Prophecies were searched out in old chronicles and reinterpreted to show that it was God’s will that Henry… — Ian Mortimer
Prophecies were searched out in old chronicles and reinterpreted to show that it was God’s will that Henry should put an end to Richard’s rule. He was universally regarded as the champion of the Church and the people, a rescuer of good government and a promise of better times to come.
Yet Henry’s position was far from safe. He had not faced the king, and thus the kingdom had not yet had to choose between the good government he promised and the legitimate government represented by Richard….Which path would the kingdom choose: tyranny in the name of loyalty? Or treason in the name of justice?
p. 177Source: Wikiquote · CC BY-SA 4.0
More from this book
Modern scholars now see Richard as essentially narcissistic, convinced of his own perfection, and yet deeply insecure. We might elaborate on this slightly and see that he was exceptionally self-conscious: so much so that his own identity, royal percentage, ideas, rivalries and feelings formed not only the core but the limit of his entire world.
p. 136
The question of whether or not Henry was a great king in the fifteenth century, or subsequently, is a distraction. A man’s character may be obscured as much by the acclamation of greatness as by neglect.
p. 3
It is not surprising that Lucia Visconti fell for him [Henry IV]. Considering his crusading, his pilgrimage and his jousting, it is not going too far to say that he had made himself into an exemplary knight, combining the spiritual and chivalric values of his age more completely perhaps than any other Englishman of the late fourteenth century.
p. 115
