsor where she was kept in close, if comfortable, confinement for the next three years and Edward informed the Marcher Lords that their antagonism towards Llywelyn would no longer be checked by the English government. Realising, too late, what he had done or perhaps simply accepting that he had been caught, Llywelyn tried desperately to convince the world that he wanted peace. Letters to the Pope and Robert Kilwardby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, attest to Llywelyn’s apparently genuine wishes to avoid conflict with his powerful neighbour. His epistles to Edward cried for peace, but only on condition of partial homage – Llywelyn still had terms and conditions and Edward would not accept them. He did not negotiate, he commanded.

"A History of the English Monarchy" extract: The Queen in the Silver Saddle

My most recent book A History of the English Monarchy covers the English Crown from Roman rule to the death of Elizabeth I in 1603, when the monarchy began to shift into a British institution. Over the next few weeks, I'm posting short extracts from each of the book's seven chapters.

The book's third chapter is called From Scotland to Spain and it focuses on the early Plantagenet empire, which cover more of modern France than the then French monarchy. The English royal family's power and their dysfunction were both augmented by Henry II's glamorous and famous queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine. A reigning duchess in her own right, Eleanor's legend was born in her own lifetime thanks to the strength of her character and the scandals she managed to attract, then weather. The extract below discusses Eleanor's larger-than-life personality, which had been on display during her first marriage to King Louis VII of France. (It had ended in divorce and after an indecently short period, she married the future Henry II of England.)

Shortly after her marriage, King Louis [VI] died and Eleanor’s husband succeeded to the throne as Louis VII. Arriving in Paris for their coronation, Eleanor quickly discovered that she was no more popular with the French than Louis was with the Aquitinians. Her respected mother-in-law, Adélaïde of Maurienne, was ugly and pious; Eleanor was extravagant and said to be very beautiful. France hardly has a heart-warming history when it comes to its foreign-born queens consort, particularly if they happened to be pretty and had so much as a spark of a personality. It has already been mentioned that powerful clerics like Bernard of Clairvaux took issue with their new Queen’s pendulous earrings, but they also disliked her expensive jewellery, fur-trimmed silks and the long sleeves of her gowns. To them, and for whatever reason, the Queen’s wardrobe seemed indecent. She had been raised in a court that was comparatively more sophisticated and far wealthier than that of France. One contemporary noted that from childhood Eleanor had acquired ‘a taste for luxury and refinement’. Now that she was Queen, she saw absolutely no reason to tailor her whims to soothe the outrage of a few troublesome priests. 

More damaging by far than her extravagance was Queen Eleanor’s passion for intrigue. Her younger sister Petronilla came to Paris with her and embarked upon an affair with the Comte de Vermandois, who was married. His wife, Éleonore, was King Stephen of England’s younger sister. That the Count was married to the sister of a King and that she had numerous powerful relatives at the French court should have warned Petronilla off her course of action. It should certainly have dissuaded Eleanor from stepping in to help her. However, Eleanor was close to her sister and she had a score to settle with the Comte de Champagne, King Stephen’s brother, who had recently opposed a French invasion of Toulouse, part of Eleanor’s patrimony, which she felt was being kept from her illegally. When news of the affair between Vermandois and Petronilla broke, Eleanor persuaded her husband to support Vermandois divorcing his wife to marry Petronilla. The clergy were appalled at the Queen’s actions and she gained a lifelong enemy in the Comte de Champagne, who regarded the divorce of his sister as a slight on his entire family. Champagne subsequently rebelled and many blamed Eleanor for provoking it. Criticised on all sides, the Queen brazenly refused to apologise and even publicly quarrelled with Bernard of Clairvaux when he declined to intercede with the Pope on Petronilla’s behalf. It was only when Eleanor began to fear that her continued childlessness was a sign of God’s displeasure that she began to improve her relationship with the Church. 

It was during her first pregnancy, which she and those around her attributed to the intercession of the Blessèd Virgin, that news reached France that Edessa had fallen to the armies of Imad al-Din Zengi, the Islamic Emir of Mosul and Aleppo. Edessa was part of Outremer and its collapse prompted Pope Eugenius III to issue the Papal bull Quantum praedecessores, exhorting the Christian knights of Europe to ‘take the Cross’ and go east to defend the holiest sites of Christianity from falling into the hands of the non-believers. Both Louis and Eleanor were caught-up in the crusading fever and at Bernard of Clairvaux’s Easter sermon in praise of the sanctity of the Crusade, Eleanor knelt at her former opponent’s feet and pledged that the knights of the Aquitaine would take up their swords in the service of Christ. She, as their Duchess, would go with them.

It was not quite what Bernard had wanted from her. Like many of his contemporaries, the famous preacher neither liked nor trusted the idea of women anywhere near an army and Eleanor in particular worried him. However, the Queen had sworn publicly and she could not therefore be gainsaid. If she did not go, there was also every chance that the men of the Aquitaine would not go either, since going without their Duchess would mean submitting themselves entirely to the control of the French. One is tempted to think that Eleanor’s public gesture of commitment to the Crusade may therefore have been a deliberate ploy to bounce Bernard and her clerical opponents into giving their reluctant blessing to her participation. In any case, the Pope was keen to encourage maximum royal involvement in the holy war and his office formally blessed Eleanor and Louis in a ceremony at the basilica of St Denis shortly before they set off for Palestine. Having won a place for herself, Eleanor did nothing to dispel fears that she would prove a disruptive influence. She took nearly three hundred female servants with her and turned up for the army’s departure on a horse with a silver saddle encrusted with golden fleurs-de-lis and a dress glistening with jewels. She had many strengths. Minimalism was not one of them.

A History of the English Monarchy

Henry V at Agincourt. Throughout the book, I am fascinated by the ways in which the legends of Camelot fuelled the monarchy's veneration of martial victory.

I am very excited to say that my new book A History of the English Monarchy: From Boadicea to Elizabeth I was released this week by MadeGlobal Publishing. I've been writing about the monarchy on this blog for a few years, so it was great fun to write the story of the Crown from its beginnings under Roman rule, right the way through to the accession of the first 'British', as opposed to English, sovereign in 1603. Thank you so much to everyone who has commented on my royal history posts in the past; for those who order History, I hope you enjoy it! Throughout, I was fascinated by the influence of the Arthurian legends in shaping how English kings, and their subjects, viewed and shaped the early monarchy. I was also particularly interested in telling the story of how the English Crown interacted with its Welsh, Scottish, and Irish neighbours, so chapters 3, 4, and 7 are heavy on exploring the often surprising story of how each part of the British Isles related to one another in that fascinating, bloody, compelling period of History. UK customers can order the book here; US and Canadian customers here.

The blurb reads: In A History of the English Monarchy, historian Gareth Russell traces the story of the English monarchy and the interactions between popular belief, religious faith and brutal political reality that helped shape the extraordinary journey of one of history’s most important institutions. From the birth of the nation to the dazzling court of Elizabeth I, A History of the English Monarchy charts the fascinating path of the English monarchy from the uprising of the Warrior Queen, Boadicea, in AD 60, through each king and queen up to the 'Golden Age' of Elizabeth I. Russell offers a fresh take on a fascinating subject as old as the nation itself.

INFORMATION: Each chapter is divided into sections, chronicling the monarchy’s story.

Chapter 1 - Conquest: The violent birth of the monarchy

* Britannia
* The Barbarian Conspiracy
* Seven Kingdoms
* Praying men, fighting men, and working men
* Edward the Confessor

Chapter 2 - God, Life and Victory: The coming of the Normans
* The Conqueror
* The Red King
* Beauclerc
* When Christ and His saints slept
* The Lioness in Winter


Chapter 3 - From Scotland to Spain: The empire of the Plantagenets
* Eleanor
* Henry
* Diarmait na nGall
* Murder in the Cathedral
* Family Strife
* Come, and see the place
* Sic Gloria Transit Mundi


Chapter 4 - Diluted Magnificence: The birth of Parliament
* The Wrath of God abideth upon him
* Crowned with a bracelet
* Know, Sire, that Llywelyn ap Gruffydd is dead
* The Jewish Diaspora
* Until a king is provided


Chapter 5 - Enemies Foreign and Domestic: The fourteenth-century monarchy
* Our friends do fail us all
* The glory of the English
* Shameless fire was thus mixed with sacred flame


Chapter 6 - Spilled Blood Does Not Sleep: The Wars of the Roses
* Necessitas non habet legem
* This story shall the good man teach his son
* The lords in England kill their enemies
* The sun in splendour
* No more sons of the royal blood


Chapter 7 - As the Law of Christ Allows: The rule of the Tudors
* The Welsh Moses
* Bluff King Hal
* The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn
* Deborah and Josiah
* The Queen of Scotland rises on the world
* That Good Old Princess

Epilogue - The word 'must'

My Top 10 Books of 2014

Good evening!

This was a great year for books, I think. The year started of well for fans of the sixteenth century with Lauren Mackay's fantastic biography of the diplomat Eustace Chapuys, which I reviewed and loved. If you're interested in the Tudor court or in the world of diplomacy, do pick up a copy. Since then, I've brought these books to New Haven, Oxford, London, Portballintrae and Gloucestershire with me and they have been great company. I'm currently working my way through two books that I hoped to finish before the end of the year - The Six Wives and Many Mistresses of Henry VIII by Amy Licence and The Medieval Housewife and other women of the Middle Ages by Toni Mount, both of which I'll post more about in the new year. From Inside the Tudor Court on, here are my ten favourite reads of 2014, in order of publication.

1. Finding Camlann by Sean Pidgeon (novel) (published by W. W. Norton & Company)  This novel reads as a love letter to Oxford no less effusive than Brideshead Revisited, but in this case the story of an archaeologist on the quest for the historical origins of the legend of King Arthur allows the story to lovingly evoke the one side of Oxford life that Brideshead tried to avoid at all costs - actual academics. Long and haunting descriptions of the British countryside and a crackling dynamic between the archaeologist and an employee at the Oxford English Dictionary make this a short but cerebral novel that I absolutely loved. It had me hooked, I stayed up to finish it and I hope we'll see more from Sean Pidgeon in 2015. (Full review to follow)

2. Four Sisters: The Lost Lives of the Romanov Grand Duchesses by Helen Rappaport (non-fiction) (published by Macmillan) I thought Helen Rappaport's Ekaterinburg, about the weeks preceding the murder of the Romanov family in 1918, was a triumph of a book and while the decision to write the first full-length biography of Nicholas II's daughters meant that Four Sisters lacked the dramatic intensity of her earlier work, Rappaport managed to produce a deeply moving and painstakingly researched account of the Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia. Their childish quarrels, the friends they made when they volunteered as nurses during the Great War, the Grand Duchess Olga's deep love for a wounded soldier and the twilight of Imperial Russia intersect to produce an intimate account of four too-short lives.

3. George Boleyn: Tudor Poet, Courtier and Diplomat by Clare Cherry and Claire Ridgway (non-fiction) (published by Made Global) One of three of Henry VIII's brothers-in-law to end his life beneath the headsman's axe, George Boleyn was no saint and no prude, either. But he emerges from the pages of Clare Cherry and Claire Ridgway's biography as a committed and talented young man with a sincere passion for the Protestant faith. Cherry and Ridgway know their subject and his world, and they use that knowledge to lift him from the shadow thrown by his famous sister, rehabilitating him while never failing to remind us of the grizzly world in which he lived and died. 

4. How to Ruin a Queen: Marie Antoinette, the Stolen Diamonds and the Scandal that Shook the French Throne by Jonathan Beckman (non-fiction) (published by John Murray) I don't know what it is about the Affair of the Necklace, but it seems to produce more than its fair share of historical works that could also be praised for their literary merits. In 1942, the Hungarian-Jewish writer Antal Szerb produced a book called The Queen's Necklace which, if you can find it, cannot come any more highly recommended. It is utterly beautiful. Likewise, Jonathan Beckman's account of one of the greatest jewellery heists in history is written in such a delicious style that, if edible, it would produce moomoo-necessitating levels of obesity. It was a joy to read this book and Beckman works through the initiators, and victims, of the Affair with consummate skill. Like Szerb's book, and Antonia Fraser's biography, it left me feeling even more sorry for poor Marie-Antoinette, but it also managed to delve deeper than before into the murky personality of the Comtesse de la Motte and it's the inescapable whiff of that dreadful woman that lingered long after I finished reading. 

5. The Creeper by Emerald Fennell (novel) (published by Bloomsbury) I bought this sequel to Shiverton Hall because the author is a good friend of mine and because I thoroughly enjoyed the first book in the series. On a side note, I have such a low threshold for any kind of horror that if Emerald does ever turn her hand to writing that genre for adults, you will find me manfully dousing myself in water from Lourdes and using rosaries like lassos. But I digress. This creepy and intrigue-laden ghost story at a ghoulish English boarding school is perfect for children or for those of us who have never been able to see the clock turn to 3 a.m. again without silent tears courtesy of The Exorcism of Emily Rose. 

6. Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China by Jung Chang (non-fiction) (published by Vintage) Chairman Mao's biographer returns with this compelling and page-turning life of the notorious "Dragon Empress" who presided over the waning years of the Chinese monarchy. Cixi's insatiable ambition, murderous self-promotion and pathological meddling usually cause bile to mix with ink in the historian's pen, but Chang offers up enough of the Empress's virtues, namely her hard-headed pragmatism, her charisma and her impressive list of political victories to balance the scales. 

7. The Paradise Tree by Elena Maria Vidal (novel) (published by CreateSpace) Like Finding Camlann, this is a cerebral book with a love of nature underpinning its dialogue. Here, it's a defence of Catholicism and the experience of Irish immigrants as they set out for a new life in Canada and the United States during the reign of Queen Victoria. The grasp of Irish colloquialisms  is impressive, as is the way Irish words peppered conversation even before the Gaelic Revival at the end of the century led, irony of ironies, by the privileged offspring of the Protestant Ascendancy. A love of domesticity, quotes from the Bible and Irish folk songs to start each chapter, and a pretty heartbreaking subplot about how far one character will go to prosper in their new homeland made The Paradise Tree a thought-provoking read. (Full review to follow)

8. Eleanor of Castile: The Shadow Queen by Sara Cockerill (non-fiction) (published by Amberley) Proof that biographies of medieval personalities don't have to succumb to flights of fantasy, The Shadow Queen was a wonderful read about a supreme multi-tasker. Businesswoman, landlady, princess, politician, adviser, wife, mother and patron of the arts, Eleanor of Castile also managed to keep the royalist home fires burning during the Second Barons' War. Like the indomitable Hapsburg Empress Maria Teresa five centuries later, Eleanor didn't seem to find being nearly-constantly pregnant a deterrent. The invasion of Wales and the Diaspora are also dealt with. I would say that The Shadow Queen deserves to be considered the definitive biography of its subject.

9. Edward II: The Unconventional King by Kathryn Warner (non-fiction) (published by Amberley) Sympathetic without being sentimental, The Unconventional King is as much a warning against trusting in the power of repetition as it is a biography of a monarch whose disastrous reign ended in his deposition and mysterious disappearance. Warner uses every contemporary source available to her to prove that nearly every popular image of King Edward II is totally unfounded - the effeminate appearance, the domestic cruelty, the cowardice, the alleged illegitimacy of his eldest child and the grotesque cameo of a red hot poker in his final moments. They're all bunkum. She's also refreshingly frank about what his bisexuality, to use a word familiar to us but alien to him, and lays out the evidence to support her view that his relationship with Piers Gaveston, Earl of Cornwall was probably a romantic one. Gutsy, outgoing, strong, handsome and with a flair for bonhomie, Edward II has clearly caught Kathryn Warner's interest and she's repaid him with a stellar and brutally honest account of his life. 

10. Midnight at the Pera Palace: The Birth of Modern Istanbul by Charles King (non-fiction) (published by W. W. Norton & Company) It is hard to put into words how much I enjoyed Midnight at the Pera Palace. A social history of the city of Istanbul from the end of the First World War to the aftermath of the Second, the narrative is framed around a hotel that was built to attract a European clientele. Fantastically written, perfectly structured and with a cast of hundreds of men and women who visited the hotel from the fall of the Ottoman sultanate through the tortured birth of the Turkish republic, Midnight at the Pera Palace is a grand story of humanity. It is modern history at its finest. I could not put it down and I plan to visit the city next year. 

An Unconventional King and a fantastic story: An interview with Kathryn Warner

Knowledge is a compellingly beautiful thing and by that I mean the kind possessed by the master of their trade, rather than the jack. When one is in the company of someone whose awareness of their subject is so deep and so painstakingly researched, it is a privilege to hear them speak, particularly if their words bounce easily with a confident rather than a phlegmatic intelligence. That is the experience of reading Kathryn Warner's superb biography Edward II: The Unconventional King. Outside of Queer Theory classrooms, Edward II does not enjoy a kindly reputation. He was portrayed as a sniveling incompetent, a pathetic and faintly homophobic caricature, in the hit movie Braveheart, while a recent biography of his glamorous wife compared his government to one of depraved and vicious terror.

Kathryn Warner sets out to rescue Edward II from the calumnies heaped upon him and she does so with success, because it is quite clear upon reading this book that the author is a lady who has spent years researching every detail of her subject's tumultuous life. Edward II, king and man, emerge from this biography not just as an unconventional king, but as a fascinating person.

Warner's book wears its sympathies openly and honestly. I have no problem with sympathetic biographies - one only need thing of Eric Ives's take on Anne Boleyn, Amanda Foreman's on Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, or Dominic Lieven's on Tsar Nicholas II - to know that a sympathetic biography can often produce the finest scholarship, as the author is inspired to delve deeper to produce the truth about someone who they have come to admire or pity, as well as remain fascinated by. (Likewise, biographies with a more critical hue, like Leanda de Lisle's account of Lady Jane Grey or Anna Sebba's account of Wallis Simpson, can often produce gems of historical writing. The crucial component seems to be emotional honesty with the subject.)

The biography that An Unconventional King has most in common with, at least in terms of its tone, is Lady Antonia Fraser's 2002 bestseller, Marie Antoinette: The Journey. Both Fraser and Warner are very clearly on their subjects' side, and while both are more than prepared to recount their mistakes and follies, they underscore the humanising, empathy-generating or admirable qualities firmly because both royals have suffered a fate that saw their historical reputation torn asunder and their reality buried beneath a hundred petty, obscuring lies.

This is a beautiful, thought-provoking and compelling life of one of England's most enigmatic kings, who emerges from the shadows as a flawed but oddly likable prince. Anyone interested in monarchy or the Middle Ages will enjoy this superb book.

***

As part of her blog tour promoting "Edward II: The Unconventional King" I am delighted to welcome Kathryn Warner, who's here to answer a few questions about her book.


Kathryn Warner holds two degrees in medieval history from the University of Manchester. She is considered a foremost expert on Edward II and an article from her on the subject was published in the English Historical Review. She has run a website about him since 2005 and a Facebook page about him since 2010 and has carved out a strong online presence as an expert on Edward II and the fourteenth century in general. Kathryn teaches Business English as a foreign language and lives between Dusseldorf and Cumbria.

1. Kathryn, you've spent years researching Edward II's life and reign. When did you first become interested in him?

I studied medieval history and literature at Manchester University, where I gained a BA and MA with Distinction, but, despite writing an essay about Edward II in my second year as an undergraduate, I somehow always felt that he was the medieval king of England I knew least about.  All that changed several years later, when I was reading a novel which mentioned Edward's great-uncle Richard of Cornwall, Henry III's brother.  I started reading about and researching Richard and his family, and this led me inexorably to Edward II.  Once I started reading about Edward, I couldn't stop, and felt that I'd finally found the thing I was meant to be doing in life - researching Edward II, his reign, his life, his family. everything about him.  In 2005, I began writing a blog about him to try to correct the many inaccurate stories told about him and to make him much better known, and I still write it regularly and it's had almost a million readers by now.  The historian Ian Mortimer suggested some years ago that I should write a full-length biography of Edward, so I did, and it was great fun.  I'm so thrilled to be getting his story out there to a wider audience.

2. One of the things that's often repeated about Edward II is that he was not the biological father of his son and heir, Edward III. But in your book, you argue that it's more or less impossible that Edward II didn't father Edward III. Why do you think that myth has proved so durable? 

This myth was first invented in 1982 by Paul Doherty in his novel Death of a King, and popularised by the 1995 film Braveheart, which makes William Wallace the father of Isabella's child - impossible given that Wallace was executed on 23 August 1305 when Isabella was only nine or ten and still in France, and more than seven years before her and Edward II's eldest child Edward III was born on 13 November 1312.  I can always tell when Braveheart has been on television somewhere in the world as the number of searches along the lines of 'Did William Wallace father Isabella's child?' which reach my blog dramatically increase, usually a few thousand hits within mere hours.  The huge popularity of the film is a large part of what drives belief in this myth, and it also continues to be perpetuated because some people are determined to think that because Edward II was a lover of men, he must automatically have been incapable of intercourse with women.  These people miss the fact that Edward and Isabella had three younger children as well, and that Edward fathered an illegitimate son, Adam.  Isabella did later have a relationship with the baron Roger Mortimer, long after her children were born, and he has often been put forward as the real father of Edward III.  This is impossible, however, as Roger was several hundred miles away from Isabella when all her and Edward II's children - Edward III, John, Eleanor and Joan - were conceived.

3. Something that struck me so much when I read your book was how human Edward seemed and the quirks and kindness that he was capable of. What is your favourite anecdote about him? 

For all his faults, Edward could be extraordinarily generous, kind and loyal to people he loved and who pleased him.  I've found so many wonderful entries in his household accounts detailing how he loved chatting with fishermen, carpenters, shipwrights and the like, how he spent time at the wedding of Lady Hastings' daughter in 1326 with a servant who "made him laugh very greatly," how he gave a pound to a woman he drank with on the way to Scotland in 1310, how he stood by a river near Doncaster in November 1322 to watch a group of fishermen fishing, how he played a ball game with some of his household at Saltwood in Kent in 1326 while waiting for two envoys from the pope to arrive, and so on.  To choose my favourite anecdote is hard as there are so many, but it's probably this one: on 25 July 1326, when Edward was sailing along the Thames near his palace of Sheen with his niece Eleanor Despenser, he gave a gift of two shillings to a fisherman called John de Waltham.  The reason?  John had given him a bucket of loach, and also "sang before the king every time he passed by water through these parts."  John, the singing fisherman, entertaining the king every time he sailed past; what a wonderful image!

4. The marriage between Edward II and his controversial queen, Isabella of France, is usually presented as a miserable one, but you see it as much more complicated?

Absolutely.  There's a tendency nowadays to depict their relationship in the most one-dimensional manner imaginable, as though it was nothing but a unloving, unhappy disaster from start to finish, which is just silly if you ask me. Surely we all know as human beings that relationships which last for many years change and evolve over time, they're not static, and for heaven's sake, people feel much more than one emotion towards their partner of nearly two decades!  There is much evidence that Edward and Isabella's marriage was, for a long time, a successful and mutually affectionate, even loving, one.  It ended spectacularly badly, of course, but that doesn't mean it had always been bad or was doomed from the beginning, and much of Isabella's behaviour in 1325/26 strongly suggests to me that she was deeply distressed at the breakdown of her marriage and the intrusion into it of Edward's last and most powerful favourite, Hugh Despenser. There is no evidence at all that she disliked Edward's previous favourites such as Piers Gaveston and Roger Damory, whose relationships with Edward she seemed to view as entirely separate from her own.  Edward showed little interest in Isabella at the start of their marriage, but given that he was twenty-three and she only twelve it's hard to blame him for that, and as she grew older, he grew to love her.  Probably not in the same passionate all-consuming way he loved Piers Gaveston, but love nonetheless, as an eyewitness to Edward and Isabella's visit to Paris in 1313 declared.  For her part, Isabella addressed Edward in letters as 'my very sweet heart' and 'my very dear and very sweet lord and friend', which is highly unconventional and hints at her strong feelings for him.

5. Finally, a question I love to ask historians: if someone came along and decided to make a television series on your life of Edward II and you had a say in casting - money is no object - who would you cast as Edward II, Piers Gaveston and Queen Isabella?

For Edward II, Chris Hemsworth, as he's big and tall and fair-haired.  For Piers Gaveston, Ben Barnes.  For Isabella, the French actress Stéphanie Crayencour.

Chris Hemsworth - Kathryn's choice for a convincing-looking Edward II

Stéphanie Crayencour for Edward's French wife, Queen Isabella

Ben Barnes, of Prince Caspian and A Portrait of Dorian Grey, for Edward's great love, Piers Gaveston, Earl of Cornwall