The early Plantagenet kings inherited a blood-drenched kingdom from their Norman ancestors and turned it into an empire that stretched from Scotland to Palestine. In this epic chronicle of courage, betrayal, ambition and deceit, Dan Jones resurrects a recalcitrant royal line, each of whom was a remarkable and memorable figure. Before the eyes of the reader will pass: Henry II and his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine, twice queen and the most famous woman in the Christian world; their son Richard the Lionheart, who fought Saladin in the Third Crusade; and his treacherous brother King John, forced to sign the Magna Carta, which became the first example in Europe of limiting royal arbitrariness. Combining the latest academic research with a gift for storytelling, Jones vividly recreates the great battles of Bannockburn, Crécy and Sluys 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 the national identity of England was forged with a sword and a judge's gavel.