The Black Prince: England’s Greatest Medieval Warrior

With a knack for storytelling, Jones (Bosworth 1485) describes how England’s Edward of Woodstock (1330–1376) embodied the idealized chivalrous warrior prince—both a successful military leader and a fair ruler—while governing large areas of what is now France. Jones’s accounts of Prince Edward’s military prowess shine with clear explanations of military movements and strategy; medieval-era concepts of chivalry and good governance are also explained. Much attention is devoted to Edward’s close but complicated relationship with his father, King Edward III, which allowed the prince to “earn his spurs” at an early age but also led to some of his greatest crises. While the prince wrestled with gambling debts and disagreements with his father, his role as a founding member in the Order of the Garter personified the intense belief in duty and honor he retained down to his last military campaign, during which he had to be carried, weak but determined, on a stretcher. Jones combines easy prose with annotated accounts from many sources of the era that exemplify the English point of view and that of the other European powers at the time. In Jones’s strong portrait, the Black Prince towers as a potentially great king whose illness-shortened life devastated English hopes, leaving him to become a potent legend and reminder of what could have been. Illus. Agent: Claire Kennedy, Head of Zeus. (May)