The first kings of the Plantagenet dynasty inherited a blood-stained kingdom from their Norman ancestors and turned it into an empire stretching from Scotland to Palestine. In this epic chronicle of courage, betrayal, ambition and deceit, Dan Jones resurrects a defiant royal dynasty, each of which was a remarkable and memorable figure. The reader will see: Henry II and his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine, twice queen and the most famous woman in Christendom; their son Richard the Lionheart, who fought Saladin in the Third Crusade; and his treacherous brother King John, forced to sign the Magna Carta, Europe's first example of limiting royal tyranny. Combining the latest academic research with a gift for storytelling, Jones vividly recreates the great battles of Bannockburn, Crecy and Sluis and shows how Kings Edward II and Richard II met their last days. This is the era of chivalry and the Black Death, the Knights Templar, the founding of Parliament and the Hundred Years' War, when England's national identity was forged by the sword and the gavel.