Tales from the Long Twelfth Century: The Rise and Fall of the Angevin Empire by Richard Huscroft (review)

Tales from the Long Twelfth Century felicitously opens with a fairytale. According to folklore of Northern France, the Angevin dynasty was descended on its matrilineal side from a magical creature named Melusine. Half siren and half she-devil, the beautiful Melusine married the Comte D'Anjou, who begot upon her sons, as described by the author Richard Huscroft, of "ferocious tempers and tyrannical leanings" (xx). In his Tales, subtitled The Rise and Fall of the Angevin Empire, historian Huscroft seeks to set out an innovative overview of the family that ruled vast territories in England and France during a tempestuous century. In actuality descended from the seed of William the Conqueror rather than from a supernatural sea monster, the exploits of the Angevins, named by scholars after their ancestral duchy, encompassed military adventures, murder, and civil wars. Their accomplishments included artistic patronage that enabled the ethos of the Troubadour poets and political reforms that paved a path to the modern world. Henry Plantagenet and his sons Richard and John were warriors all, and prey to the power obsession and priorities of personal advancement emblematic of royalty, but they left such an indelible impression on Western history that they loom large in the popular imagination to this day. Who, after all, has not heard of King Richard the Lionhearted?—a legendary figure, and fit content for a fairytale, indeed.

Huscroft, an instructor of history at Westminster School, London, has previously penned texts on related topics, including Ruling England, 1042–1216 (2004) and The Norman Conquest: A New Introduction (2009). He has utilized a brilliant concept to construct his current book, published on the eighth centenary of the death of King John: he has borrowed the structure of The Canterbury Tales as a template, with each chapter a biography of one person pivotal to the Angevin era's events. By telling interconnected stories of the important players around the Angevin kings, Huscroft has opened up a fresh and more fully dimensional perspective of their rule. "The Prince's Tale" provides a tragic prologue to the Plantagenets with the saga of William Atheling, the heir of the usurping youngest son of the Conqueror, Henry I. The Atheling's untimely death in the sinking of the White Ship caused the succession crisis and subsequent war known as the Anarchy. The contested kingship ultimately passed to Henry I's grandson Henry II upon the death of another usurper, Stephen of Blois, and thus began the Angevin epoch, with the younger Henry succeeded in turns by his sons. "The Disciple's Tale" outlines the role of the scholar Herbert of Bosham in the conflict between Henry II and the Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Becket that culminated in the latter's unlawful killing. Herbert was Becket's companion and biographer and as such was a front-row witness to the power struggle between the cleric and the king over the privileges and proper relations of the church and the crown, one of the most consequential clashes of the Middle Ages. "The Princess's Tale" tells the fascinating story of Joan, a daughter of Henry II and the remarkable Eleanor of Aquitaine. Joan was a typical aristocratic chess piece serially and strategically married to scions of other noble families, but she was also notably well-travelled and well-educated for a woman of her time. A strong woman as well, and no mere pawn, she led at least one recorded siege at the head of an army but died similarly to many females of her era, felled by complications of childbirth. Another unusual woman is highlighted in the final of these twelfth-century tales: Nicola de la Haye was an ally of King John who also like Joan played a military role, holding Lincoln Castle in the last civil war of the Angevin age. With the death of John by disease during that conflict, the...