Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Edward II: His Sexuality and Relationships

Edward II: His Sexuality and Relationships

Warner, Kathryn

Hardcover

Biographies GeneralBritish HistorySexuality

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN10: 1399098179
ISBN13: 9781399098175
Publisher: Pen and Sword History
Published: May 15 2024
Pages: 256
Weight: 0.92
Height: 1.00 Width: 6.20 Depth: 9.30
Language: English
Edward II is one of the most unsuccessful and unconventional kings in English history, and is well-known for having passionate and probably intimate relationships with men. In modern times, he has often been considered an LGBT+ icon of sorts. Edward II's Relationships looks at the men in the king's life and examines the relations he had with them in the context of medieval notions of sexuality and the famous, albeit almost certainly mythical, idea that he was murdered with a red-hot poker as punishment for having sex with men.

It also investigates Edward's associations with women. Though often thought of as a gay man, it is more likely that Edward was bisexual: he fathered an illegitimate son in his early twenties, at the age of forty had an intimate encounter with a woman in London which is recorded in his household account, and might even have had an incestuous relationship with his own niece.

Edward's marriage to the king of France's daughter Isabella, arranged when they were children, has often been depicted as a tragic disaster from start to finish. Edward II's Relationships takes a detailed look at the royal marriage and at all the evidence that it was in fact a happy and mutually supportive partnership for many years, and at Isabella's important though over-romanticised association with the baron Roger Mortimer.

Because Edward is often assumed to have been solely attracted to men, numerous modern authors have depicted him as a grotesque caricature of a camp, weak, foppish gay man. Edward II's Relationships reveals him as he truly was: as a chronicler puts it, 'one of the strongest men in his realm'.

Also from

Warner, Kathryn

View All

Also in

Biographies General

View All