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lisa_setepenre's review
4.0
Richard II was crowned King of England at the tender age of ten years old. At thirty-one, he was deposed, depicted as a feckless youth, a boy who could not live up to the role he’d been embodying for twenty-one years – but Henry Bolingbroke, three months the king’s junior, was the man to replace him. This narrative – that of Richard II as unable or unwilling to “be a man” (i.e. live up to and conform to the idealised standards of manhood) – has dominated discussions of Richard II’s life, personality and reign. Christopher Fletcher challenges this narrative by focusing on the question of what “manhood” meant in medieval Europe and how we might interpret Richard II’s behaviour within this lens.
Richard II: Manhood, Youth, and Politics, 1377-99 is an intriguing work. It does much to put Richard II’s reign under a different light and challenge the standard narrative of his reign. For example, it argues that far from being a long term proponent for peace and unwilling to physically involve himself in battle, Richard II had aspirations to go to war, but was held back by a lack of funding, threats of invasion and the ambitions of his royal uncles (John of Gaunt, for instance, was more interested in his own claim to Castile and, later, Aquitaine than he was in the war with France).
Another interesting idea is the notion that, far from wielding full power from the time he declared himself of age in 1389, he was still subject to control until he managed to “drift” back to full power in the tail end of his reign.
Obviously, Fletcher adds new depth to the understanding of Richard II’s reign and forces the reader to look beyond the dominant, standard narrative. For that reason, I would recommend it to anyone wanting to do in-depth research on Richard II, if only to hear a different viewpoint. That being said, this is a scholarly text and tends towards being a dense read. It is not strictly speaking a biography either – the reader needs to be familiar with Richard II’s life and reign or else they’re likely to get lost.
It is also worth noting that Fletcher’s analysis takes place predominately through the lens of gender/masculinity. With such a focus, it can sometimes feel as though this lens is the dominant or only viewpoint that Richard and his contemporaries saw through. This is not a criticism of Fletcher’s work or approach – I am not for one moment suggesting that Fletcher believes, or is arguing, that Richard and his contemporaries were solely and entirely motivated by the idea of ‘manhood’ – but something for the reader to be aware of.
Richard II: Manhood, Youth, and Politics, 1377-99 is an intriguing work. It does much to put Richard II’s reign under a different light and challenge the standard narrative of his reign. For example, it argues that far from being a long term proponent for peace and unwilling to physically involve himself in battle, Richard II had aspirations to go to war, but was held back by a lack of funding, threats of invasion and the ambitions of his royal uncles (John of Gaunt, for instance, was more interested in his own claim to Castile and, later, Aquitaine than he was in the war with France).
Another interesting idea is the notion that, far from wielding full power from the time he declared himself of age in 1389, he was still subject to control until he managed to “drift” back to full power in the tail end of his reign.
Obviously, Fletcher adds new depth to the understanding of Richard II’s reign and forces the reader to look beyond the dominant, standard narrative. For that reason, I would recommend it to anyone wanting to do in-depth research on Richard II, if only to hear a different viewpoint. That being said, this is a scholarly text and tends towards being a dense read. It is not strictly speaking a biography either – the reader needs to be familiar with Richard II’s life and reign or else they’re likely to get lost.
It is also worth noting that Fletcher’s analysis takes place predominately through the lens of gender/masculinity. With such a focus, it can sometimes feel as though this lens is the dominant or only viewpoint that Richard and his contemporaries saw through. This is not a criticism of Fletcher’s work or approach – I am not for one moment suggesting that Fletcher believes, or is arguing, that Richard and his contemporaries were solely and entirely motivated by the idea of ‘manhood’ – but something for the reader to be aware of.
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