28. England’s Most Fractious Ruling Family
King Richard I, or “the Lionheart”, once said about his Plantagenet family: “From the Devil we sprang, and to the Devil we shall return“. Many contemporaries agreed that there was something demonic about the Plantagenet Dynasty (1154 – 1485). Known for their manic energies and a seeming inability to just sit still, they revolutionized and remade England. They dominated Britain by conquering Wales, cowing Scotland, and subduing Ireland. They created an empire stretching from Ireland to the Spanish border, and devastated France in the Hundred Years War.
Europe proving too small for them, the Plantagenets exported their manic energies to the Middle East, where they wreaked considerable havoc during the Crusades. They were also known for their fierce intra-familial rivalries, which doomed and brought their dynasty to a dramatic end. Where others tried to take them down, and failed, the Plantagenets proved quite capable of taking themselves down. As with everything else they did, they approached the task of self-destruction by going at each other full tilt.