Books like A great and terrible king by Marc Morris

Michael Prestwich's study of Edward I, first published in 1988 and now reissued with a new introduction and updated bibliographic guide, is the definitive full-length account of one of the leading monarchs of the Middle Ages. A king who pioneered legal and parliamentary change, conquered Wales and came close to conquering Scotland, Edward I presents many contradictions. A pious man who built his reputation during the greatest chivalric adventure of the time, the Crusade, he quarrelled with his archbishops. A major player in European diplomacy and war, he acted as a peacemaker during the 1280s but became involved in a bitter war with Philip IV a decade later. Examining the full range of manuscript sources, the book provides an expert analysis of a long and significant reign, dominated by a remarkable and complex king. - Jacket flap.

King John is one of those historical characters who needs little in the way of introduction. If readers are not already familiar with him as the tyrant whose misgovernment gave rise to Magna Carta, we remember him as the villain in the stories of Robin Hood. Formidable and cunning, but also cruel, lecherous, treacherous and untrusting. Twelve years into his reign, John was regarded as a powerful king within the British Isles.

The first Plantagenet king inherited a blood-soaked kingdom from the Normans and transformed it into an empire stretched at its peak from Scotland to Jerusalem. In this history, Jones resurrects this fierce and seductive royal dynasty and its mythic world. They produced England's best and worst kings: Henry II and his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine, twice a queen and the most famous woman in Christendom; their son Richard the Lionheart, who fought Saladin in the Third Crusade; and his conniving brother King John, who was forced to grant his people new rights under the Magna Carta, the basis for our own bill of rights. Combining the latest academic research with a gift for storytelling, Jones vividly recreates the great battles of Bannockburn, Crécy, and Sluys and reveals how the maligned kings Edward II and Richard II met their downfalls. This is the era of chivalry and the Black Death, the Knights Templar, the founding of parliament, and the Hundred Years' War, when England's national identity was forged by the sword.