Surrounded by myth, the story of the life of edward II is stripped to the bare bones in a new book.

Edward II: The Unconventional King
by Kathryn Warner and with a foreword by Ian Mortimer
Amberley Publishing 2014
ISBN-10: 1445641208
ISBN-13: 978-1445641201

ABSTRACT:

He is one of the most reviled English kings in history. He drove his kingdom to the brink of civil war a dozen times in less than twenty years. He allowed his male lovers to rule the kingdom. He led a great army to the most ignominious military defeat in English history. His wife took a lover and invaded his kingdom, and he ended his reign wandering around Wales with a handful of followers, pursued by an army. He was the first king of England forced to abdicate his throne. Popular legend has it that he died screaming impaled on a red-hot poker, but in fact the time and place of his death are shrouded in mystery. His life reads like an Elizabethan tragedy, full of passionate doomed love, bloody revenge, jealousy, hatred, vindictiveness and obsession. He was Edward II, and this book tells his story. The focus here is on his relationships with his male ‘favourites’ and his disaffected wife, on his unorthodox lifestyle and hobbies, and on the mystery surrounding his death. Using almost exclusively fourteenth-century sources and Edward s own letters and speeches wherever possible, Kathryn Warner strips away the myths which have been created about him over the centuries, and provides a far more accurate and vivid picture of him than has previously been seen.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Kathryn Warner holds a BA and an MA with Distinction in medieval history and literature from the University of Manchester. She has had an article about the earl of Kent’s plot of 1330 published in the English Historical Review in 2011, and also one about a fifteenth-century manuscript published in the Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester. When she is not immersed in the fourteenth century, she works as a teacher and translator.