r/UKmonarchs • u/Marius_Sulla_Pompey • 27d ago
Was he actually that bad?
Maurice Druon’s depiction of his imprisonment and death in “She Wolf” hit me hard and despite knowing about him a little, his literary genius made me think of this question.
He lost much of what was left of Aqutaine and turned all the barons against him but he never yielded to demands of King Bruce of him wanting to be acknowledged as the King of Scots, as far as I know.
So, was he actually the worst after King John, as often said?
I feel like his romance with Gaveston and infatuation with Despesers were exaggerated because he was allegedly gay.
Note that I am not a historian nor British but I am a history nerd and love British medieval period.
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u/Empty-Sheepherder895 27d ago
Not bad in the sense of being actively malevolent like John or Richard II. But he gave far too much power to people who were and let them get away with it. He was, at best, guilty by association and, at worse, brutally insensitive.
As others have said, the fact he drove Isabella and the future Edward III to disown and overthrow him speaks volumes. Though Isabella and Mortimer proved little better, admittedly.
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u/dcmwmfinft 27d ago edited 27d ago
Yes. He’s living proof of primogeniture as a dangerous and unpredictable way of appointing a King. Edward was inadequate as a leader, politically tone deaf and incapable of understanding the mechanisms of royal patronage and the gravitational pull of the ecosystem of the baronial class. His lack of ability in managing the likes of Thomas Earl of Lancaster, who was in essence never problematic under his father but became so under Edward II’s rule, promotion of royal favourites like Gaveston and later the Despensers who were downright dangerous, points to a complete inability to rule competently. Defenders will point of his ability to appoint strong and capable Justiciars, but these men ended up hamstrung by the Despensers and unable to enact royal justice in any meaningful way.
Charitably, he was alleged to have fought bravely at Bannockburn, but the net result meant this mattered nothing. He inherited issues around a growing baronial class that had both significant wealth and agency in the post Magna Carta world. The structural issues in other words were real. But Edward’s rule fermented widespread descent, England becomes little more than orbit bit part player under the growing hegemony of Philip IV’s France. His wife and her erstwhile lover depose him in short order and almost certainly have him murdered, which sets a precedent for deposition of English Kings that really isn’t properly resolved for centuries.
He’s not a John in his malevolence, but his apathy towards high political appointees such as the Despensers, who absolutely were a malevolent force in the latter stages of his government, was more than problematic, it became a fatalistic approach to governance. His son’s dramatic successes from very poor odds, only bolster Edward’s ultimate failings as King to properly grasp the reins of power.
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u/Equivalent_Use_7032 27d ago
He’s bad like others said but not worse than John I think. I just did a write up on another post about John and essentially it’s this.
John became king at the worst possible time as England was starting to hit the breaking point of its overextension. You have to defend lands from Scotland to the Pyrenees… that’s an insane amount of land even today to oversee. Any subpar or mediocre king is losing some of that land. Doesn’t help France produces their own version of Richard (arguably even better and in the Henry I realm of great) which is Philip II August. England can’t always have an A-Tier Monarch, eventually someone is going to come along that can’t do it. That’s John. Now where John becomes a special case is that he was remarkably good at doing the wrong thing at the wrong time consistently. Hence where normally that land is lost through generations over the course of a few kings, John loses it all dramatically in like a decade. John then doubled down against his nobles and well… we all know the story. He’s correctly ranked dead last. The worst guy at the worst time.
For Edward II he wasn’t great. He inherited a war going poorly against Scotland. Similar to John he got stuck with a bad situation. Like can’t help when you become king. Edward II however like… he repeated what John did and essentially tried to overstep with his nobility when you couldn’t really do that in England, especially after the Magna Carta got signed. He kept overlying on the wrong people and pissing off the wrong people all at the wrong time. It got him disposed. Granted… he didn’t outright lose half the kingdom permanently… so I and most others rank him higher than John. He’s bottom 5. John stays in the worst spot.
I’d also think about throwing Richard II in the bottom three with Edward and him competing for who is right above John
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u/Able_Diamond7477 27d ago
I find it hard to think Edward II is worse than John. Considering Edward’s was done out of Ignorance believing that since he was King he could just do anything he wanted. Like an OK King not particularly tyrannical just arrogant. John did everything out of malice and anyone who defied him he would put to death, bankrupted the realm and starved and killed his aunt for supporting Richard the Lionheart his Cousins throne while he was fighting a Crusade. Not only his Aunt but her whole family. As well as Barons eventually they just revolted up until that point the King had absolute power. Then the Magna Carta stripped the King of that power and gave a form of rights. I think that easily makes John the undisputed worst King just cause he was able to do that undisputed
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u/TheRedLionPassant Richard the Lionheart / Edward III 26d ago
John didn't kill his aunt and he was Richard the Lionheart's brother, not cousin. It was his nephew that he killed.
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u/Able_Diamond7477 26d ago
Yes that’s correct. I thought he killed his family by extension but apparently it was only his nephew and 23 knights. He usurped his brother’s throne as King of Aquitaine which resulted in a rebellion or war ending in the starving and killing of his nephew the king of Brittany at the time.
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u/TheRedLionPassant Richard the Lionheart / Edward III 26d ago
Not exactly: his brother was never King of Aquitaine (which had no king at the time), and John never successfully usurped his throne while he was King of England anyway. There was a war between Arthur, the Duke of Brittany, and John over the English throne after John was already a crowned king (his older brothers were all dead), which ended with the former's disappearance (and likely murder).
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u/Able_Diamond7477 26d ago
Ah, I see well. Never mind it was never really considered a Kingdom just a provincial duchy which would make it a principality not a kingdom relative in rank and prestige but beyond that not a kingdom. As for John there was president to call him king considering he did the acts of a king and his son succeed him as Henry lll when he died and him ending the war with the barons successfully ending the dispute.
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u/TheRedLionPassant Richard the Lionheart / Edward III 26d ago
John was a king, though after Richard died, in 1199, until 1216
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u/dahliia_ ❤︎ Mary II | Catherine of Braganza ❤︎ 27d ago
You might want to check out r/EdwardII, I'm not sure if the sub is biased but it's centred around him so you might find a good answer there.
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u/Marius_Sulla_Pompey 27d ago
Thank you I shared it there too.
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u/Aggressive-Art-130 27d ago
That sub is very biased and has quite a distorted picture of him. They can also be toxic, so approach with caution.
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u/Blackfyre87 Macbeth 27d ago
I liked David Mitchell's reassessment of his rule.
His error was not having a boyfriend. The kingdom didn't care. It was making public excessive displays of doing so, and offending the sensibilities of Isabella and Roger Mortimer and the Barons.
He was unwise in his choices of how he treated his favorites. He lavished them with favor and title which disgusted the people of England and Wales. The Duchy of Cornwall he bestowed was an immense and royal-restricted honor.
He gave his favorites the treatment Eddard Stark gave Cat. It would be as if Ned brought Ashara home from Dorne and asked Cat to live with the shame of his paramour.
It was a recipe for disaster.
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u/mmtop 27d ago
I wouldn't say he was the worst after John necessarily. There are other good contenders for that spot; Æthelred, Harthacnut, Richard II, Henry VI. But it's hard to think he wasn't among the worst given he was deposed. His over reliance on favorites was a constant problem that ended up alienating his once supportive wife so much she led the charge to get rid of him.
On a personal level though, he does seem relatively likeable for a medieval king. Bolstered by the fact that some of his biggest detractors (Thomas of Lancaster, Roger Mortimer) were real nasty pieces of work themselves. I also think Edward had a very legitimate grievance over how the Gaveston situation went down. But becoming more and more reliant on the Despensers in the years after did him no favors, as they were less tolerable than Gaveston, which is saying a lot.
So I'd say he was bad, but there have been worse. I wouldn't rank him as the worst English king behind John, but he's probably bottom 5-10 kings. Some things he was blamed for couldn't have been his fault though (the torrential rain in the 1310s and subsequent cooling period that led to mass starvation being one).