One bad apple may not spoil the whole barrel, but one bad chapter can really spoil a whole book. At least when it's the last chapter.

From the standpoint of readability, this is a fine book. And Edward II was a fascinating king (as long as you didn't have to get anywhere near him). What was his problem? How could any man be so controlled by favorites that he ruined the economy, turned his nobility against him, and eventually was driven from his throne, with hardly anyone standing at his side? Kathryn Warner can't answer that (my personal hypothesis is that Edward II was autistic), but she does a fine job of giving the reasons why he got in trouble. Indeed, if anything, I think she is relatively harsh toward Edward, failing to show his positive side. Yet the biography never feels like a hatchet job. Biographies always have to take an attitude toward their subject, ranging from excessive kindness to excessive harshness (look at biographies of Richard III for an example!). The extremes are unreasonable, but anything in the center is a useful sort of work -- we need both positive and negative biographies to fully understand how people of the time might have seen the person.

That's the good of this biography. The bad is... the last chapter.

Deposed kings have afterlives. There has never been an instance of a deposed English king who didn't have someone try to rebel on his behalf. And the general result was that the deposed king ended up dead if he hadn't been deceased already. It happened with Richard II. It happened with Henry VI. It happened with Edward V. And being dead didn't stop the pretenders. Just ask Henry VII, who had to contend with "feigned boy" after "feigned boy"; Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbek were only the most famous.

So: Claims of the survival of a dead king always fall into the category of "extraordinary claims," and extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. The ordinary evidence is that every contemporary chronicle says that Edward II was deposed early in 1327 and murdered later in that year, and that was that.

And yet, in the last chapter, Warner takes up, with approval, the ancient story that Edward II was not killed in 1327 (an hypothesis promoted also by Ian Mortimer, who wrote the foreword to this book). Her evidence? That there was a conspiracy to rescue him in 1330 and take him... somewhere. As support, she offers the fact that Edward's half-brother the Earl of Kent was one of the conspirators. Surely, she argues, Kent would not have supported the rebellion unless he knew Edward was alive.

Ever hear of Lambert Simnel and John, Earl of Lincoln, Ms. Warner?

Lincoln was the official heir of Richard III -- after the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, he should have become king. But, because Henry (VII) Tudor had won at Bosworth, Henry was king and Lincoln was nobody. And so, when Lambert Simnel the "feigned boy" showed up claiming to be the rightful heir of Edward IV, Lincoln supported him. Did Lincoln think Lambert was in fact the rightful king? Of course not. Lincoln thought that Lincoln was the rightful king, and that Lambert was a way to get to the throne.

And Kent was Edward II's half brother. If the current regime (of Edward II's wife Isabella, her boyfriend Roger Mortimer, and their puppet Edward III) could be set aside, well, who would take over? Kent, obviously. Who needs Edward II to be alive for Kent to have an interest in the proceedings?

As for the other adherents of the conspiracy, keep in mind that Isabella and Mortimer were hated, and with good reason. There were many reasons for a conspiracy against them. Did they require Edward II to be alive? No; all they needed was a useful idea to rally around. The "Edward II is alive" rebellion didn't quite work -- but, not too much later, Edward III successfully rebelled against his mother and Mortimer. And that truly was that; once Edward III was king de facto as well as king de jure, there were no more stories in England of Edward II's survival!

This irritatingly silly final chapter doesn't really ruin what is otherwise a pretty good book, but it is extraordinarily disappointing, because it raises the risk that someone will believe it. Let's hope, in the next edition, Ms. Warner will come to her senses and drop it. ( )

I have followed Kathryn Warner's blog for years. It is well-researched and interesting, not only about Edward II but also about the other people in his era. Her book about King Edward II draws upon that research and provides an interesting portrait of a king who has been demonized by Shakespeare, Marlowe, and others throughout the centuries.
She draws extensively upon contemporary records to provide a full picture of a man ill-suited for the role his birth ordained. I especially liked how Ms. Warner used account records to show Edward's generosity to the common man as well as his lavish lifestyle. She also gives a new and interesting view of Isabella, his wife, and one that I thought made more sense than the story often told about her. She is often portrayed as a woman who rebelled against her husband by taking a lover and then his crown, because of his interest in his male lovers. Ms. Warner demolishes this picture, showing a much more prosaic and less lurid version of both Edward and Isabella, thus providing a more complete story.
This is a biography well worth reading by medieval history enthusiasts. ( )

This was a struggle, a very dull account which really dragged for me. It didn't have the narrative flow that Ian Mortimer's books do. I didn't feel any closer to Edward II at the end but I did find out that he regularly paid minstrels seemingly random amounts on a regular basis. I found her analysis superficial and at times flippant. Perhaps it's because after the first third I lost patience with this book that I became too critical always finding the negatives rather than just trying to enjoy the read. ( )