{"id":4405,"date":"2022-10-07T13:52:42","date_gmt":"2022-10-07T13:52:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/?page_id=4405"},"modified":"2022-10-07T15:06:50","modified_gmt":"2022-10-07T15:06:50","slug":"the-greatest-knight","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/index.php\/writing\/book-reviews\/the-greatest-knight\/","title":{"rendered":"The Greatest Knight"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/The-Greatest-Knight.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-4458\" src=\"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/The-Greatest-Knight.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"195\" height=\"293\" \/><\/a>The Greatest Knight: the Remarkable Life of William Marshal, the Power Behind Five English Thrones<\/em>, by Thomas Asbridge<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The greatest knight being William Marshal, one of life\u2019s survivors who managed to make himself indispensable to five successive kings \u2013 though this rather cheatingly includes the unnumbered Henry, son of Henry II, who was crowned king while his dad was still alive but never actually allowed to be in charge of anything. Anyway. Marshal lived in an age when loyalty was everything, and provided you served your liege lord faithfully, no one held it against you, though they might still kill you in battle. Thus he supported Young Henry against Henry II; switched to Henry II when the young one died; supported Old Henry against Richard the Lionheart; switched to Richard when Henry died; supported Richard against John \u2026 and so on. It\u2019s a fascinating insight into the times and mindset of the Middle Ages, which dear old Game of Thrones sort of gets sometimes (the sense of entitlement to rule of the nobility, never mind who suffers further down in the ranks) but usually doesn\u2019t. I didn\u2019t know that in Marshal\u2019s day, a tournament was far from the friendly one-on-one jousting that we get in all good fantasy \u2013 rather, it was a controlled war game, with armies charging around vast territories trying to capture each other.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Greatest Knight: the Remarkable Life of William Marshal, the Power Behind Five English Thrones, by Thomas Asbridge The greatest knight being William Marshal, one of life\u2019s survivors who managed to make himself indispensable to five successive kings \u2013 though &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/index.php\/writing\/book-reviews\/the-greatest-knight\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":368,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-4405","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4405"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4405\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4484,"href":"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4405\/revisions\/4484"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}