23. A Serial Bungler Who Had Things Backfire Even When He Tried to Do Good
John’s brother, King Richard the Lionheart, was captured and imprisoned on his way back from the Crusades. So John tried to usurp the throne, but bungled it and ended up banished and had his property confiscated. When he became king, John entered into a disastrous marriage that cost him much of his holdings in France, then got into a ruinous war with the French king that cost him the rest. At home, he got into an argument with an archbishop, that ended up with the Pope excommunicating John and all of England.
Even when he tried to do the right thing, things backfired and worsened John’s perception. For example, he shifted some of the burden of taxation from poor peasants to wealthy nobles. The result was the First Baronial Revolt, and John’s forced signing of the Magna Carta. Fittingly, his final days were just as pathetic: while suffering a bout of dysentery that would ultimately do him in, he decided to take a shortcut through some marshy ground by a tidal estuary. The tide came in, John barely escaped drowning, but lost his baggage train and the Crown Jewels of England. He died soon thereafter.
