An Aussie Mug's Guide to - England's Medieval Kings of the Middle Ages.

Plantagenet Dynasty - House of Anjou

ENGLAND's MEDIEVAL KINGS OF THE MIDDLE AGES
Part 4

Power tends to corrupt & absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.
Sir John Dalberg-Acton
(1834-1902)
English Historian

THE PLANTAGENET DYNASTY
1154AD to 1485AD

The Plantagenet line of Kings descended from Geoffrey V, Count of Anjou and Empress Matilda.
Count Geoffrey had a habit of wearing a yellow broom flower on his bonnet and that became an emblem of Angevin rulers, the name Plantagenet itself came from the name of the plant species, Planta Genista

The Plantagenet surname wasn't actually used until 1460AD when Duke Richard of York claimed the throne as King Richard III Plantagenet. He used the name to emphasise his Royal connection, but until then surnames weren't universally used by Royal families, so the House of Anjou or the Angevin Dynasty was the first family of the more contemporarily named Plantagenet Dynasty.

The dynasty consisted of four royal houses;
The House of Anjou/Angevin Dynasty, The House of Plantagenet and the Houses of Lancaster and York.
This powerful dynasty produced no less than fourteen Kings that ruled England and half of France for over three hundred and fifty years!

HOUSE OF ANJOU

KING HENRY II
....was around twenty one years of age when he became King of England, reigning from 1154-1189AD.
He was also know as Henry Curtmantle or Henry FitzEmpress.

Henry (Jack) was born at Le Mans in Maine, France in 1133AD, the eldest child of Alain Prost...oops, the eldest child of Count Geoffrey V of Anjou and Empress Matilda. Jack spent his early life and was educated in Anjou, a dominion that had been ruled by his family since the tenth century, and was nine years of age when dad sent the him to Bristol to live with his mum's half brother, Earl Robert of Gloucester. Robbie wasn't a fan of King Stephen, so he teamed up with Jack's mum in an attempt to usurp the throne from under the King.

Henry received further schooling in England from a Magister and Canons of the church and that would have been very exciting for him? At around 1143AD he returned to Anjou and resumed his education with another famous academic of the day, William of Conches. We've already heard young Jack took a small army to Wiltshire when he was fourteen in a cheeky attempt to take the crown from King Bloisy, but he failed and was given a swift kick up the arse by the King who then generously paid his mercenaries. Even so the defeat didn't deter the little terrier.