WI: Good King John?

Zioneer

Banned
I was watching the film Ironclad (which is about a bunch of guys defending a castle from King John), and like most medieval English movies, it holds to a cliche which irks me; that is, making King John of England medieval English Hitler, instead of the mildly vicious, probably not pious below-average King that he probably was.

So to counter-act that cliche, I'd like to see if there could be a PoD which could make King John a highly successful and beloved King of England, on the level of Richard the Lionheart. Is it possible?
 
So to counter-act that cliche, I'd like to see if there could be a PoD which could make King John a highly successful and beloved King of England, on the level of Richard the Lionheart. Is it possible?

What were Richard's big achievements, anyway? He was handsome, he went crusading, and he wasn't John?
 

Zioneer

Banned
What were Richard's big achievements, anyway? He was handsome, he went crusading, and he wasn't John?

That, and Richard wasn't the one levying the taxes when he got captured on the way back from the Crusades. John was.
 
That, and Richard wasn't the one levying the taxes when he got captured on the way back from the Crusades. John was.

Yes, that too.

Well, here's an easy one: have Geoffrey live and do the dirty work, while John rots in Ireland, until Richard dies and Geoffrey becomes King. John, when he takes the throne, is seen as a liberator from the oppressive tax farmer.

Also, John doesn't preside over Bouvines. That's a big one.

The Plantagenet boys are still gonna get played by Philip though, so in some ways someone will have to be the villain of the piece to answer for the failures.
 
That, and Richard wasn't the one levying the taxes when he got captured on the way back from the Crusades. John was.

Or spending more than a years worth of English taxes on Chateau Galliard.

One way you might be able to do this is improve the range of documentation in Enlgand at the time; John lived at a time when some pretty good chroniclers died off. Added to the fact he pissed of the church (and you might say he ended off better in the end, gaining an alliance from Innocent), the people writing stuff about him were ones that disliked him.

This has the added effect of the millitary successes in France being better chronicled perhaps.

OR a post John POD where he gets less used as a villain...
 
Something with a stronger monarchy might help, as it means that "John's misgovernance lead to the Magna Carta" isn't used as "proof" of how Tyrants Never Prosper.
 
It was actually in some part the fault of King Henry III that King John became a villian of childhood stories. Henry's desire to find funds to complete his building projects, to fund the war needed to put down revolts in Gascony and even to go on Crusade - largely to silence critics who saw him shirking his duty by not going on Crusade - meant that he was constantly abusing his power and authority to wring as much money as he could out of his people, permitting his agents to be as ruthless, oppressive and unscrupulous as they could so as to make the most out of the limited revenue raising methods at the Kings disposal - rents and sales of property and fines .

It was in Henry's reign that the stories of Robin Hood emerged, and the agents of the King were villified. King John was likely turned into a fairytale villian in those stories because he had a romantic brother who could be played up as a better alternative where as the only alternatives to Henry were Richard of Cornwall - a man who lived in self-imposed political exile but was just as unscrupulous as Henry in taking money from the people, and more unscrupulous in taking land from them - or Prince Edward - who depite becoming arguably England's greatest ever King was at the time was known for undue violence, arrogance and duplicity. There was also the fact that Richard I, by and large, left England to govern itself so long as he could get taxes every now and then, and this governance in absence was certainly more palatable to the English nobles and people than John or Henry's constant quarrels with thier subjects over what powers the King could exersize.
 
So what would let John's reputation be so good that his son would be compared (unfavorably) to him?
 
So what would let John's reputation be so good that his son would be compared (unfavorably) to him?

Hard to say. Henry had the benefit of getting the crown when he was a child and thus had nobles ruling in his name for the early period, and the plus of the Simon de Montfort government being worse that his own adding to a greater sympathy to his reign in comparison to that of his father. Perhaps, if the Montfort rebellion had failed and Henry would have become a greater figure of hate.
 
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King Richard Lionheart levies Draconian taxation on the poor so he can fund a massively unnecessary war in the Middle East motivated entirely by imperialist and zealously religious desires.

King John agrees to sign a political charter that is the very ancestral document for constitutional government with checks to its power, for the first time in writing making clear that the state is not merely an arbitrary authority.

Now, the million dollar question is... Who's the great and noble king, and who's the tyrant? :p
 
King Richard Lionheart levies Draconian taxation on the poor so he can fund a massively unnecessary war in the Middle East motivated entirely by imperialist and zealously religious desires.

King John agrees to sign a political charter that is the very ancestral document for constitutional government with checks to its power, for the first time in writing making clear that the state is not merely an arbitrary authority.

Now, the million dollar question is... Who's the great and noble king, and who's the tyrant? :p

Still both of them. John didn't sign anything willingly, typical of any monarch really (*cough* Tsar Nicolas II *cough*), and the Magna Carta was more about allowing the nobles to share in oppressing the peasants. There was nothing noble about it (beyond who's interests in served). On the plus side John actually spent time ruling England and wasn't the war criminal his brother was!



Also, maybe you could just have Richard live longer? He loses his romantic appeal as he taxes England ever more heavily to fight his wars in France, and when John takes over he is moderately mild by camparison. Henry III then pretty much does as he did and is compared to the tyrant Richard, leading to John being seen as the far superior of the three monarchs.
 
King Richard Lionheart levies Draconian taxation on the poor so he can fund a massively unnecessary war in the Middle East motivated entirely by imperialist and zealously religious desires
Zealously religiously, yes. Imperialist, not more than Saladin trying to conquer Outremer.

On John, sounds like he needed chroniclers who would give him a better press. After all, look at the Henry V's of this world. Not withstanding stuffing the French at Agincourt, the campaign was not a great success. Yet thanks to Shakespeare and his precedessors the arrogant chump comes over as a hero. As for that matter does John's brother Richard (although not withstanding his failure as a king has been described as Britian's finest cavalry general).

Perhaps then, he should have gone on a crusade. Not necessarily to the Middle East. There were infidels in Spain and Baltic who could be slain instead.
 
So to counter-act that cliche, I'd like to see if there could be a PoD which could make King John a highly successful and beloved King of England, on the level of Richard the Lionheart. Is it possible?
Well the most obvious point of departures that I can think of are that either Richard isn't captured by the Emperor - he sneaks though or his ship isn't forced off course by bad weather, or that he dies in captivity from resisting arrest or natural causes whilst being held. Whilst it doesn't do anything for John losing territory or being compared to Richard it at least means that he doesn't now have to squeeze the country and raise the ransom for Richard as in our timeline. It might also improve his standing if Richard makes it back to England uninterrupted and starts to behave like a bit of a bastard as ruler, a lot of his popularity seems of come from never being there to actively rule and get in people's way as others have mentioned. In this timeline it's Richard who probably keeps raising taxes to go on military campaigns, either against France or Scotland most likely. As an added bonus if it is France and he manages to give them enough of a kicking they might not be in a position to conquer Normandy during John's rule.
 
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