The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England

Dan Jones

Apr 2013 · Sold by Penguin

About this ebook

The New York Times bestseller, from the author of Powers and Thrones, that tells the story of Britain’s greatest and worst dynasty—“a real-life Game of Thrones” (The Wall Street Journal)

The first Plantagenet kings inherited a blood-soaked realm from the Normans and transformed it into an empire that stretched at its peak from Scotland to Jerusalem. In this epic narrative history of courage, treachery, ambition, and deception, Dan Jones resurrects the unruly royal dynasty that preceded the Tudors. 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.

Ratings and reviews

Is needed as one consumes both evenly as the pages turn. A tremendous amount of history written in a few chapters capturing the best the Plantagenet records had to offer. An historical narrative at its best.

Historically complete and focused on the political intrigue of the Plantagenet line, recognizing the importance of these rulers in English and ultimately world history without degenerating into fawning or villainization.

It was an amazing book. I was completely consumed by it. I had the Audible version of the book. Would recommend to everyone who is interested in English History.

About the author

Dan Jones is the author of The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queen Who Made England, a #1 international bestseller and New York Times bestseller, and Wars of the Roses, which charts the story of the fall of the Plantagenet dynasty and the improbable rise of the Tudors. He writes and presents the popular Netflix series Secrets of Great British Castles. He is also the author of Magna Carta: The Birth of Liberty and Summer of Blood: England’s First Revolution and is working on a history of the Knights Templar due out in 2017.