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Historical person
1133–1189
Henry II ruled England from 1154 to 1189 and built an extensive Angevin realm stretching from the Scottish border to the Pyrenees. His legal and administrative reforms strengthened royal justice, while his conflict with Archbishop Thomas Becket ended in Becket’s murder and a major political crisis.
Henry’s government expanded the reach of royal justice through travelling justices, writs and procedures that contributed to the development of English common law. His attempt to define the crown’s authority over the church brought him into bitter conflict with Thomas Becket, whose murder in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170 forced Henry into public penance. Despite repeated family rebellions, the administrative structures of his reign had a lasting influence beyond the collapse of his personal empire.
In Anne O’Brien’s Devil’s Consort, after the annulment of the French marriage, Eleanor chooses the younger Henry of Anjou, who soon becomes Henry II of England. Gareth Russell’s A History of the English Monarchy moves through the Norman settlement, the Angevin empire, medieval succession disputes, the Wars of the Roses and the consolidation of the Tudor dynasty. Attention is also given to England’s changing relationships with Wales, Scotland and Ireland. Historical accounts that place Henry II of England in context include Peter Ackroyd’s Foundation, Richard Barber’s Henry II (Penguin Monarchs), David Crouch’s Medieval Britain, C. 1000–1500, Alison Weir’s Eleanor of Aquitaine, and Alison Weir’s Queens of the Crusades.
Series
The five Angevin novels trace the Plantagenet dynasty from the succession crisis after Henry I through Henry II and Eleanor’s turbulent marriage, their sons’ rebellions, Richard I’s crusade, captivity and final campaigns. The sequence combines royal family drama with the Anarchy, Angevin state-building, church–crown conflict and the Third…
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The Anarchy Series follows families, knights and warlords through the civil war between Stephen and Empress Matilda and into the Angevin settlement under Henry II. The sequence expands from northern England and Normandy to crusading, Wales, Ireland and the politics around Thomas Becket and Henry’s sons. It is…
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Ferdia, a young Irish noble held hostage after the English invasion of Ireland, saves the life of Henry II’s son Richard and enters his service. He accompanies Richard through rebellion against his father, warfare in Aquitaine and the struggle for the English crown. When Richard becomes king, Ferdia…
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The Plantagenet Saga spans the dynasty from Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine to Richard III. Across fourteen novels, family rebellion, disputed succession, royal marriage and war connect the Angevin Empire, the conquest of Wales, conflict with Scotland, the Hundred Years’ War and the Wars of the Roses.
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The Medieval Saga follows interlinked fictional families through two centuries of English dynastic conflict, beginning with the invasions of 1066 and ending with Simon de Montfort’s challenge to Henry III. The sequence places ordinary soldiers, household officers and landed families beside the rulers whose wars repeatedly reshape their…
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The Fifth Knight trilogy follows the fictional mercenary Sir Benedict Palmer and the nun Theodosia through crises of Henry II’s reign. The opening novel inserts Palmer into the murder of Thomas Becket as an imagined fifth knight who turns against Reginald FitzUrse and the other attackers after Theodosia…
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The William Marshal trilogy fictionalises the life of the celebrated knight and regent from his childhood during the Anarchy to his final defence of the young Henry III. It follows Marshal through tournaments, service to Henry II and Richard I, the Third Crusade, King John’s loss of Normandy…
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The Mistress of the Art of Death series follows Adelia Aguilar, a physician trained in Salerno whose knowledge of anatomy makes her an extraordinary investigator in twelfth-century England. Beginning in Cambridge in 1171, the novels place murder inquiries inside the reign of Henry II, where royal government, church…
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The Templar novels trace the order from the First Crusade to its established power in the mid-twelfth-century Crusader States. The Templar follows Hugh de Payens, Godfrey de Saint-Omer and Eleanor as they travel east with the crusading armies and confront the brutality, deprivation and political bargaining behind the…
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The Queens of England novels dramatise the lives of royal women from Eleanor of Aquitaine to Queen Victoria. Each volume concentrates on a queen, consort or claimant whose marriages, loyalties and private ambitions were inseparable from dynastic politics, religious conflict and the exercise of monarchy.
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The Kinghood books are two independent medieval novels linked by their examination of contested rule rather than by recurring characters. Hammer for Princes follows an experienced Anglo-Norman earl through the final phase of the Anarchy, when King Stephen and the future Henry II struggle over England. The King’s…
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The Dublin Saga follows several interconnected families through more than a millennium of Irish history, with Dublin as the changing centre of political, religious and commercial life. The first volume moves from pre-Christian Ireland through the Viking and medieval periods to the Tudor intervention; the second traces plantation,…
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Published under the Alan Savage name, the Eleanor of Aquitaine Saga presents Eleanor’s life as a two-volume dynastic narrative. The first book follows her inheritance of Aquitaine, marriage to Louis VII, queenship in France and participation in the Second Crusade. The second begins after annulment and follows her…
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Standalone books
Non Fiction
Biographies, histories and other non-fiction are listed separately from the historical novels above.
