Crown & Country: A History Of England Through The Monarchy - Plot & Excerpts
But, having first intervened in English affairs seven years before, at the age of only fourteen, he was already a political old hand and fully able to recognize the weight of expectation vested in him. He had also had time to develop his own model of kingship and deploy his own extraordinary talents.Henry was gifted with genuine charisma: he had piercing grey eyes and his physical presence was mesmerizing: ‘his face was one upon which a man might gaze a thousand times and still feel drawn to gaze on again’. And he had a single, overriding goal:after years of anarchy and the degradation of the monarchy he was determined to restore the crown to the power it held under Henry I. For this Henry was his grandsire’s grandson: in abilities, temperament, political skill and even, to a large extent, in appearance. Like Henry I, he was shortish, barrel-chested and with a tendency to run to fat. He had also inherited his grandfather’s inexhaustible energy, his restlessness, his addiction to hunting, his gross sexual appetites, his personal simplicity, his attention to detail, his acute intelligence and his memory.But his Angevin ancestors left their mark as well.
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