When Shakespeare wrote Richard II, he billed his play as a tragedy: the downfall of a king riddled with fear, contempt and an obscure sense of majesty. Shakespeare’s portrait was a reasonably accurate one. Some historians have suggested Richard was a narcissist; others that he had borderline personality disorder.
Helen Castor offers a candid and considered view. Though the king ‘always knew he was special… his presence in the world shaped by his God-given destiny’, he simply lacked the conventional qualities of kingship. Richard’s tragedy was that he was doomed to rule under the spectre of his father and grandfather’s martial legacy – the Black Prince, hero of Crécy and the military giant Edward III.
His cousin, however, possessed all the skills that a ruler required. Henry Bolingbroke, the son of John of Gaunt and Blanche of Lancaster, excelled in a tournament. He was a soldier, fighting for a time on crusade in Lithuania with the Teutonic Knights, and had three sons by the time he was in his early twenties. Richard had no interest in war and his marriage to Anne of Bohemia – who was described by a contemporary as ‘a tiny portion of meat’ – provided no children to succeed him.
Both Richard and Henry were born in 1367, three months apart, the year their fathers were at war in Spain. Princess Joan (Jeanette) gave birth to Richard in Bordeaux on 6 January, the feast of the Epiphany, a date Richard would exploit for all its symbolic worth. On his return from Spain, the Black Prince developed an illness that would eventually kill him.
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