Edward II: The Unconventional King by Kathryn Warner Page A

resolve the great accident of his own birth – that he, with all his faults and doubts in himself, had been chosen by God to be king.
    A new biography of Edward II is thus an important publication. This is all the more the case as Edward II studies in the past have in many respects been lacking. Even at the sharper end of the historiography, academics adopted a sort of ‘Edward II routine’ in which certain difficult questions were not asked, let alone answered in full. Nowhere is this more in evidence than with regard to his death – the information underpinning which has been shown to be a deliberate lie, carefully designed to conceal the location of his new prison in late 1327. But it also applies to Edward as a man and thus to the entire understanding of precisely why his reign foundered. Scholarly medievalists who, in the twentieth century, favoured objectivity over a sympathetic portrait of the man, simply sat in judgement on him and did not seek to understand why he acted as he did. Thus they missed much of the man’s character and failed to understand the reasons for his nobles’ actions. Only relatively recently with the publication of Seymour Phillips’s Edward II has this generally parlous state of affairs been remedied – but even that book demonstrates its author’s inability completely to break away from the ‘Edward II routine’ in respect of the man’s death and possible later life.
    Kathryn Warner brings fresh air to the study of this reign. For her no aspect of the ‘Edward II routine’ can be taken at face value. She re-examines the issues, and criticises and corrects the rest of us fearlessly and tactfully. She understands the limits of historical evidence but she also knows its power, and she revises many distortions that have crept into the traditionally accepted version of events, especially where they are not supported by contemporary sources. But most importantly of all, she understands the importance of the human subject beyond the evidence. After all, the evidence in itself is a matter for antiquaries; the historian has to reach for the vitality that is only touched upon here and there by the documents. In this case the essential things to grasp are the man’s personality and his contemporary reputation: what motivated him, what frightened him, and what he perceived to be his worth to others. I was once criticised by an eminent scholar for devoting more pages in a biography to the matter of whether Edward III raped the countess of Salisbury than the parliamentary crisis of 1341. But I still maintain that in a true biography – as opposed to a history book about a reign – it is important to present not only what a man thought of himself but his awareness of what others thought of him. In this context I very much admire Kathryn’s concentration on Gaveston at the outset of Edward’s reign: some historians would regard the Gaveston episode as a mere distraction, and less important than Edward’s governmental crises. However, putting that relationship centre-stage reflects Edward’s own priorities. It demonstrates how his whole approach to kingship was secondary to the companionship of his adopted brother. Edward II’s personal relationships, and his lack of awareness of how they were seen, lies right at the very heart of his story, along with the contradictions in his nature mentioned above. The more objectively and judgementally you view the man, and ignore the huge distortions of his personal life, which ultimately were his undoing, the further you drift from the truth.
    It goes without saying that deliberate attempts to understand a medieval character, and to present his concerns and priorities in proportion, are fraught with difficulty. Too often attempts to write a sympathetic study end in a whitewash. Worse, there is a danger that an emotional credulity may seep into the narrative, and obscure the contradictions of the character. Such romanticism does not affect Kathryn’s