24. King John’s Problems were Caused By His Being Extraordinarily Incompetent
So King John of England had serious issues that supplied serious grounds for criticism and for the poor perception of his reign by contemporaries when he was alive, and by historians and scholars in centuries since. However, although John could be and often was a heel, he could also be quite a likable fellow when he wanted to be. The problem was that he often did not bother to even try. So his reign ended up being disastrous for England.
John lost his French holdings, got the Pope to excommunicate him and place England under interdiction, and triggered a baronial rebellion that ended with the Magna Carta. However, none of that came about because John was an evil king – at or at least as cartoonishly evil as he is often depicted in various versions of the Robin Hood story. Instead, John’s poor perception came about because, instead of being an exceptionally evil monarch, he was an exceptionally incompetent one.
