Richard II: A Brittle Glory

by Laura Ashe

The acclaimed Penguin Monarchs series: short, fresh, expert accounts of England's rulers - now in paperback

Richard II (1377-99) came to the throne as a child, following the long, domineering, martial reign of his grandfather Edward III. He suffered from the disastrous combination of a most exalted sense of his own power and an inability to impress that power on those closest to the throne. Neither trusted nor feared, Richard battled with a whole series of failures and emergencies before finally succumbing to a coup, imprisonment and murder.

Laura Ashe's brilliant account of his reign emphasizes the strange gap between Richard's personal incapacity and the amazing cultural legacy of his reign - from the Wilton Diptych to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Piers Plowman and The Canterbury Tales.

Genres: History, Biography, Nonfiction, Medieval, Medieval History, British Literature, Royalty

126 pages, Paperback

First published February 23, 2016

About the author

Laura Ashe is Professor of English Literature and David Woods Kemper Family Fellow in English, at Worcester College, University of Oxford.

Reviews

[W.D. Clarke · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5*

One of those “I need to learn more about the context” [of Shakespeare’s play] when I really didn’t: the play taught me what I needed to know as i read it, and the various introductions (Oxford, New Oxford, Modern Library) more than sufficed to sate curiosity afterWords [sic!] and show/suggest that Willy S’s choice to make adaptations/compressions to the historical record (if that's what you can call the Chroniclers) was 100% the right thing to do: he was writing for his own day, and its attendant succession anxieties and medieval nostalgia, after all, and this book, while it goes a ways to filling out the picture of the latter, isn’t really necessary unless you are after History more than drama-context (and you'd be unlikely to stop, maybe even start, with this slim volume, perhaps, but it does have a good “Further Reading” starter list)...

Still, I enjoyed my few hours in its company, and it is quite well written, and structured around an interesting conceit, “arranged by four locations, each both real and imagined: parliament, battlefield, city, shrine,” as a nod to the idea that what a monarch projects (or, with Shakespeare—and Machiavelli), plays at is as important as who he “actually” is—if that last is indeed meaningful, at all...

Archbishop Arundel is said to have pointed out Richard’s paradoxes to his handsome face: ‘Thou art a fair man, but thou art the falsest of men’; at the end of this diatribe against Richard’s crimes, ‘the king knew not what he should say’. As we approach him through contemporary records and chronicles, any sense of the ‘real’ man beneath the image recedes, never to be caught. Chroniclers tell us what they think he said or did, or that bias or rumour believed he had done or said – and even then they give us a Richard who baffled those around him. But the idea of Richard II is as real an object of historical study as the man himself. When it comes to trying to understand the fate of a king, the idea of him may be the only real object of study there is.

[Farah Mendlesohn · Rating 3 out of 5]

The problem with this book is that it’s not for people who know nothing about the subject, but the series is on the whole directed precisely at people who know nothing about the subject. If you do have a basic grasp of the reign, all the following is irrelevant.

I really haven’t a clue about medieval Kings. The Penguin Monarch, King John, was brilliant and left me feeling I now had a surface grasp of his reign. Laura Ashe’s book has me making notes so I could figure out how all of the things she told me fit together.

Basically, the thematic structure is very cool but means this total beginner has no idea what’s going on, because Ashe tells us the outcome of things we’ve not heard about before we know what they are or how we got there. Date wise, the book flows backward in time


If Richard II Is as much a mystery to you as to me (I’ve not even seen the play) I recommend reading the chapters in the following order. It won’t give you a straight chronology but it does give you chapters that each then begin a bit later than the one before


Battlefield
Shrine
City
Parliament

Finally: what’s with Chester? I still don’t understand why Chester?

—-
Post script:
King who believes in his own majesty and the sanctity of his office; raises money for overseas ventures he loses; contracts an unpopular marriage; pisses off the Commons and breaks his word to his Lords. Loses crown.

And there was me thinking we only had one of those.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lauren Ashe’s Richard II: A Brittle Glory is a slim volume (105 pages, not counting notes and further reading) that explores the reign of Richard II through thematic analysis based around four locations: parliament, the battlefield, city and shrine.

First up, I should say that this is not a strict biography of Richard II. If you’re looking for a chronological exploration of his life and reign, you’ll probably be disappointed, or if you’re not too familiar with him, you’ll probably be confused. Two alternate books that might serve you better are Nigel Saul’s Richard II and Kathryn Warner’s Richard II: A True King's Fall, both of which are more conventional biographies, albeit far longer and complicated than a volume in the Penguin Monarchs series would be.

Thankfully, I do know a bit about Richard II and was able to enjoy this book for what it was. The analysis never really goes deep – it’d be hard to, given the limited space plus the need to make sure the text is relatively beginner-friendly – but it is interesting. Ashe’s writing is clear, accessible and definitively readable and I did enjoy her discussion about how Richard’s image, not his person, that dominates not only the perceptions of him throughout history, but also his own reign and also, presumably, his life.

[Boar's Head Eastcheap · Rating 2 out of 5]

With a particular connection to Shakespeare's play about Richard, and a few Penguin Monarchs already under my belt, I'd really hoped for something special from this book.

I was disappointed.

The main issue is not Laura Ashe's subject knowledge (clearly immense), or even her writing style (clear and accessible enough). What distracted me and deters me from recommending this without reservation is the approach she took: thematic rather than chronological.

The consequence of this, for a biography, is that it is difficult - almost impossible - to follow the subject's life. For someone looking for contextual information for their studies of Shakespeare's play, or as a starting point for the historical period, it is difficult to piece together the factors which may have combined to cause a decision, policy or event. The reader needs to produce their own chronological framework - which is surely what this book should do - before they can start to synthesise their own ideas. And if you are interested in the themes and not the person, there are probably much more useful books out there, given how short and condensed the Penguin Monarch series is.

Overall, whilst it's not one to avoid, be prepared to be frustrated by the disjointed narrative. An opportunity to produce something really useful has been squandered.

[Carolyn Harris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Most titles in the Penguin Monarchs series provide an introduction to an individual monarch's life and reign but this short biography of Richard II is best enjoyed by readers already familiar with the key events and people of the time period or, at least, have seen a performance of Shakespeare's Richard II. Ashe adopts a strictly thematic approach, analyzing Richard II's reign through the lens of parliament, church, battlefield and London. The literary culture of the time (and Shakespeare's time) is woven into the text with extensive quotations from primary sources. 

[Lisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sometimes it's okay to just conclude "there's not enough info about this person to merit a whole biography" and this may be one such example.

The book is organized by themes ("Parliament, Battlefield, City, Shrine") rather than chronoligically, and assumes the reader already is familiar with the story of Richard II. Perhaps if one was, this would make more sense, but if one is not, it's unintelligible.

[Harry McDonald · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is fine, with a few moments when its structure - analysing the reign of Richard II through 4 different environments/concepts: Parliament, Battlefield, City and Shrine - allows for some genuinely brilliant insights. It's a bit more interesting than a generic Life-and-Times book but I think it gets in the way of itself.

[Shawn Thrasher · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you are looking for a traditional biography of King Richard II (a truly fascinating figure), then you need to look somewhere else. Likely in interest of brevity, Ashe distills Richard II down to his essence, and places him in the essence of his time, place and people. For as short as the book was, it’s not an especially light read: Ashe has written a book of depth.

[Robert Tostevin · Rating 2 out of 5]

So far, I've read 4 other biographies in the Penguin Monarch series. This one was written rather differently to those. It's presented not as a historical chronology of Richard IIs reign, but rather as a series of themes : Parliament; Battlefield; City and Shrine.

The other Penguin Monarch series biographies successfully gave me an overview of the monarch in question's life along with interesting details and vignettes into their reign - This didn't and so it left me dissapointed as it got bogged down with too many diversions into,interesting, but nevertheless tenuously related other topics (mainly literary appreciation).

The penguin monarch series are by design short overviews limiting themselves to anything between 75 to 150 pages so they have to be concise if you are going to cover a biography in that restricted space - when you arrange it thematically you make it even more restricting - end result an unsatisfying read.

Normally with a straight chronological presentation of a monarch's reign you get a sense of the person, how they change, how they mature, how they react to events as they unfold, but when you present a life thematically you get a very narrow view on that one theme you are reading at that moment. You rob the the reader of some of the context to be able to understand the events unfolding because you are stuck restricted within that theme. In addition your contextual understanding is naturally reduced because you won't have read later chapters yet in which they may have illuminated you on something or some event that has gone before and crucial to what you are reading right at that moment.

In of themselves the different themes are interesting but I felt they failed to illuminate me with any wider understanding of Richard or his reign.

For example quotes from Shakespeare, who was writing his plays nearly 200 years after the reign of Richard, is hardly germaine to understanding Richards reign but more to understanding how Shakespeare and his generation interpreted it - or maybe demonstrating the literary credentials of the author.

I found myself getting more and more irked as I read through this book as it failed to get to the point of discussing Richard and instead circumvented and circled around , interesting, but none the less esoteric discussions, for example several pages in one of the chapters veer off on a discussion of a British library manuscript on a 7th century Anglo Saxon bishop Erkenwald !
The justification as to why this was relevant was tenuous to say the least.

So on the whole I wasn't really very impressed with the way it was written & the way it was presented. If you want a straightforward concise summary or analysis of the life of Richard II then this book is probably not for you.

[Patrick · Rating 2 out of 5]

Gives the basics but somewhat rambling and unfocused.

[Nicholas Whyte · Rating 4 out of 5]

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/richard-ii-a-brittle-glory-by-laura-ashe/

It’s a very short and digestible book, which doesn’t waste time on chronology but just jumps straight into the question of what went wrong with Richard’s reign, assuming that the reader is familiar with the basics.

There are four chapters, each dealing with an area of kingship as practiced by Richard. In her prologue, Ashe makes the point that the court is not one of those four, because it was carried by the king wherever he went. The four areas are Parliament, the battlefield, the City of London (where Richard hand-picked his namesake Richard Whittington as Mayor), and the shrines connecting the King with God.

The overall thesis is that Richard was driven by a concept of kingship where he was divinely appointed to lead, and did not need to keep people like the other magnates and the citizens of London on board with anything that he did. He felt this very deeply and it informs the Wilton Diptych, which is a personal statement of his religious beliefs which we can only dimly understand. Of course, it was not sustainable; he made too many enemies and was overthrown and (probably) killed.

It is worth reflecting that British constitutional history was a close run thing. If Richard had been even slightly more politically adept, or luckier, he could have assembled a coalition of favourite lords combined with urban stakeholders to support his personal rule without institutional safeguards, provided that there was something in it for them; and that could have proved a lasting political settlement. He was in fact lucky in how the Peasants’ Revolt played out, and that the Lords Appellant in the late 1380s also pushed their cause too far and allowed him to regain control for another decade.

As it was, the fact that Parliament successfully overthrew him one and a half times (counting 1388 as well as 1399) consolidated the English constitutional theory of Parliament as a sovereign institution which constrained the monarch, to the point of deciding who the monarch could be. Richard was clearly not interested in constitutional theory. If he had been, he might have lasted longer.

One point that I wished the book had spent more time on: Richard’s reign was a really good time for the arts in England. This is the age of Piers Plowman, Chaucer, Wycliff, Gower and the Pearl poet; and as mentioned the Wilton Diptych and the funeral monument in Westminster Abbey that Richard built for his first wife and where he was eventually laid to rest. I don’t think you would find a similar flowering of the arts in England for a century or two either before or after. Richard himself doesn’t deserve a lot of credit for this, but it’s worth noting.

There is a page on Richard’s temporarily successful campaign in Ireland in 1394, and half a page on his unsuccessful return in 1399. These were the only visits to Ireland by a reigning English monarch between King John in 1210 and William III in 1690.

[me · Rating 4 out of 5]

I actually liked the thematic approach this book takes, despite not knowing much about Richard II's reign. Occasionally I wanted to know more about some event in his life, but I did enjoy it not being a conventional narrative of a dead king's life.

Arguably there is a tension with the Penguin Monarch series between straightforward biography and delving into social and cultural context, as the latter is more what history is about these days compared to the 'old style' king-focussed works that dominated prior to the late 20th century. If you want the latter some of them can fall a bit short, yet they're also pitched as introductory overviews of specific people.

This book is more about the idea of Richard II and how he and others saw the role of 14th century kings. The conclusion's justification for this is that we don't really know enough to say much about the man and that given how his reign ends (spoiler: deposed by Henry IV) the way he engaged with (or in some cases didn't) the expectations of society is perhaps more relevant. Which is the kind of history I enjoy reading, but I can see why other readers were disappointed by this approach.

[Sally O'wheel]

This was short but I did have a problem with lack of background knowledge. It took up the story at a level above where I was at. I needed the children's version to read first. Richard was a spoiled boy who became king when he was only a child. He seems to have handled the Peasant's revolt pretty well - except that he went back on his promises and lied to the peasants. At least he got them to go home, which may, or may not, have been a good thing.

I would have benefited from a more chronologically ordered recount of the events. If I had known more about the subject I would have appreciated the organisation of the book into headings of place, Church, City etc.

[Christopher Day · Rating 4 out of 5]

A slightly odd biography, but one that works well nonetheless. The books in this series are framed as being short introductions to each monarch and their reign, but reading this one was a struggle at times as it seems to assume that the reader already has some knowledge of the subject. It's structured thematically rather than chronologically, and the end of his reign is dealt with in the very first chapter. These criticisms aside, each chapter reads well and I have come out with a reasonable understanding of the monarch, so I guess it achieves its objective.

[John Glasscock · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was slightly disappointed in this book. The majority of the books in this series have done a good job of giving a broader view of the monarch’s life and the tide of events they swam in. There was not a great deal of those details in this book. While the explanation on Richard’s view of the regal nature of his kingship was helpful, there was only a cursory explanation of what led to his being deposed as king. Some more details would be better for the average student of history. I did however like the examples of English poetry contemporary to Richard’s reign contained in this book.

[Pete daPixie · Rating 4 out of 5]

My first foray into the 'Penguin Monarchs' series of publications which follow the English crown from the Anglo-Saxon period through to Elizabeth II, which includes contributions from many popular and knowledgeable scholars of their particular studied period of history. Laura Ashe is certainly at home with 'Richard II'.
A short read of just over one hundred pages, but a book that gets right to the heart of this short and troubled reign. Recommended.

[Mary Sanche · Rating 3 out of 5]

As much as I am a fan of the Penguin Monarchs series, this one was a difficult read. The chapters are nonlinear, focusing instead on aspects of Richard II's reign rather than a chronological survey. The last chapter, 'Shrine,' seemed to be the most in-depth but it was hardly about Richard himself. The epilogue, however, made it all makes sense, wherein Richard II was described essentially as "being quite weird, and no one really knew him, and then he died."

[G · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is probably a good analysis of Richard II's reign and view of the monarch's role, but it's not a biography or text for those unfamiliar with the subject. I'm reading the Nigel Saul book now, which is the chronological biography of Richard II with which I should have begun.

I'll probably revisit this once I've read Saul's biography, after which the geographical--rather than chronological--approach to the subject might make more sense.

[Kieran · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the major issues of studying medieval monarchs is we are virtually unable to see behind the mask to the person beyond. Laura Ashe tackles this problem head on, by looking at the person Richard II wanted his contemporaries to see. By doing it thematically (Parliament, Battlefield, City, Shrine), it sidesteps the ‘and then this happened, and then’ which biographies can often end up being, and offered a glimpse into the richness of the late medieval world.

[Cora · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well written and intriguingly envisaged, but having no previous knowledge of the guy, I'm left confused that she didn't go into his capture and death at all, nor the steps it took to get there. When I have to go to wikipedia after reading a book, that's not great. Another reviewer said it best: this was written for people who already have prior knowledge, and yet it's marketed towards people who don't.

[Jane Walker · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was glad to see that other readers felt as I did on reading this little book. If you're looking for a short account of Richard's reign, this isn't it. Ashe takes a thematic rather than chronological approach, and in the process omits or makes only brief mention of key events in his reign. Fortunately I have enough background knowledge to realise this. But I was disappointed.

[Tatiana · Rating 5 out of 5]

I liked the topical approach of this book. I learned more than I do from the typical approach of a chronology of battles. The chapters on Parliament, the cities and the church give a good understanding of the evolution of institutions and social organization at this time. Richard himself comes across as an ineffective, vacuous narcissist, allowing other forces to lead the changes in society.

[Blair Hodgkinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This short biography relies on primary sources to illustrate how Richard II presented himself in a majestic and regal isolation from his subjects by bending the institutions of law and parliament to his will and with art, documents and court ritual. I had heard of Richard's penchant to project his image of kingship before, but this book spells out the means (and the consequences) with clarity.

[Beth · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't feel it is controversial to expect a short history to be... Well a history. I don't know how he died. Or what happened at the end of his reign, did he have kids 🤷‍♀️ none mentioned but then so much want mentioned. Worst in the series so far.

[CEM · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well written but not a simple and straightforward biography... Which having read several others of this series was what I was expecting. An interesting treatise on Richard's reign, but better read once you've finished with more of the 'beginner' level books.

[Jodie Payne · Rating 3 out of 5]

*3.5

The book presents a compelling account of the problematic reign of boy - king, Richard II. It offers a concise & vivid portrait of a weak, vain & naive King that would ultimately see his downfall.

[Nick Artrip · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fine overall. Quick read giving an overview of Richard II, but I think the text does itself a disservice by presenting events thematically rather than chronologically. I enjoyed this volume, but it seems a weaker installment in the Penguin Monarchs series.

[Mark Challen · Rating 3 out of 5]

A thematic approach. Interesting but for an introduction to Richard II a chronological account seems more likely to engage the reader

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was a little disappointed with this book as it was not really a biography and packed with contemporary quotes. However it has whetted my appetite to read more about this unusual king.

[Ilia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Short and very readable account split into four thematic chapters and with some excellent illustrations. Turns out Shakespeare did a pretty good job portraying the character.