Gone Medieval - Edward II: King of Incompetence

Episode Date: March 7, 2025

Gone Medieval begins a gripping 4 part series exploring scandal, power, and betrayal in the Plantagenet Court.This one of England’s most dramatic royal sagas; from the ill-fated reign of Edward II to the rise of his son, Edward III, Matt Lewis and Dr. Eleanor Janega uncover how love and the Crown do not make good bedfellows.Each episode brings to life the key players in this enthralling saga and today Matt and Eleanor explore the disastrous reign of Edward II.With exclusive behind the scenes access to the Royal Shakespeare Theatre's rehearsals of their stunning new production of Edward II, Matt and Eleanor dissect the intricate balance of power and personal desire, detailing the king's conflicts with his barons, his disastrous military campaigns, and the role of his infamous favourites.Gone Medieval is written and presented by Matt Lewis and Dr. Eleanor Janega. Lines performed by Daniel Evans. Audio editor is Amy Haddow, the producers are Joseph Knight and Rob Weinberg. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.All music used is courtesy of Epidemic Sounds.Gone Medieval is a History Hit podcast.Tickets are available for the RSC's new production of Edward II: https://www.rsc.org.uk/edward-ii/Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world,

to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Eleanorianoga. Welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit. The podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We've got the most intriguing mysteries, the gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research. From the Vikings to the Normans.

From kings to popes to the Crusades. We delve into the rebellions. plots and murders. To find the stories big and small that tell us how we got here. And tell us who we really were. Welcome to this episode of Gone Medieval. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Eleanor Yonaga.

And today we have been unleashed into the wild again. The Wilds of Stratford Up on Avon, that is. Because we're heading to the Royal Shakespeare Company for the first part of a special series. From the 21st of February to the 5th of April, the Royal Shakespeare Company are staging a brand new production of Christopher Marla's violent yet tender play, Edward II. Edward II's rule and his deposition represented a moment of crisis in Plantagenet England that would rip up the being king of England rulebook.

There are huge characters. Kings, queens, princes, ambitious nobleman, and greedy favorites all wrapped up in a constitutional crisis. Sounds delicious. We'll be learning more about all of those central figures across the series. But how did this fall from Grace actually? actually play out 700 years ago. Why did everyone in 14th century England seem to hate Edward II so much? Wasn't he really that bad at being king? Let's travel back in time to find out.

It is the year of our Lord, 1,307. The old king is dead. The first Edward since the conquest, named for the confessor, proved himself a very different man from his namesake. He sought to quench his anger and soothe his temper with blood, fire and conquest. Wales and Scotland have paid the price. His glory was the glory of all England, but war brings with it suffering in equal measure. The new king shares his father's name.

He will be our second Edward. He inherits his father's wars as well as his name. They have been long and if the father could not find his way to victory, then the son will be quickly and sorely tested. Scotland remains raw, a wound that might heal or fester or run once more with blood. This Edward may not have caused the damage, but it is his to end however he might. At 23 he offers youth in place of experience. Who knows in what direction he may lead his people? The promise of a brighter future can be dazzling.

The light of hope will not blind us for long, though. We will see him soon enough. The kingdom seeks to take the measure of the man who now rules us all. He has favourites. So many of them. Few think it's a good thing, but none can shake them from Edward's affections. As we wonder whether he can be roused to war, it becomes clear when his first favourite is murdered by his enemies that this at least can stir King Edward.

Hear him lament his loss. If I be England's king, in lakes of gore, your headless trunks, your bodies will I trail that you may drink your fill and quaff in blood and Staying my royal standard with the same, that so my bloody colours may suggest remembrance of revenge immortally on your accursed traitorous progeny, you villains that have slain my gaveston. So, who is this new king? He sounds like his father full of wrath and vengeance. What qualities does he possess? Will he step into a legacy of war or seek to clear his own?

path for good or for ill, we are about to find out together. We're beginning with a chat with the plays director, Daniel Raggett. Daniel, welcome to God Medieval. Thank you very much for joining us. Thank you for having me. So you're the director of this new production of Christopher Marlowe's Edward II. And we're here while you're in rehearsals. Is that a pretty intense time for you? Yeah, it is because it's the end of rehearsal. So this is our penultimate day in the rehearsal room. So it's the end of a six-week process so far and then a new bit of the process starts.

So then we go into the technical rehearsals to make sure that it all works and this is quite an ambitious production so there's a lot of moving parts, literally and figuratively. So Marlowe's Edward II is based on real historical events what really happened to King Edward II.

But it also takes some dramatic liberties with the story. As the director, how do you balance historical accuracy with the need for this to be a theatrical story-telling of an intense and dramatic tale, where do you place that balance? It's really interesting questioning because I think that it's important to remember that

these history plays are fundamentally plays. And so they're meant to be performed and it's about creating drama. And so those dramatic liberties are, I think, really interesting. But at the same time, the historical fact of it can really help with lots of things. From understanding, you know, a lot of my history reading on this has been around how the nobles and barons worked, what exactly the makeup of that was within Edward's court. You know, the idea that, for example, the power of Lancaster historically has really guided the way that we've got Evan that actor to play that part, the way we've costumed him, and the way that, because so much of it is about the machinations of these lords and nobles, exactly what the dynamics are between them. And then that sort of becomes, I suppose, the circumstances which the scenes then pour out of.

And whether that was what Marlowe wrote, it's definitely helped us make those feel sort of, I suppose, thicker. more realistic. So yeah, it's useful, but it's always a balance. And I have been irreverent, I suppose. Some people, scholars wouldn't say that in what I've cut and what I've ignored historically. But yeah, it's trying to find a balance of the two things. Edmund's second downfall is kind of really deeply tied into complex medieval notions of kingship and power and how it works and what kingship means. How do you approach depicting some of those often quite abstract themes to a modern audience so that an audience sitting here can understand the messages that you're trying to portray about Edwards fall. Well, I think what's really interesting is, again, historically, you had a sort

of a weak king between two strong kings and the way that that sort of happens. And we've just had Elizabeth die, and we've still got a monarchy. There's still a line of succession in that sense. I mean, what I'd say about kingship as well is there's a real correlation to leadership, full stop. And working with Daniel Evans, who's just taken over at the RSC, there's a real, as artistic director, there's a real conversation going on about. what leadership means and how to be a good leader. And so it's quite, there are simple parallels to be drawn. You also have like, you know, global leadership. And then you have the leadership of people like Musk and Zuckerberg who have sort of appointed kings in a weird way of like just because of

their sheer power of patronage and control over like government, as you see, Musk wading into the White House. But the other side of that is a thing I think that we don't think about as much is the idea of the divine right of kings, which I'm really interested in. And we were rehearsing a scene with Daniel the other day, and it's all about when he's giving up his crown the deposition scene. And when he had a physical crown in the space, what continued to happen is it felt like it was about an object. And then when I took it away, and when he was talking about the crown being his head, and when the head is removed, that's death. Suddenly it took on a whole new depth, I suppose, because you really understood that they were one and the same, that you

cannot choose to be a king. And from that also came this really interesting conversation around you can no more choose to be a king than you can choose to be gay. Like it is just a part of you and who you are. I think it's interesting that notion that the object of the crown became too much of a focus. And if you take that away, it makes it much more personal. And that for Edward would have felt, you know, 700 years ago, it was personal. It wasn't him losing a crown. It was him losing everything he was and everything he had. So it's interesting that removing the physical object to the crown makes such an impact on a modern production. And I also think it's interesting what you say that actually, is it that difficult to make it relatable for a modern audience when

we live in a world where we're questioning, what does it mean to have power? Who has it? How do they get it? How do you take it away from them again if you don't want them to have it anymore? Those are questions that are current today. And is there any consensus? Because I think that's another interesting thing about the play is that at least in this version, the nobles rarely agree on the best course of action. There's a lot of deferring to each other of trying to sort of escape. There's a lot of flip-flopping in the play, basically. We go back, we go forth, we make a decision that's banishing, it's getting back. Gaveston, that is. And I think that that's another sort of, it's those moments where you realize that a lot of what is going on is just people like you and me

with an elevated status, but then still having the same desires, needs, wants, flaws, and that unfortunately being acted out on a global scale. And that I think is also part of it. At the beginning what Edward doesn't realize is that to be a king is not to just get what you want. And the kind of structure of the whole thing, the sadness of that story is he only finds his true kingship, his true leadership, when he's been stripped of everything. And by that point, it's too late. And that's been kind of, I would say it's been very interesting to explore with somebody who is

just stepping into a new role as a leader as well because there's a lot that he feels it's like oh that's like when i xyz and it helps with the making of it as it were yeah learn the lessons of it the second exactly yeah but i think that's a really interesting way of looking at it that really personalizes it because they are you know people throughout history are ordinary people like you and i who make decisions every day some of those are mistakes that have consequences it's just for them for kings and great noblemen and the consequences are so much bigger and reach so much further

than they do when probably you or I make a similar mistake. I would just say on that just really quickly that also we did have another conversation about the fact that it is possible that he is just a bad leader and his sexuality has absolutely nothing to do with it but is sort of used and monopolised by bad actors in order to give a reason for them to pursue their own ends.

And I think that's a really interesting thing as well that a lot of the times we conflate or certainly in the world nowadays, things are weaponised. Again, I don't want to come back to obviously to politics, but things are, identity politics are weaponised in order to achieve specific ends. And I think that's a part of it. The play shot through with that as well. They keep saying, well, it's not because of that. But is it really because of that?

Yeah, the vice versa option, that maybe it is like a kind of latent homophobia that exists that mean that the nobles create a situation which he cannot lead well. and that he's never going to be as accepted as his father who, you know, by all accounts, was a stronger king, a warmonger or a kind of, although he'd bankrupt Britain. Yeah. And again, that comes down to elements of, for Edward II, expectation. People have had Edward I, they're expecting him to be exactly the same. He is, ultimately, all he can do is be who he is. Whether that's anything to do with his sexuality is irrelevant. He's a different kind of man. He's a different kind of leader who does things in a different way. But that doesn't meet the expectations of those around him. And then medieval history is littered with cases of throwing homosexuality at someone as a weapon, of throwing promiscuity at medieval women as a weapon, lots of things that are often difficult to disprove,

used to drag down someone who is simply not the right person or not the person you want there at that specific moment. So all of these things become loaded on them. That's a really good point. And it's about leverage though, isn't it? And so all of those things get piled upon them. as ways to deal with the fact that we've got a bad leader here that we don't want, so we can throw this mud at him and throw those sticks and those stones, we'll see what eventually it takes to knock him off his perch.

And it's almost, it doesn't matter what those things are, it doesn't even matter how true they are. They're just the ammunition used to depose a ruler that people don't happen to want there at the time. And it being about leverage as well, we had a problem in that when Edward was giving out the title of Sigavaston at the beginning, it wasn't really clicking that those correspondents, to huge amounts of land and money, and they were being taken away from other people. And so, you know, if suddenly someone new comes into an organisation and you suddenly

fear for your job and your salary and the amount of power and control that you have, like that is a very active concern. And so a lot of it was trying to sort of ground that and activate it in a way that didn't make him seem, it wasn't frivolous. Like he was doing it because Gaveston is Edward's number one in his mind. but to everybody else, that is a genuine threat that corresponds to a real-world consequence. Yeah, yeah. And the play deals with topics around sexuality, with favouritism, with rebellion of the nobility. And these are all topics that will have real-world consequences for Edward II and will ultimately lead to his downfall.

How do you make sure each of those gets proper weight and proper context in the play? I guess it must be tempting or easy to focus in on one of those things. how do you balance those things throughout the production? It's a really good question because I don't know how that's where the audience come in and I don't know how successful we've been because when you're in, when you're sort of thematically sealed in the rehearsal room, you have all these ideas and you throw them out there. And it's only when you sit with an audience and you sort of try and follow the story

through their eyes that things will become hopefully clearer. And we've tried to honour a lot of that, but it's another place in which history has been really useful to me in that I've gone, when I've read back the story of what happened to Edward, I sort of have tried to, even though the time is significantly contracted, I've tried to sort of focus on those things as well and pull those forward rather than, I suppose, trying to pack everything in. It's just about whether it's clear at the end of the day, I think.

And the production you mentioned is kind of reset in a modern world, so we're not in the 14th century. What do you need to do and think about in terms of the set, the costume, to give it any historical references or do you just abandon that altogether? No, we haven't on this. I always think theatre is most successful when it has one foot in metaphor as well,

so it's not fully literal. So although I said it's modern dress, we've kind of created our own world that is recognisably modern, but also links back through that line of kings to Edward. And so one of the central pieces of the set is a replica of the Cosmati pavement,

which is in Westminster Abbey, which was commissioned. Someone in this room was going to correct me by Henry I. Henry III. So because we start the play with the funeral of Edward I, the first, and then through that we get Edward III, and it still exists, we were watching videos the other day of Charles's coronation,

that it feels like that pulls it back into the historical context and sort of creates a living history, which I really like, because you do sometimes forget, and it makes it feel so much more live that you can draw a single line between all these monarchs to present day, and that feels really exciting. So what you're making is a kind of, nowadays it would be a political thriller. The Crown, maybe, is a really good example of it. And so what we're trying to do is make, I suppose, our own version of the Crown,

but the Crown is simultaneously now and the one that sat on Edward's head. But within that, you want a nice bit of theatre. It's all drawn from the Marlowe, but bigger. Bigger, better, more. Bigger, better more a little bit, yeah. I wrote a biography of Henry III. So as a Henry the Third nerd, I very much appreciate the Cosmati. pavement being there. And it is an interesting way to make a modern production with something that

does still exist today, but also was part of Edward II's life and his story. And he would have seen it and stood on it as well. So there is that connectivity across the centuries. And the idea that it is this beautiful thing that has such a weight of history to it. Yeah, fascinating. Well, thank you so much for joining us, Daniel. It's been great to try and understand your process with this a little bit more, but I guess I ought to let you get back to rehearsals, really. Yes, very much. Thank you. Okay, so let's get into this. What exactly happened during Edward II's reign that set off this dramatic chain of events

leading to his deposition in 1327? Who were Pierce Gaviston and Hugh Dispenser to Edward? Professor Chris Given Wilson specializes in late medieval English political and social history at St. Andrews University. Matt caught up with him to hear more about. the worst king of England. Chris, a very warm welcome to Gone Medieval. It's fantastic to have you with us.

Thank you. So we're going to talk about Edward II, and I thought let's just deal with some of the big, broad, stroke questions before we get into the detail of his life. He's quite often listed as one of the worst medieval kings of England. Do you think he deserves that? Does he rank up above the worst? Yep, he ranks with the very worst.

Okay. Are we going to give him top three billing? Oh, I should imagine so. Yeah. His reign was a disaster. His reign was a disaster for all sorts of reasons we're going to go into. But, you know, we can deal with them one by one. But, I mean, he was very unsuited to kingship. Yeah. And what are the historical sources that are available to us to give us detail and color about Edward and his life? As usual, there are a host of chronicles. There are some very good chronicles of Edward's reign. The best one. is a chronicle. It's an anonymous chronicle, although there's been quite a few guesses as to who wrote it, called Vita Edwadi Secundi. Wasn't, that's not the original title, that's the name it was given by its editors. And that was written by a guy who was obviously

pretty close to the court, and he has a lot of quite interesting inside information about the way baronial factions were forming and falling apart again, and then coming together and realigning. And that's very interesting stuff. Because, I mean, really, the big problem with Edward II, the overriding problem is his relations with his magnates, but I'm sure we're going to come on to that. There's a very good Northern Chronicle called the Lanarkost Chronicle, and that's got the detail of the Scottish problems, all the Scottish raiding into England and the English attempts under Edward II to try to impose English over. overlordship of Scotland, which was really what Edward I had been very keen to try to achieve. And of course,

Edward II failed disastrously when it came to Scotland. And then there are also a number of London Chronicles, Chronicle of St. Paul's, Chronicle, the London Annals. And then there are some chronicles which are written after Edward II. And I mean, an interesting one is Geoffrey LeBaker's chronicle, because Geoffrey LeBaker is one of the very, very few chroniclers who is actually quite sympathetic towards Edward II. But to be honest, I mean historians obviously take into account what he's written, but no one really agrees with him, or very few people agree with his judgment on Edward II. Yeah, fair enough. Do we get a sense from this collection of chronicles of what kind of a person Edward was? Do we get any sense of his character? Yeah, I mean, his character. I started by saying he was

completely unsuited to kingship. He was vindictive, he was very passionate, he was foolish in many ways, I mean, particularly his associations with his two particular favourites and with favourites more generally. Personally, he was quite witty. There are one or two interesting letters of his which survive, which suggests that, you know, he liked to have a good joke. One of the most unkingly things about him was something which has often been pointed out, is that he indulged in unkingly occupations. And what both chroniclers, and there is, documentary evidence for this as well. He liked to go fatching and digging and rowing and swimming. And I mean, these are things which everybody now thinks are absolutely fine. If you want to go and

dig something, go and dig it. That's great. If you want to go swimming in the river, go rowing with your friends, the oarsmen, then that's fine. But these are just not the sort of things which were thought of as kingly in the Middle Ages. And one of the problems here was that Edward was seen as so unlike his father. His father was a very kingly character, indeed. He upheld the dignity of kingship and the power of kingship. And Edward II's, well, some people call them his vices or his predilections or preoccupations or whatever you want to call them. This made him ridiculous. It made him seem ridiculous to be going swimming and, and so they said, this guy can't really be the son of Edward I. Now, to be fair, very few people really thought that he wasn't the son of

Edward I. What they meant was he just isn't like his father and he ought to be. So those are some sides of his character. But of course, the great flaw in Edward's character was his passionate attachment to his favourites. And I'm sure that's something we're going to come on to. Yeah. I guess some of those physical pursuits, we might think of it making him something like a man of the people, but that's simply not what his subjects and his barons expected from their king at the time? Absolutely not. I mean, George III could get away with it, you know, the whole farmer George thing. People sort of just smiled a bit at that farmer George. You like to go around with his plants and, you know, his farming proclivities. That was okay, possibly in the 18th or 19th century,

but it was not possible, you know, under a constitutional monarchy. But it was not the case under a personal monarchy. Edward II really couldn't get away with that sort of thing. I mean, you might say it's a bit harsh on him to condemn him for that. All I'm saying is that his contemporaries condemned him for that. And, you know, he should have known better. We can think, yeah, jolly nice, go for a swim, you know, go for a row with your pals. But they didn't. Yeah, I mean, it's tempting, I guess, to see him as sandwich between a really famous and successful father and a really famous and successful son, but it sounds like he kind of deserves the bad reputation that he's got in your mind. Well, he was sandwiched between a very successful father, in many ways a very successful father,

and certainly a very successful son. The problem was, for Edward II, had Edward I had a clear agenda in his kingship. And towards the end of his reign, he was pursuing that agenda, particularly the desire to control Scotland. I mean, the last 10 years were very much focused on Edward I'm first trying to bring the Scots to heal. And the legacy that he left to his son in Scotland was pretty crippling. People often talk about Edward I's legacy to his son and how this was a bit of a disabling factor, Edward II right from the start. There was this unfinished war in Scotland, which just a year or two before,

Edward the first death had turned much more difficult because this was the time when Robert Bruce rose up in rebellion and began to claim the throne and began to pick off English castles and so forth. So this was in some ways a new situation in Scotland for Edward. But Edward I first also left enormous debts to his son. The crown was about £200,000 in debt when Edward II came to the throne. And that's one of the defining features of Edward II's reign, actually. He was always poor. He could never get the money he wanted until after 1322. And then, well, we'll come back to that, I'm quite sure. And then, of course, he made damn sure that he had all the money he wanted, but the price was tyranny. Yeah, yeah, fascinating. Yeah,

we're going to get there. We're definitely going to get there. If we go back a little bit and think about Edward's younger years. He's born in 1284. He's fairly famously, I guess, born at Canarfon Castle and eventually invested with the title Prince of Wales by his father, the kind of first English heir to the throne to be called the Prince of Wales. Absolutely. And I guess that's a really significant statement by his father that's wrapping the future Edward the second up in his conquest of Wales. Yes. It's doing something more than that. I mean, it is doing that. It's doing something more than that. And I think it's fair to say that this period after Edward I first completed the conquest of Wales, something which had been going on piecemeal for 200 years

since the late 11th century. And the conquest of Snowdonia, in effect, was the completion of the conquest of Wales and the establishment of a new administration in Wales under the English crown and so forth. At the same time, England was doing pretty well in Ireland. We had a pretty substantial hold in Ireland, and Edward I was trying very hard to bring Scotland under control as well. And what you're actually seeing here, what you see under Edward I first, is probably about as close as we get at any time before the 17th century to what you might call the idea of the English Isles, rather than the British Isles. If you follow what I mean by that,

in other words, England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, united under English rule. Whether that was the deliberate policy of Edward I, is something which you can debate, but in practical terms, that was where it seemed to be heading at the end of the 13th century.

By the end of Edward II, it was absolutely, it was in ruins. English dream, if it was an English dream, dream. It quite possibly was. So, you know, there was an unfinished war and there was 200,000 pounds worth of debts. But I mean, I think it's important to say that this was not a particularly unusual situation for an heir to the throne. And Edward II had many things on his side when he came to the throne. He was 23 years old, the perfect age to come to the throne.

You don't want to come to the throne at the age of 10. You don't particularly want to come to the throne at the age of 55 or 60. You know, 23, perfect. Most of the nobles were within 10 years either side of that. So, you know, there was a generation of youngish nobles here. He was the undisputed heir to the throne. No one disputed his right to be his father's heir. And that, again, is something which is actually quite unusual. There are plenty of examples of, you know, people who have to fight for their inheritance, to fight to establish their kingship. So there were good signs for Edward the second as well, but he squandered everything, really. Do we have a sense of how Edward II ends up so poorly militarily trained, given that his father is Edward I,

and his father's rule is characterized by wars with Wales, with Scotland and efforts to go to war with France? Does he not teach his son what he needs to know to succeed him, or does Edward simply not take on those lessons? Well, I mean, I think Edward I first asked himself the same question. Why is this son of mine not very good? He took him on expeditions to Scotland. He encouraged him. He tried to give him his own commands. But I think above all, there's tactical inflexibility from Edward II.

I mean, Edward I mean, Edward I first, to be fair, he tried to train Edward the second in military leadership. But I think you're right that Edward II just didn't take it on board. Yeah, didn't absorb any of those messages. And so then Edward will become betrothed and married to Isabella of France. Indeed. What is the reason for selecting that French marriage? What is the strategy? What is the diplomatic benefit of a marriage to a French princess at that time? An attempt to sort out the problem in Gascany. Gascany is the area of southwest France, the Bordele and the surrounding region, a region which the English have held for 150 years or something like that by this time, but the French don't like it. The French don't like having this very powerful neighbour as one of the chief vassals of the French crown. And Philip VIII,

the King of France, he launches various campaigns against Gascany, and Edward I has to fight hard to defend Gascany and to hold on to the English possession of Gascany. And to marry, they in effect make a truce in 1297, Edward I and Philip the 4th, and they agree at that time, even though the kids are too young to get married at that time, that they will cement this peace or truce it is at the time, cement this truce, hopefully to become a peace with a marriage between the two royal families, which, as I'm sure you know, was a very traditional, a very normal way and remained so for a long time to try to make peace between warring nations. or nations which were liable to go to war.

So it was a diplomatic marriage, no doubt about that. Yeah. And so then I'm going to bring in a name that people may well be aware of. Piers Gaveston, he will dominate the early portion of Edward II's reign. When does he first come to court and how does he get close to Edward? Well, he first comes to court in 1305. He's the son of Agaskan nobleman. Well, a Gaskan baron. I mean, the English, or most of the English, not a different second,

most of the English, certainly the magnates regard him as a foreign upstart. I mean, you know, we've just been talking about Gascany and how it's actually, but the English never colonised Gascany in the sense that they didn't move there to go and live there in the way that they did in parts of Wales or parts of Ireland. The nobility of Gascany was Gaskin, not English. So he's regarded as a foreign upstart. He arrives in 1305. He becomes an esquire in Edward II's household, and he kind of bewitches Edward II. Gaveston has a lot going for him. Gaveston is said to be witty, charming, handsome. I mean, but he was also foolish and tactless. I mean, he made up nicknames for all the earls after he defeated them at a tournament, you know, in single combat and so forth. He was

foolish and tactless and acquisitive, and he was out for what he could get. But, you know, Gaveston could have been a perfectly successful and probably very well-liked courtier or servant of any king. The problem was not Gaveston. The problem was Edward II. The problem was Edward the second, who, as I said earlier, was passionate in his relationships. And he really, he loved Gaveston so much that he would do practically anything that Gaveston wanted. Edward II became infatuated with people. Gaveston, and later on there were other favourites, of course, the most notorious is the younger dispenser, but we'll come on to him, I'm sure.

But Gaveston doesn't really go away. And then, of course, six months later, Edward I first dies, and the first thing that happens is Gavisden immediately returns, and about two weeks after his, after Edward I died, Edsward II makes him Earl of Cornwall. And the earldom of Cornwall was said to be, I mean, it was one of those titles which was usually reserved for a member of the royal family. And it was utterly inappropriate and seen as utterly inappropriate by the magnates that Gaveston, this foreign upstart who was hardly even a knight, should be made Earl of Cornwall. There we are.

I guess it becomes easy to see why the barons and the magnates be. in to despise Gaveston, although, as you said, it's possibly more to do with Edward than Gaveston in particular. I guess the burning question that everyone always have, you must have been asked a million times already, how confident can we be that their relationship was a physical one, that there was a homosexual relationship between Edward II and Piers Gavaston? It's possible, but we can't be confident of it at all. Edward II, I mean, if it was a homosexual relationship, Edward was clearly bisexual. He had four years. He had four. children. He had a bastard child. Gaviston had children. He had a bastard child as well. So they were

certainly not in any way exclusively homosexual. It may have been that there was a physical relationship. The direct accusation of sodomy was not made against Edward II until after the revolution of 1326. People perhaps insinuated a little bit at the time. They used the sort of language. I mean, I think It's the Vita who says something like, I never knew a man, love another man so much. And people can interpret that as they want. There is no definite evidence, but it's a possibility. Yeah, yeah. So there's nothing explicit, but it's kind of there in the background as a possibility.

Well, and the accusation was made in 1326 by Adam Orlerton, the bishop of Hereford, who was a supporter of Isabella and Mortimer. But this was after Edward 2nd had actually, and the Spencer had actually been captured. And one possibility is that they were raising this question of Edward Second's possible homosexuality in order to deflect attention from Isabella's relationship with Mortimer. How then do we move towards Gaveston's fall? How does he end up dying and how does Edward react to that? Well, Edward made Gaveston Earl of Cornwall. He also made him the Chamberlain, his personal Chamberlain. The Chamberlain is the man who controls access to the King's Chamber. And Gaveston

basically let in those he wanted to let in and didn't let in those he didn't want to let in. There's a very powerful position being the Royal Chamberlain. And the nobles, their counsel, was not being considered. They were sidelined by this foreign upstart. You know, they exiled him in 1309. He went off to Ireland for a year, did well, as I said. but then came back, then they exiled him again, and this time he didn't go abroad, and then they exiled him for a third time. And each time, Edward II, was just forced to accept this as the price of any kind of cooperation from the magnates, and he couldn't rule the country without agreeing to

Gaveston being exiled. Eventually, he came back at the beginning of 1312, and they just decided to hunt him down. They hunted him down, they caught him at Scarborough Castle, or at least they made him come out of Scarborough Castle. The Earl of Pembroke apparently promised him he would be safe, but they took him down to Oxford, and then the Earl of Warwick and the Earl of Lancaster came along and said, no, this man can't live anymore. Every time we try to exile him, you know, he just comes back and we'll never have peace in this country unless we kill him, so he chopped his head off the barons. And Edward II never forgave them. This was an execution,

a death which poisoned English politics for the remaining few. 15 years, well, certainly for the next 10 years, and you could say for the remaining 15 years of Edward's second reign, he never forgot the fact that they had done this to his great friend. Yeah, and is it fair to say that for all the favourites that will follow, Gaveston remained special to Edward, that he was sort of somehow above the rest of them? I wouldn't say so. I wouldn't say so. I think that, I mean, there were various favorites in the 1310s, the decade or so after Gaveston, or the, or the, six or seven years after Gaviston's death, people like Damary and Audley and Montague and a few

others. But, I mean, the favourites become a problem again by 1318. By this time, of course, the man who is very much leading the opposition to Edward II is Thomas of Lancaster. I'm sure we'll say more about him in a minute. And Thomas of Lancaster eventually meets the king at Nottinghamshire, place called Leak, so the Treaty of Leak in 1318. And he says, you've got to get rid of all these favourites. All these favourites are not to go. We can't have them around anymore. And so Damary and Audley and Montecute, they're all dismissed from court. The man who takes their place and once again becomes the King's Chamberlain is Hugh Dispenser the younger. And no, he was every bit as powerful as Gaviston had been between 1307 and 1312. Yeah, we're definitely going to come back to Dispenser in a moment.

But before we get on to him, I wonder if we could just move back to Scotland a little bit and talk a bit more about Bannock Burn. How does Edward end up at Bannockburn? How does he end up facing this Scots army still at war with Scotland? And why does it go so horribly wrong? Well, for a year after Gaveston's death, the chief opponents of the king, the chief barons opposing the king, and Lancaster's now really the leader of the opposition. Chief opponents of the king and Edward just will not really talk to each other. They hardly meet each other at all for a And then they make a piece. In the autumn, I think it's in September or October 1313, they make a piece. And one of the conditions of the peace that they make is that they are going to go and deal with Bruce in Scotland. Because with all the distractions of Gaveston and the threats of civil war in England and the very difficult parliaments and all that, Bruce has been given virtually a free hand in Scotland. When Edward I died, he held there were about 40 English-held castles in Scotland. By this autumn of 1313, there were less than 20. They'd been

gradually picked off by Bruce. He was, you know, reasserting his kingship in Scotland. And Edward and Edward never lacked the desire to deal with Scotland. He lacked the ability to do it. And Edward and the barons agreed when they made peace in the autumn of 1313, the priority is a Scottish campaign, we must go and deal with Bruce. And so they raised this big army. They raised this big army. And they marched north and they found, I mean, probably about 15,000, which was a very sizable army at the time. And they marched north and they got very, they got to Falkirk and they realized that they knew that Bruce and his army, which was about half the size of the English army, they realized that Bruce and his army were standing, were encamped between them and standing. And

Stirling. That's only like 15 miles or so from a lot, or even less from Falkirk to Stirling. So they marched up the road towards Stirling Castle and the Scots came out and stood in their way. And this was obviously going to be a battle. But the English found themselves. And maybe this was the Scots were on a sort of slight slope going down, obviously. You know, they chose the high ground. And below them was a very marshy area, the pools and the bogs. This is the first of force. And there were lots of bends and pools and marshes and everything. And Edward II just couldn't adapt his army to this sort of. He still tried to manoeuvre great big divisions around, and they were getting stuck in the mud, and they were falling over, and, you know, falling into the pools and whatever, and they just couldn't maneuver. And Scott Bruce drew up his forces in what were called Schultrons,

which were kind of like Greek-style phalanxes, very tightly packed to resist the English cavalry charges. because the English were fighting mainly at, well, the cavalry were fighting on horse. The Scots were almost entirely on foot. They'd dismanted. They'd learnt from the Flemish at Courthry ten years earlier that it was best to dismant. And it was, of course, an absolute disaster for the English. And, I mean, 200 English knights were killed.

200 English knights. That was probably about 15% of the knighthood in England. You know, 15% of all the knights in England. were killed at Annockburn, Edward II was forced to flee, chased, hotly chased, as far as Dunbar where he managed to find a fishing boat to take him down to Newcastle. So, I mean, utter humiliation, utter humiliation for the English. I mean, they were overconfident apart from anything else. They thought they had these big, well-armed, mounted armies, and they, you know,

the Scots were never going to be able to deal with them. And, of course, for the Scots, it was a resounding. and very well-remembered victory. Yeah. How significant is Banat-Burn, both for Scotland in terms of fighting to regain and maintain their independence, but also Edward II's kind of popularity within the kingdom. You've just lost a significant battle with Scotland.

Surely that's not going to go down well at home. Oh, it was absolutely ignominious for Edward II. Ignominious for him. It was not just a military disaster. It was a political disaster for Edward II. for Edward's second. And basically, when Parliament met at Lincoln the following year in 1315, Thomas of Lancaster, Edward's great enemy, his first cousin, but also his great enemy, was handed. He was made head of the council and became in effect ruler of the kingdom for the next couple of years or so,

until he found it absolutely impossible to work at all with the king and retired up to his northern fastnesses and sulked for the next four years. As we move Edward kind of through all of these moments of crisis and towards the building problem that will ultimately bring about his downfall, the dispenser, particularly Hugh Spencer the younger, but also his father, Hugh dispenser the elder, kind of step onto the political stage now. When do they begin to emerge and how do they get close to Edward II? Hugh Dispenser the elder is a man very well regarded in many ways and he had always been loyal. to Edward II, and Edward II really valued him. For example, he was one of the very few magnates who refused ever to agree to Gaveston's exile. He always said, you know, he was always on the side of the king. So he was a constant at court. He was constantly at court and a well-trusted advisor. Now, the younger dispenser, well, he gets rich after the Earl of Gloucester is killed at Bamak-Burn.

The Earl of Gloucester is the second richest Earl in England. He has a patronagee worth about £6,000 a year. He's second to Thomas of Lancaster, who has probably 10 or 11,000 pounds a year. But those two are way above the rest of the earls. None of the other earls have more than about two and a half or three thousand pounds a year. Gilbert Earl of Gloucester is killed at Bannockburn and he leaves three sisters as his heirs, heiresses. And Gaveston marries one of them. He'd marry one of the four, but Dispenser also marries one of them. And so he becomes rich overnight. He gets an inheritance worth about £2,000 a year,

which is a very rich man in those days. He really steps into having, he's very ambitious. He's got a third of the clear inheritance, but he wants more than that. He really steps into the shoes, vacated by Audley, Amory and Montague after the Treaty of Leak in 1318. Treaty of Leak is an attempt to make peace

between Edward and Thomas at Lancaster, and that breaks down fairly quickly, but Amory, Montague or in Montague are dismissed from court after the Treaty of League, because Lancaster insists on this. And then in their place comes the younger dispenser. And he is very rapidly made Chamberlain of the King's household, his attempts to augment his inheritance, particularly in South Wales and the South West. Basically, he's trying to put together again the Oldham of Gloucester, the elder of Gloucester, which was held by Gilbert Clare. And he's using all sorts of violent and underhand and bullying tactics to try to force the other magnates around there, the marcher lords around there to give up their lands, to cede their lands to him. And, well, eventually that leads to what is called the marcher war in 1321.

I just wondered at this point, we discussed a little bit earlier how Gaveston actually had a fair bit going for him, could have been quite a good. good subject and that maybe Edward was more the problem than Gaviston. Is there a similar situation here? Because it seems like people take against Hugh Dispenser the Younger much more in a personal way than they did against Gaveston. People were outraged by Gaveston. People were terrified of the younger dispenser. He was a violent, vindictive, ruthless, very, very greedy and in every imaginable way, deeply unpleasant character. Edward II didn't think so, sadly. There's an interesting relationship going on there.

I mean, the two dispensers are both exiled in 1321, not that that's effective at all, but we'll come on to that. But one of the charges against them says that if the king didn't do what dispenser asked him to do, he would get angry and shout at the king. And that is a very unusual thing to find in the middle ages, the idea that a subject shouts at the king and tells him, no, you've got to do this, you know, you've got to do that, I want this land, or whatever. And he's kind of using with the king the same bully-boy tactics that he uses with the nobles whose lands he wants. And Edward, for some reason,

seems to accept this. And again, it's a complete infatuation with the younger dispenser, and, again, Again, people say it might have been homosexual, but we really can't prove it one way or the other. And it's a complete defatuation, but the other thing, to Spencer was clever. He was manipulative, and the other thing is he was very good at finance, very good at money. And he says to Edward, I'm going to make you rich. And of course he does. He makes him very rich. And, you know, one of the chroniclers says, I mean, the evidence is all there in the Exchequer documents of the time, but he makes Edward II, according to one chronicler, the richest king since William the conqueror. And that's probably true. It's probably true. Edward II, having been poor, all of his reign up until 1322,

suddenly becomes, yeah, the richest king for two and a half centuries. Yeah, yeah, fascinating. And I guess it's easy to wonder whether, was it the infatuation that is painted later in terms of a physical relationship, or is it that dispenser is giving Edward what he really wants, which is the cash. to be able to control the kingdom the way he wants to? Well, he's giving him the cash, and therefore he is a valuable ally for the king. But also, I mean, it was interesting. One chronicler said,

and this man had bewitched the king. And he meant that, I think, quite literally, because this was actually quite a common trope in the Middle Ages that favourites actually employed some kind of sorcery. Now, there's no evidence that to spend, employed some kind of sorcery. But it was believed so firm was his hold on Edward II's affections, that it was believed that he must in some way have bewitched the king. And Edward II certainly acted as if he was bewitched. He would do more or less anything that the younger dispenser wanted,

just as he had done, or less anything that Gavison had wanted. And we come back to the same problem. No one could like the younger dispenser. He was a revolting character. But we come back to the the same problem. It's really Edward II. You know, he becomes in fact absolutely infatuated with people and he can't control his emotions and everyone else hates them. Yeah. And is the March of War that breaks out then? Is that more Hugh Dispenser's war than Edward the Seconds? Is he pulling Edward the Second along with him? Oh, definitely. Well, he's pulling Edward the Second along. The Second seems quite happy to be pulled along because he also sees this. I mean, it's a war very largely fought in South Wales in the area of the former Gloucester inheritance, the canteen

more or less glomorgan nowadays. It's Hugh Dispenser's war against the marchers whose lands he covered because the marchers had risen up against him. They said, you know, you're bullying us, you're forcing us to, you're attacking our land, you're forcing our peasants to leave us, and so forth. And so they rose up against Dispenser. And then Dispenser called in the king and said, come on, we're going to go and deal with this slot. And Edward II said, fine, right? And of course, Edward II was totally successful in the Marcher War. And one of the problems for the marchers was they hoped that Thomas of Lancaster, who were still sulking up in Pontefract Castle, they hoped that Thomas of Lancaster would come and join them, but Lancaster didn't come and join them

until basically the war was over. And then, Edward II turned north and Dispenser said to him, and other people must have said to him as well, it's time to deal with Lancaster. Because you'll never really rule your kingdom until you crush Lancaster. And they did. And Lancaster was executed too. So at this point, we're kind of around 1322. Edward II must have felt like finally he'd got a grip on his kingdom. He was in control and he'd won.

He'd got his vengeance for what they'd done to Gaveston and potentially driving away his other favourites too. He must have felt like he was sitting pretty. And he did. And he was. He had an opportunity now. He was in effect a tyrant now, the last few years of it. Edward the second's reign is often referred to as his tyranny and the tyranny of him and the dispensers. He could rule England as he wanted to, really. It was an opportunity for a king to do lots and

lots of good things, and it was an opportunity which Edward squandered. It was not the benign rule. It was basically a reign of terror, and the punishments that were inflicted on anyone who'd been involved with the marchers. Lots of people were imprisoned. About 20 barons were executed, hanged, and their bodies left up for years in the places where they held their lands and so forth. And their lands were seized. Edward II, as I've said, became very rich. Shoe Dispenser, of course, became very rich. That is the younger dispenser. Basically, he was trying to reunite the earldom of Gloucester. His father became Earl of Winchester. He became very rich, too. And yeah, It was a reign of terror.

Hugh Dispensers, the younger dispenser's speciality was really widows. He would torture widows of people who had been opposed to Edward II until they agreed to sign over their lands to him. Not a man you'd ever want to meet, really. I was going to say, sounds like such a lovely guy. Yeah, yeah. What could possibly go wrong? And then in 1325, war will break out with France.

Is Edward doing this with his newfound confidence and his newfound wealth and authority, or is it France that ignites the war? Well, relations with France are made difficult by the fact that lots of French kings die very young. Philip the Force dies in 1314, and then three of his sons become king because the first two die within another eight years. And then Charles IV becomes king in 1322. And Charles IV, he is a bit keener to bring these English to heal. in Gascany than his predecessors had been, and he summons Edward to come and do homage. And this was a thing which English kings were meant to do, to go and pay homage to French kings,

preferably in person. And Edward II goes down to Dover, and he says, I'm coming to pay homage, and then he decides not to, and he sends the Charles IV's a message saying, I'm ill, I can't come and do homage, now Charles' Force doesn't believe this. Anyway, there is this war, this really quite brief war in which the French take something like half of Gascany back. I mean, it's a war of reconquest of Gascany. And when Edward II says, I'm not going to come pay homage, he decides instead to send his 12-year-old son. That is Edward III. Now, his wife, Isabella, who actually, for most of the time of their marriage, seemed to have got on fairly well together with Edward. Seems to have gone on fairly well. But by this time, she was absolutely sick of Hugh Disparen.

answer. And she had already gone to France because she was the sister of the French king. Well, as we know, you know, this was this diplomatic marriage between England and France, the sister of the French king. And she was thought to be the best person to try to patch up relations between England and France. So she's already in France, in Paris. The future Edward III is sent across to do homage, and Edward Sir does homage to Charles IV. And then Isabella says, we're not coming back. We're not coming back to England. And she announces that it's, I can't remember that wording, but it's something she, this public announcement, marriage is supposed to be a union between a man and a woman, but someone has come between me and my husband. And I shall not

return to England until that man is removed. Everyone knew she was referring to Hugh Dispenser. Some people, of course, think that is code for the fact that they were having a homosexual relationship. Maybe or maybe not. She didn't say that. Yeah, it has the sense of the medieval version of the, you know, there were three of us in that marriage. Absolutely. It's a bit like that. Yes. I didn't, I think she thought actually that she wasn't really in it anymore. Yeah. But anyway. Yeah. So today, we are either denying or depriving, depending on how you feel about it, denying or depriving you the chance to talk about Edward's actual downfall and his deposition. But I just wondered if you could leave us with the scene set for how. all of this, the time with Gaviston, his experiences in Scotland, the rise of Hugh Dispenser,

the marcher wars, the success that he's felt, and now this sort of war ending in a piece with France, how does that set the stage for Edward II to meet his ultimate failure? I think that the lasting impression that one gets from Edward II's reign is that this is an age of absolutely visceral hatreds. There is so much violence. There is so much violence. So many nobles. People talk about the execution of Gaveston. He was an earl. He was the first English Earl to be executed for 250 years. And he's the last English Earl to be executed after Edward the Second's reign. There are no other English earls executed for over 50 years. So the visceral hatreds of this reign have created a situation, and especially the treatment of the people

whom Edward II called the contrarians, that is the people who opposed him in 1321 to 2, the treatment of them had created enormous fault lines in English politics. And these fault lines are going to go on for a long time because people say, oh, we were deprived under Edward II, we need our lands back. They're going to go on saying that for 100 years. You know, so this has created tremendous fault lines in English politics. Edward II's regime is clearly absolutely hated. Dispensers in particular are absolutely hated by 1325, 1326. And there are lots of people who have gone outlaws, who are making raids on dispenser lands and so forth,

and he's even turned his queen away from him and his younger son. Well, Edward III was only 12 years old at this time, so what he thought is very difficult to know. But anyway, there they are in France. They know that a regime in England, that his husband's regime in England is absolutely hated, they're going to do something about it. Yeah, and so Edward II, we're going to leave him about to face his ultimate test. And I think with a sense that whoever else might be included in the blame, particularly Hugh Dispenser the younger,

Edward II himself needs to shoulder most of the blame for the situation he finds himself in? I think he certainly does. He was a man completely unsuited to kingship. Yeah. And, you know, in the end, he's going to be the first English king since the conquest to be deposed, isn't he? Yeah, yeah, hopefully that's not too much of a spoiler. Thank you so much for joining us, Chris. It's been absolutely fascinating to get to know Edward a little bit better and to work out how he arrived at this kind of monumental crisis that we're building towards.

So thank you so much for helping us to get to know him a little bit better. No problem. Okay, thank you. Thank you very much. Thanks for that, Matt. Okay, now we are bringing you back to Stratford to dig a bit deeper into Edward II's portrayal in Marlowe's play. We've managed to catch Daniel Evans, one of the Royal Shakespeare Company's co-artistic directors

and the actor playing Edward II in the play in the middle of rehearsals. We're here to speak to him about what it's like to play one of England's most enigmatic medieval kings and how he goes about capturing Edward's fickle fancies in his performance. Daniel, thank you so much for letting me pick your brain about this, because you're in such an interesting position as the actor who needs to be. to portray Edward II. This is a really, really complex, layered person. You've got to deal with this man who's really torn between his personal desires,

but also his responsibilities as king, which are part of who he is as a person, but almost outside of him as well. Yes. How did you, as a regular person who's living in the modern world, then balance this vulnerability of him as, you know, a queer person, but an authority at the same time in your performance? Oh gosh, really good question. I guess the hardest thing is to really imagine what it's like to think and know that your kingship is given to you by God. So that kind of divine right of kings, that you're born into something, so it's your birthright and you have no choice. That this is what you're born into. And that's quite a hard thing for any regular person to get your head round, even without the real right? religious aspect, but you add God into the picture and it's even harder in our more secular times.

The way that I've kind of found my way through, close to it, is obviously I'm also queer, gay man. And so I find it very easy to identify with Edwards' loneliness and what is possibly littered throughout the play, which is a degree of shame that, you know, many, many queer people grow up with because we live in a heteronormative world. And so that, that person in a way comes easier and then I have a little bit of insight into leadership, just having been an artistic direct for 15 years. And even though that's not the same as being king, fun from it. One of the cast members did say, we're right in Stratford. You're like King of Stratford. I'm like, well, yes, not quite the same. And not that I think that I'm King of Stratford,

by the way. But there is, for me, working on the play, a really interesting discovery has been how much the intersection of queerness and leadership is. really explored by Marlowe. And that has been a fascinating kind of unpacking how, you know, even as co-artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, this isn't a job about me, it's about the organisation. And for Edward, well, it's meant to be about the Crown. And eventually it is about the Crown. It's just that when we start the play, it's about his love. And I mean, this is such an interesting point because kingship obviously is, by its very nature, bound up with the masculine. And of course, heteronautivity. Yes. Yes. Primogeniture.

You know, the whole thing. Completely. And so you have to be a man's man. Yeah. And that's sort of thrust upon you. I mean, I think even now to be a royal today, it's such an interesting and I would say completely difficult position because on the one hand, you have all the privilege in the world, but you don't have any freedom. That's right. There's no choice in this matter.

It's obviously something that happens to you. And so it's so difficult to really grapple with that. Again, there's a kind of parallel, though, isn't it? because, I mean, who knows, you know, when they find the gay gene, I'm presuming they will at some point. But, you know, people think that it's a choice to be gay. Oh, that it were. I mean, you know, frankly, you know, with all the bullying experience, it would not have been something I would have chosen necessarily. Although, you know, so my kind of pride journey has taken a long time. But that is a little insight. And it's interesting that with Edward, he was born king and born gay and had no choice in both matters. and somehow or other there both things have become obstacles because of the heteronormative world of the barons and the olds around him.

And indeed the structures of kingship itself, as you said. It's such a difficult, I don't know, ball of yarn to unpay. What do you do then as an individual now who kind of has the knowledge of the past? You know, you're sitting here in the ear of our Lord 2025, and we know how this all plays out and we can see what happens. And how do you balance that as an actor trying to be. trying to betray Edwards' priorities. You know, is there something that you really feel about this? Because, you know, on the one hand, obviously, it's very difficult for us to say, oh, well, I don't know,

don't be that nice to your boyfriend, right? You know, a ridiculous kind of thing to say. But then on the other, there is his treatment of Isabella as well, where, you know, for me, it's sort of like, okay, well, you just don't need to be that rude to your wife. Maybe play the politics game a little bit more with the nobles. What's it like to try to bring a character out who has these flaws, who makes these decisions? Well, I think you have no choice there, too. You have to do what's on the page. And on the page, he is terribly misogynistic towards his wife, calls her a strumpet, you know, to his first line to her four not on me foul strumpet, yet they're gone. You know, away, touch me not. He doesn't even want to be touched by her. And yet, when she pleads for

Gaveston, when she does what he asks, he says, I'll hang a golden tongue about thy neck. So he's also, you know, flip-flopping, even in his feelings towards those presumably close to him. But just to come back to your question for a moment, I think this is where the job of an actor is quite complicated because I have to be inside him and therefore in order to play him, I have to try and find a way to understand him

and therefore not judge him. If I'm standing back, though, and thinking about leadership and what I've learned about leadership, I have to objectively be able to say, Edward's not the best strategist. Like handing out titles willy-nilly, as ways of bribes to the earls and the barons,

is just not going to get him very far. And sort of imposing his will in a kind of totalitarian way, well, it doesn't work. And so it's one of the things of tragedies of the character and of the play is that I think he learns too late what leadership is about. So when he says to the archbishop at the end of the play, commend me to my son and bid him rule better than I,

he knows. He's reached the point where he knows. Oh, God, I didn't do this the right way. And had he only been someone who could encompass, take people with him, as all leaders have to do, if they're going to be successful, then he might have been able to find a way through. It's such a tricky way to balance things out, because on the one hand, you're told you have a divine right to be.

Yes. You're the guy who gets to all these things. But then it turns out you actually have to be fair-minded. You have to know how to be. how to really establish yourself as a leader. And those two things almost don't. So hard. And that's why balance comes into the question, right?

Because it's always a bit of give and take. But I was thinking, I had a conversation with someone yesterday and really made me think about how Edward, if he were a leader now, you know, because in history, apparently he didn't like spending much time with the Barons and Nils. He liked speaking to, quote, unquote, commoners. You know, he liked rowing. He would stop along the river and talk to, you know, your everyday people along the river. are you like digging ditches with laborers, etc.

And today, in today's world, you might say, oh, well, good on them. You know, they sort of want to be down and dirty with, you know, the real people. But not in that time. And he's just like me for real. And I'm the sort of person who's so much more interested in ordinary people than royals all the time, specifically because they're so different to us. And they have this really different circumstances. And, you know, to me that really tugs on my heartstrings.

Yeah. Because you sort of feel there's a hint in the sense. the play, that he's a leader who's just born into the wrong time. And, I mean, although having said that, it is interesting that I guess, I guess I was going to say, it's interesting that we don't have a very prominent gay member of the royal family. I know we, the living royal family. I know the queen's uncle was gay, but it's not much talked about. So it's, it's interesting that that kind of heteronormative world and structure really does impose its rules and codes. Absolutely. And I mean, almost to a certain extent, even now, I wonder if we would even know. Because, you know, yeah, would it be something that they would wish to suppress, you know, because we're still not, we're not quite there yet, are we?

Yes. No, no, no, indeed. Okay, so relationships, you know, and we keep talking about her normativity and queerness because really at the heart of this play, yes, this is a story about power, but it's also about relationships. You've got Gaveston, you've got Isabella, you've got Mortimer. Spencer. Oh, gosh, absolutely. And bear absolutely. And there, absolutely. central to this play, like this back and forth, this give and take. How did you then develop this in these dynamics with your fellow actors when you're attempting to bring a really complex situation to life? How do you make that legible from the stage? Well, one of the things we do is talk about our histories, not our histories, our character's histories. And we dovetail that with the actual history. So, for example, it was really important for me to find out that when Edward was very, very young, a baby, both his father and mother. went to France for a few years. And then when they came back, she only lasted nine more months and then

she died. So he grew up without his mother, as most royals, I guess, do because they have nannies, etc. But I think that was a kind of key thing for me that, yeah, his parents like left when he was a baby. Isabella, I think was 12 when she was conjoined, politically conjoined to him. I think they married later, but it was decided when she was 12. So they were kind of thrown together when they were children. So that's complex in itself. So, so Ruta Gedminas, who's the actress playing Isabella and I really have done quite a bit of discussion around what was their marriage like. Did they have happy times? When was the last time they had sex? For example, you know, and I guess the same then obviously with Gaveston because one of the things I read, who know, you can maybe

can tell me if this is true or not, but apparently it was Edward the first to introduce Gaveston as a kind of playmate to Edith to the second. And clearly, you know, we can decide. well, was there something that they were caught doing? But therefore, Edward I said, right, this guy has to leave the court now because he's a bad influence on my son. And so we've made up our own kind of histories there, which can hopefully feed then what happens when we're acting in scenes in the play. And we did a lot of improvisation, actually, around those.

I mean, not sexual improvisation, I should say. But we did a lot of, you know, we improvised dad's funeral, for example. And that's really been helpful for us. I think that's so useful to really have these dynamics and these relationships and stories that you're building out in this world. Yeah, and it is world building. We have to take what we can from the history and then dramatize it. So, yes. All right.

Well, speaking of dramatic, if you're the person who is portraying Edward II, there's such as huge dramatic transformation for him as a character because, you know, you kind of begin. He's at the height of his power. Everything is sort of going well for him. Then by the end, he's broken. and spiritually, politically, physically. And what's it like to try to embody that as an actor? Well, we did have run through yesterday in the rehearsal room. It was the first time we had a little audience

because staff members, wardrobe technicians and wig technicians came to see people from the marketing department, etc. And it was really, you feel very self-conscious because they're the first audience that you've had. But it was interesting just getting to do that full journey. And in the rehearsal, we did ask the cast if it was okay for me to kind of disrobe because I didn't disrobe fully, but I will do in the production, because obviously the death is the death.

But it was interesting just to start in full regalia, and the costume itself has this huge journey. So I start full of medals, full of pomp, the coronation robe, etc., the ermine, and then end up in my underpants, in a muddy, wet dungeon. And that is a kind of amazing, yeah, it is an amazing journey, and feeling loneliness throughout with the odd moment. moments of joy with Gaviston. I mean, it's a real stripping of all of the worldly things that would protect you,

especially as a queer person, you know, everything, all the armor that you need just to function in the world at all. Yes. And then he's working down absolutely nothing. And then he has this line which is sweet God of heaven, make me despise this transitory pomp. So as he's given up his crown, he's asking God to help him despise all the jewelry all the pomp, all the power, so that he can just be content with being nothing,

which, by the way, is a line that Shakespeare wrote for Edward II. Because, you know, this play heavily influenced Richard I, but Shakespeare did coin this amazing phrase about feeling like you're nothing. And, I mean, how to ever grapple with feeling like you're nothing? Well, at the same time for the majority of your life, you've been told you're the center of the kingdom, one of the centers of the world.

Even by God. And, I mean, and of course there's also religious ramifications for that, you know, because if God's given you this, what does it mean for you personally? What does it mean for the universe if that can be stripped away? Yes, and he asked to sit forever enthronized in heaven. It's sort of amazing. The language of the play is really extraordinary. I mean, this is just, I'm not sorry, but as a medieval nerd, it's like,

yes, finally, a play for us. But I'm so excited because I think that, you know, you've done such a great job to modernize it and make it make sense in a really modern world that thinks about things a lot differently. Yeah. This second Edward has ruled for two decades. We have learned about him the hard way. Favorites fighting his own nobles, driving his wife away. His reign is scarred by his own hand. But here's a man you could share.

an ale with, who would help you fix your leaky roof. How do we reconcile the good man with the terrible ruler? That is a question for the ages, but King Edward now faces a more pressing problem. Where does he go from here? He has all the power in the world, but it's a world that's turned against him. Can he rebalance all that is shifted out of his grasp? Does his England want him? anymore. If not, then what's to be done? England hasn't seen a king deposed since before the conquest. Now, every Englishman can feel the earth rumbling beneath his feet as Edward's curses ring in our ears. The wolves are circling. They have the scent of fear in their nostrils. They bear their teeth, snarling and snapping at the lamb that sits on the throne. An end is coming.

We will soon discover what it will mean for England and for Edward. Join Eleanor on Tuesday to continue our series about the Plantagenets. Next, we turn to Queen Isabella, the She-Wolf. Edward II's long-suffering queen who took control of her destiny, aligning herself with a powerful, maybe lover? Roger Mortimer. How did Isabella transform from a sidelined wife into one of a one of the same. of the most formidable figures in English history. Don't forget to also subscribe or follow us on

Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts and tell all of your friends and family that you've gone medieval. You can sign up to History Hit to access hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a new release every week and all of History Hits podcasts add free. Sign up now at historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Anyway, I better let you go. I've been We've just gone medieval with history hits.