So here's a question: what exactly makes for a bad king?

I ask this question because I was recently re-

exposed to Disney's version of Robin Hood, the one with all the talking animals, and I realized that I
didn't actually know anything about the guy who has been immortalized as a legendarily bad king.

In fact, chances are that if you know anything about him, it's that he's the guy who plays the villain in
Robin Hood stories, or that he's the guy who was forced to sign the Magna Carta. In fact in school
that's probably the only time he's mentioned at all, and it's likely that Magna Carta is being presented to
you as some kind of foundational document for representative democracy.

In fact if you look right now at the wikipedia entry for King John, the first paragraph even says that it
laid the foundation for the constitution of the United Kingdom, which is a lie on two counts. One,
because it didn't, and two, because the United Kingdom does not have a written constitution! It is an
entirely uncodified system of government! No one has, at any point, bothered to try to write down what
the rules of government actually are in the UK!

But that's a different story for a different time. This video is about King John, a guy who may or may
not deserve to be considered a bad king. And while we're on the topic of bad kings, what exactly makes
for a bad king, anyway? Like, what do we mean when we say a king is bad? Do we mean that the king
is a tyrant? Do we mean that the king is immoral? Do we mean that he's ineffectual? Do we mean that
he's power hungry? What is the basis for our formulation of what makes for a bad king?

To give contrast, the most famous King in all of English history is Henry VIII, the man who literally
represents what most people imagine when they imagine a monarch. He's the representation of kingship
itself; a man who is larger than life, who defeated his enemies, redefined the church of his nation, and
married a bunch of different women at various points. He refused to allow anyone to limit him, and he
enforced his will at the point of a sword.

And yet he's a monarch who beheaded four wives, drove his nation into bankruptcy with expensive
wars, and ushered in centuries of religious conflict between catholics and protestants in his own nation.
So can we really claim that he was a good king? We can claim that he was a mighty king. But that's not
really the same as calling him good, now is it?

How about Louis XIV of France, the so-called Sun King? Catherine the Great of Russia? Frederick the
Great of Prussia? Or maybe even John's brother King Richard the Lionheart?

I think it goes without saying that, if you were to actually look at what these people did, most would
conclude that being a great king and being a good king are entirely separate things. And while we're at
it, let's talk about Richard, since it's impossible to talk about John without also talking about his
brother, the great Crusading King who defeated Saladin in the middle east.

Actually, let's go back a bit further. Let's talk about the state of play at the time. John and Richard were
the sons of Henry II of England, and Eleanor of Aquitaine. They were two of four, and the only two to
be crowed as Kings. And here's where the issues begin. Henry II was a tyrant, to say the least. And
more to the point, he held lands that created a territory better known as the Angevin empire, which
reached from England all the way to Spain.

There are two important things to note here. One, that Henry II fought a war against his sons, who
attempted to overthrow him, a war that did not include John, and two, that despite being Henry II's
favorite son for being the only one who didn't try to overthrow him, he was still given the name John
Lackland, because of all of Henry II's sons, he didn't have an inheritance.

I should also point out that this name was given to him by his own father. And he wondered why all his
other sons tried to overthrow him.

It's also worth noting that John was the youngest of all his brothers, and so it wasn't like he could easily
rise in revolt when he was between five and ten while they were doing it. More to the point, his father
seems to have reconsidered not giving the only loyal son any land, and so quickly began stripping
various nobles of their titles and giving them to John as gifts. More on his relationship with the nobles
later.

Here's where things get messy. Henry II may have triumphed over his sons, but his sons were not done
fighting. This time however, they'd fight each other. Henry the so-called Young King started a civil war
with Richard, and before it could reach any real conclusion, Henry the Young King died of dysentery.

Important to note that the guy called the young king was supposed to be the primary heir. But now that
heir is dead. So Henry II changed who was going to inherit what after he died. Richard was going to be
King of England, the other brother Geoffrey who isn't important got Brittany, and John was to be given
his mother's territory in Aquitaine.

Now, we can infer a few things from this. One, that Henry II seems to have decided that John was his
favorite and that Richard was his least. We know this, because at this time, England was essentially a
backwater province. Henry II was a norman, from Normandy. In France. The court spoke French, and
the provinces in France were both richer and more developed than those in England.

In particular, Aquitaine was the crown jewel so to speak; there's a reason why Eleanor was able to hold
so much power while also holding it. Henry II giving it to John probably seemed like a reward for
being the only son not trying to violently overthrow him.

Except Richard was not happy about only being given England, a place he didn't really like. And so
Richard, the current duke of Aquitaine, who would have to give it up in order to become King of
England, refused to give up Aquitaine at all, thus kicking off yet another civil war.

Henry II was none too pleased about this, and so demanded that his other sons go defeat Richard. To
spare you a long story, this also inconclusively, and somehow they all managed to hug it out, albeit
without ever giving John Aquitaine. He was once again John Lackland. Which, as you can imagine, he
was super happy about.

So okay, inter-family civil war two is over. What happens now? Well, Henry is still trying to find a
place to put John, because John still needs a place to go. It was at this point, he remembered that they
also held territory in Ireland, and so Henry II sent John off to go manage Ireland. He went so far as to
try and get John proclaimed King of Ireland, but the pope refused to allow him to be crowned.

It was probably for the best, because Ireland was not a pacified and civil place at the time. The normans
had only recently conquered it, and Henry II plan to just move lots of anglo saxons into Ireland to
manage the place was not going well. Worse still, John was not what you would call silver tongued, and
managed to offend almost everyone immediately. He would, at various times, remark that the Irish
were unfashionable, that they had long beards and that they spoke a language that wasn't nearly as good
as French, while at other times he would offend the settlers who were there to support him by
complaining that they didn't keep up with the various fashions of the French courts.

As an aside, John being particularly interested in fashion and finery is not actually strange. It comes off
as strange because of his surroundings, but in reality a monarch or monarch to be, especially a French
one, being interested in fine things was not weird. French kings especially were obsessed with all kinds
of exotic clothes and ideas, and so John lamenting that he was trapped in a place where the people were
all crude and uncivilized is understandable if entirely the wrong thing to do if you hope to rule the
place.

In any case, things went from bad to worse. The Irish, not fully pacified, began to fight against the
english settlers, and the english settlers who were there weren't all that keen on supporting John, and so
within a year he left Ireland behind, claiming that everything was the fault of his terrible administrators.
Remember this, it's going to be a theme.

So the sequence of events goes like this. There are four brothers. Then henry dies on a chamber pot.
Now there are three brothers. Oops, Geoffry just got killed in a jousting accident. Now there are two
brothers. That's probably fine, right?

Actually, Richard immediately began trying to make an alliance with Phillip II of France against his
own father, because he was so worried that Henry II might make John his heir that he felt he needed the
power of the French to put him on the English throne. After a year, Richard decided that patience was
for fools, and swore allegiance to Phillip II, before the two of them declared war on the still alive
Henry II.

Welcome to civil war 3! Once again, Richard is trying to seize the throne so John can't have it. This
time, Richard was more successful. Even John, who was initially loyal to his father the same way he
had been before, switched to Richard's side when it was clear Richard would win. Keep in mind,
Richard was fighting this war to ensure John didn't take the throne.

But all of this is kinda moot, because Henry II died shortly after all this, and Richard was crowned
King. There are some things you need to know here. First, despite being crowned King of England,
Richard did not care that much about England. He was a french speaking Norman in his bones, and
while he was perfectly happy to tax England and have it as part of his territory, he considered it the
least of all his provinces.

The other thing was that Richard did not want to actually remain in Europe for long anyway. Sure he
was now King, but his main desire while being King was to uproot himself and go on crusade.
Someone would, ostensibly, have to actually manage everything while the King was wandering around
the Holy Land, and so John was given a bunch of territory, put in charge of a cabal of advisors, and left
to run the place while Richard was off doing crusader things.

Just for good measure though, the unmarried and childless Richard declared that should he die along
the way, that his nephew Arthur should be put in charge of the territories that he controlled, despite the
fact that Arthur was four years old at the time and John was right there. He then made John swear not to
visit England for three years, because Richard figured that three years was enough time to go on
crusade and come back, and would stop John from, say, declaring himself King of England while
Richard was away.
But this plan hit a snag almost immediately. Not because of anything John did, mind you, but because
the guys who he left in charge of England starting dying and the ones who didn't keel over started
fighting each other for control of the country in Richard's absence.

So Eleanor, their mother, now old as hell, convinced Richard that maybe it would be better to have a
member of the family in charge. Reluctantly, Richard agrees. And before we really delve into the chaos
that is John trying to rule England in Richard's absence, let's just focus for a moment on the fact that
Richard's whole life thus far amounts to trying and failing to overthrow his father, screwing his brother
John out of being a duke, then screwing him out of being King, and then deciding to farm all his
territories for taxes to pay for his expensive crusade.

Oh, and who did he put in charge of collecting those taxes? Who did he make the face of all these
unpopular taxes? Why John of course! It's actually quite amazing that the guy everyone thinks of as
one of the models of English Kingship barely spends any time in his own country and actively thinks of
it as a place to extract wealth from so he can go do more interesting things.