Before Ceasar came, the island of Briton was home to the Celtics, Picts, and Gaels - clans and tribes who had raised stone monuments at places such as Stone Hedge and Avebury.  They built empires of their own across the island and beyond.  The Celtic Brits were known to Greek travelers, who referred to their home as the Brittanic Isles.  To their north was the Picts, who at times ruled as far as Ireland.  And in Ireland there was the Gaels, who would eventually conquror the Picts.  They had their own kings and queens, gods and goddess, legends and lore. 

So the stories of Briton hardly began with the arrival of Caesar, who washed upon on the shores of the isle in 55 BC.    It would take the Roman Empire nearly a hundred years before it began in earnest its conquest of the island.  The lowlands of the south and east were quickly taken, but the claiming of northern and western Britain took another generation, and was never fully completed.  Indeed, the northern people of Britain still refuse to be conquered by anyone who came.  

And come they did.  In 410 AD, rotting apart from the inside, Rome informed Britain that she had to look to her own defenses.  What followed was the time of Vortigern, Ambrosius and Artorius Riothamus fighting a loosing battle against the incoming flood of Saxons.  Over generations, where the Roman Empire and the sword had failed, Christianity succeeded, slowly converting the invaders and influencing them to settle the land.   They became so settled, in fact, that when the Viking raiders first attacked the coast in 793, Christian England was rocked by the ferocity of these pagan raiders - raiders whose means and methods would have been so similar to the Saxon’s own ancestors.

For the next fifty years Vikings raided the coasts, but eventually they too were influenced to settle.  Around 840, Norwegians in Ireland founded the city which became Dublin.  In 866 Danes took York and began to colonize the north of England.  In 911, Norwegians in France were granted land and the Duchy of Normandy was born.    By the early 11th century King Canute ruled all of Norway, Denmark, and the whole of England.  For the first time, England was a unified country under a single ruler.    The kingdom did not outlive Canute, but in 1066, William the Conqueror defeated King Harold Godwinson, completing the Norman conquest of Saxon England.

William was blessed with four sons.    His eldest, Robert II, instigated his first rebellion against his father in 1077.  Robert failed and was left penniless by his attempt.  He left for the First Crusade after seeing his brother, William II, inherit the kingdom after the Conqueror died.   William II's reign did not last long.  He was killed by an arrow during a hunting accident, and with Robert away, Henry seized the royal treasury and eventually the crown.  On November 11, 1100 Henry I married the daughter of King Malcolm III of Scotland, uniting the Norman line with the old English line of Kings.

When Robert returned, he challenged Henry for the throne, and their battles dragged on for a decade.  On the morning of September 28th 1106, exactly 40 years after William the Conqueror had made his way to England, the decisive battle between his two surviving sons, Robert Curthose and Henry Beauclerc, took place in the small village of Tinchebray.    Henry won, and Robert was imprisoned in a tower at Cardiff. 

Henry’s son, William, met his own an untimely death at the age of 17 when his ship sank while crossing the English channel.   The King was thus left without a legitmate male heir, and his daughter, Matilda, had just been widowed by Henry V, the Holy Roman Emperor.   Henry took the unprecedented step of making his barons swear to accept his daughter Matilda as his heir and married her to Geoffrey Plantagenet.

However, when Henry died, his nephew Stephen of Blois to came to England and claimed the throne.  The Plantagenets were Norman, and Stephen road a backlash of Saxon support against them.  The granddaughter of William the Conqueror, and former Empress of the Holy Roman Empire, Matilda did not go quietly into the night.  What followed was twenty years of war and uncertainty known simply as the Anarchy.

Matilda’s son, Henry, was born in Le Mans, France, on March 5, 1133.   From his father, he was already Count of Anjou and Count of Maine.  From his mother, he inherited greater ambitions.  At nineteen he married Eleanor of Aquitaine, whose marriage to King Louis of France had just been annulled.    In marriage, he gained firm control of the rich lands of Aquitaine and Gascony.    He had accompanied his mother in 1147 on a failed attempt to cross the channel and take England.   In early 1153, he crossed again with 3,000 footmen and 140 horses.  Henry moved quickly and within the year he had secured his right to succession via the Treaty of Wallingford.   When Stephen died in October 1154, it was only a matter of time until Henry's treaty would bear fruit, and the quest that began with his mother would be ended. On December 19, 1154 he was crowned in Westminster Abbey, Rex Angliae, the King of England.

Like his great grandfather, Henry II was also blessed with many sons.    Indeed, his marriage to Eleanor bore much fruit: William (who died in infancy), Henry, Richard, Geoffrey, John, Matilda, Eleanor, and Joan.   Henry II was one of the most powerful men in Europe.  He united England and controlled more of France then the French King.  In this, Henry created the Angevin Empire, and he was determined to keep it intact and not simply divide it up amongst his sons.

Henry's wife was a formidable woman of her own accord.  Eleanor of Aquitaine was one of the wealthiest and most powerful women in Europe even before she married Henry.  She was twelve years older then he, and had already ridden on Crusade and born the King of France two daughters before they even met.  She encouraged the arts and helped define the notion of Courtly Love from her estate at Poitiers.  Indeed, her continued control over her lands was one of many points of friction between Eleanor and her husband. 

Another issue between them was Henry's string of affairs, which came to a head when he took the Rosamund Clifford as a lover.  The two met in 1163 when Henry passed by Clifford Castle during one of his campaigns in Wales.  She was the opposite of Eleanor in both appearance and demeanor, and the affair continued on between the two for nearly a decade.  Henry built her a tower whose gates were said to be mystically guarded and surrounded by an extensive labyrinth.  It is said that Eleanor herself had Rosamund murdered when word of the affair become public, and that "Rosamund's Bower" has remained untouched ever since.

Henry II was talented linguist and excellent Latin speaker and would sit on councils in person whenever possible. He took an immediate interest in law and in the economy and brought great reform to both.  However, he was also known to have a loud temper.  Perhaps his most famous of words were yelled in anger: "Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?"  The priest in question was Thomas Becket, his old friend who had thwarted his clerical constitutions.  While no doubt shouted in anger and perhaps without intent, four of his knights followed on their King's cries.  On 29 December 1170 they entered Canterbury Cathedral and beat down the Archbishop of Canterbury, killing him with several blows.  Immediately, Becket became a local martyr against the Kings influence in the Church.  And it cast a dark pallor onto the Kings Court, turning much of Europe against him.

By 1173, those numbers have come to include his son Henry, the young King in waiting.   While young Henry had not been seen as particularly interested in day-to-day governance, he is perhaps the most popular of Henry's children.  He is seen as gracious, affable, and courteous, and is an important figure in the tournament culture of Europe.  He is one of the key patrons of the sport, and his exploits traveled far and wide.  In 1172 he married Marguerite of France, daughter of King Louis VII. Shortly thereafter, he separated from his father.

Henry's revolt draws strength from a much deeper discontent with his father's rule, and a formidable party of Saxon and Norman magnates have joined him.  England is thus torn between the ambitions of the two Henry's, between father and son.