Magna Carta by Dan Jones
Review by Elleanore Vance Thanks to Disney's "Robin Hood" animated feature, I grew up believing John I was the "phony king of England". In his work "Magna Carta", historian Dan Jones corrects that misconception. We begin with a very detailed snapshot of the Plantagenet siblings known as The Devil's Brood. These were the sons born to Eleanor of Aquitaine and her second husband Henry II: Henry the Young King, Richard I, Geoffrey and John. Henry would have become the Third, but predeceased their father; a heart-breaking blow. Geoffrey also predeceased their father, getting trampled at a joust (though that may have been a fiction to conceal a homosexual relationship he may have had with Phillip II of France) Richard spoke no English and spent much of his reign Crusading in the Holy Land. What time he was not Crusading or being held hostage, was in France. John, the youngest, known as "Lackland", is the one we're concerned with. See, ...