Henry VI Penguin Monarchs

Ross, James

£4.99

Henry VI, son of the all-conquering Henry V, was one of the least able and least successful of English kings. His long reign, which started when he was only nine months old, ended in catastrophe, with the loss of England’s territories in France and a bankrupt England’s long decline into civil war: the wars of the Roses. Yet, failure though Henry undoubtedly was, he remains an enigma. Was he always, as he became in the last disastrous years of his rule, a holy fool, simple-minded to the point of insanity and prey to the ambitions of others? Or was he more active and, as some have suggested, actively malign? In this groundbreaking portrait, James Ross shows a king whose priorities diverged sharply from what England expected of its monarchs, and whose fitful engagement with government was directly, though not solely, responsible for the disasters that engulfed the kingdom during his reign.

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Publish Date: 04/07/2019

Description

‘No other medieval king had such demonstrably serious mental health issues; no other king was so notoriously susceptible to those around him; no other king was so clearly uninterested in the business of government’

Henry VI, son of the all-conquering Henry V, was one of the least successful of English kings, whose weakness bankrupted the nation and led to the Wars of the Roses. Yet was he always a foolish puppet? This groundbreaking portrait pieces together the evidence to show a manifestly decent man trapped in a role to which he was utterly unsuited.

Additional information

Weight 89 g
Dimensions 181 × 111 × 8 mm
Author

Publisher

Imprint

Cover

Paperback

Pages

115 , 8 unnumbered of plates

Language

English

Edition
Dewey

942.043092 (edition:23)

Readership

General – Trade / Code: K