14. King John Was Not So Much Evil as He Was Incompetent
On his way back home from the Crusades, Richard the Lionheart was captured and imprisoned by a powerful aristocrat whom he had offended in the Holy Lands. A huge ransom was demanded for Richard’s release, and his brother John tried to take advantage of the situation to usurp the English throne. He bungled it, and ended up banished and had his property confiscated before a freed Richard finally forgave him. When he finally became king following his brother’s death without issue, John entered into a disastrous marriage that cost him much of his holdings in France. He then got into a ruinous war with the French king that cost him the rest.
At home, John 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 and shifted some of the burden of taxation from the peasants to the wealthy nobles, it backfired and led to a baronial rebellion that forced him to sign 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, and John barely escaped drowning but ended up losing his baggage train and the Crown Jewels of England.
