Richard II of England

Richard of Bordeaux became King of England at ten in 1377 after his father the Black Prince died young, leaving the boy to inherit his grandfather Edward III's war-stretched realm. He helped crush the Peasants' Revolt in 1381 with unusual brutality for his age, then spent years trying to end the Hundred Years' War while building a courtly world of art and elevated ceremony — less interested in battle than his warrior forebears. His belief in royal prerogative and reliance on a narrow circle of favorites provoked the nobility: in 1387 the Lords Appellant seized control, and though Richard clawe…