The Realm: The True history behind Game of Thrones by Ed West Read Free Book Online

(For having introduced the jury system Henry II was voted number 90 in the BBC’s 100 Greatest Britons list, a few places below Bono and Robbie Williams.)
    In 1162 Henry II made his crony Becket, an ostentatious rich merchant’s son who wore the finest coats around town and kept a pet monkey, Archbishop of Canterbury. However, the move backfired when the new religious leader began to take his role too seriously, wearing hair shirts and blocking the king’s plans to remove clerical exemption from prosecution. Becket fled the country but when he returned in 1170 and attacked the king from the pulpit on Christmas Day, Henry erupted in fury. ‘What miserable drones and traitors have I nourished and promoted in my household, who let their lord be treated with such shameful contempt by a lowborn cleric?’ Four young knights in attendance, eager to impress the king, rode to the Channel to confront Becket at Canterbury. The men, led by Reginald FitzUrse (‘son of a bear’), were severely hungover by the time they arrived in England the following day, and having picked up another 12 men on the way, were pumped-up for a fight.
    When they arrived at the cathedral, Becket, ever the diplomat, shouted ‘Pimp!’ at FitzUrse. This led to a slanging match, and as the knights were leaving, Becket goaded them again and the quarrel erupted, and at some point one of the knights drew his sword and struck Becket in the head. Another blow slit his skull open, mixing brain and blood on to the cathedral floor. The murder shocked the nation, and Henry donned sackcloth, the traditional clothes of penance, and allowed himself to be whipped by clergymen in public – five lashes for each of the dozen or so bishops in attendance and three for each of the 80 monks.
    The final eruption of the feud was caused by Henry, in Becket’s absence, choosing the Archbishop of York to preside at his son’s coronation in 1170. Henry wanted his eldest son, Henry the Young King, to be crowned in his lifetime to reduce the risk of another war, but the gifts he bestowed on him only led to a conflict with his jealous brothers.
    After being crowned once, Henry demanded his father let him have a second ceremony, this time with the new Archbishop of Canterbury (who, after Becket’s exit interview, was very accommodating). Despite now being joint King of England, Duke of Normandy and Count of Anjou, young Henry felt that he was hard done by – after all, his father had his own duchy when he was 16 and a kingdom at 19. At a banquet, Henry made his father wait hand and foot on him, and when the older man complained, ‘No other king in Christendom has such a butler,’ he replied: ‘It is only fitting that the son of a count should wait on the son of a king.’ History does not record the angry middle-aged king’s response.
    Richard and Geoffrey, the king’s middle sons, were unhappy about their elder sibling receiving so much of the inheritance. Geoffrey was described by Gerald of Wales as ‘overflowing with words, soft as oil… able to corrupt two kingdoms with his tongue; of tireless endeavour, a hypocrite in everything, a deceiver and a dissembler’. xiii The two brothers started an almost-Freudian armed rebellion against their father in 1173, the boys aged just 16 and 15. They were supported by their mother Eleanor, now estranged from her husband, as well as the kings of Scotland and of France. But later that year, when Eleanor fled the country in men’s clothing and sought refuge with Louis VII – the former husband she had supposedly committed adultery against with her own uncle – he handed her back. Richard’s 1174 rebellion ended with him throwing himself at his father’s feet and begging for forgiveness. Father and son were reconciled.
    But before long Henry the Young King rebelled, upset that youngest son John had been given Cornwall and three castles in Normandy, which he wanted for himself. While in southwest France in 1183, Henry died of a