Plantagenet Quotes

BEFORE HE CAME INTO a lot of money in 1839, Richard Plantagenet Temple Nugent Brydges Chandos Grenville, second Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, led a largely uneventful life. ~ Bill Bryson

Oh, the shame that I suffer now . . . the shame of a vanquished King. And those were the last words of Henry Plantagenet. ~ Jean Plaidy

To recount these histories is like unravelling a thread: one means only to tell one little part, but then another comes in, and another, for they are all part of the same garment - Tudor, Lancaster, York, Plantagenet. ~ Margaret George

I wil not heat treason from my own daughter
What will you do behead me for treason? We are not an amry at war
We are an army at war! This is your brother's rightful throne that we are talking about ~ Philippa Gregory

Perhaps most surprising of all, the deposed and imprisoned King Henry was not murdered. This had been the fate of the two Plantagenet kings who had lost their crowns before him: Edward II died while in custody at Berkeley Castle in 1327, while Richard II was killed at Pontefract in 1400, the year following his deposition. Ironically, Henry's survival was perhaps a mark of his uniquely pitiful and ineffectual approach to kingship - for it was much harder to justify killing a man who had done nothing evil or tyrannical, but had earned his fate thanks to his dewy-eyed simplicity. Permitting Henry to remain alive was a bold decision that Edward IV would come to regret. But in 1465 it must have struck the king as a brave and magnanimous act. ~ Dan Jones

My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all, I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise. I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the death-cup mushroom. Everyone else in our family is dead. ~ Shirley Jackson

This Plantagenet king comes from the devil. ~ Edward Rutherfurd

In following their line through, and those of Plantagenet and Tudor, there is but little to soothe the mind. ~ Charlotte Smith

RICHARD PLANTAGENET, DUKE OF YORK:
Let them obey that knows not how to rule. ~ William Shakespeare

How would I overlook the name Moody? Why, that's like overlooking Hanover, or - or Plantagenet.'
The woman laughed. 'I would hardly compare Adrian Moody to a royal line! ~ Eleanor Catton

If that's how you'd rather remember it. But I did not mean that as a reproach. I do not, in truth, think less of you for having the common sense to abandon a ship once waves began to break over the bow. Nor, after sixteen years shut away from the sun, am I likely to find tears to spare for Henry Plantagenet. ~ Sharon Kay Penman

Richard knew, of course, that his was thought to be an unlucky title; only twice before had a Richard ruled England, and both met violent ends. ~ Sharon Kay Penman

Idle Jeffrey, when asking his cousin for money: "I fear I have not a mercenary tendency."

The Chancellor of the Exchequer and his cousin, Plantagenet Palliser: "Men must have mercenary tendencies or they would not have bred. The man who plows, so he may live, does so because, luckily, he has mercenary tendencies."

Jeffrey: "Just so, but you see I am less lucky than the plowman."

Palliser: "There is no vulgar error so vulgar, that is to say common or erroneous, as that by which men have been taught to say that mercenary tendencies are bad. The desire for wealth is the source of all progress. Civilization comes from what men call greed. Let your mercenary tendencies be combines with honesty, and they cannot take you astray. ~ Anthony Trollope

The first century of the plague had seen the country turned upside down. In the twilight years of Edward III it seemed that nothing could damage the greatness of the Plantagenet royal estate. But the world of the village went from impoverished claustrophobia to traumatized infection. A hundred years later, everything had been upended, courtesy of King Death. ~ Simon Schama