Richard II (1377-99) has long suffered from an unusually unmanly reputation. He has been associated with lavish courtly expenditure, absolutist ideas, Francophile tendencies, and a love of peace habitually linked to the king's physical effeminacy. Even sympathetic accounts of his reign have only dismissed particular facets of this picture, or reinterpreted it as yielding evidence of praiseworthy dissent from accepted norms of masculinity. This book takes a different tack. It does so by putting the politics of Richard's reign back in the context of contemporary assumptions about the nature of m ... More

Richard II (1377-99) has long suffered from an unusually unmanly reputation. He has been associated with lavish courtly expenditure, absolutist ideas, Francophile tendencies, and a love of peace habitually linked to the king's physical effeminacy. Even sympathetic accounts of his reign have only dismissed particular facets of this picture, or reinterpreted it as yielding evidence of praiseworthy dissent from accepted norms of masculinity. This book takes a different tack. It does so by putting the politics of Richard's reign back in the context of contemporary assumptions about the nature of manhood and youth. This makes it possible not only to understand the agenda behind the attacks of the king's critics, but also to suggest a new account of his actions. It is argued that Richard tried to establish his manhood (and hence authority to rule) by thoroughly conventional means. The inability of his subjects to support this aspiration produced a sequence of conflicts with the king, in which Richard's opponents found it convenient to ascribe to him the faults of youth. These critiques derived their force not from the king's real personality but from the fit between certain contemporary assumptions about youth, effeminacy, and masculinity on the one hand, and the actions of Richard's government — constrained by difficult and complex circumstances — on the other. This book thus uses an inquiry into contemporary concepts of manhood and youth to understand not only the role they played in providing useful rhetorical strategies, but also in structuring the priorities of political actors.