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The Sibling Rivalry That Wrecked an Empire, and Other Self-Destructive Royal Family Episodes

Khalid Elhassan January 5, 2020 33 min

Wars of the Roses - Battle of Bosworth Field — The Wars of the Roses, during which the Plantagenet Dynasty destroyed itself. Encyclopedia Britannica

32. “From the Devil We Sprang”

As King Richard, the Lionheart 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 the British Isles 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, the Plantagenets exported their energies to the Middle East, where they wreaked 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.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.