Introduction

2020

This chapter takes up the emotional dimension of Edward’s relationships with his favourites, considering the significance and decline of medieval claims that Edward ‘called Gaveston his brother’; engagements in early modern narratives of Edward’s reign with classical ideals of friendship; and the increasing romanticization of his relationship with Gaveston. I show that accounts of Edward’s love for his favourites, and his grief at their deaths, are often crafted to elicit sympathy and pathos, and thus represent a valuable source of positive depictions of relationships between men. Moreover, analysis of these depictions in texts of all genres provides insight into the literary influences and motivations of early modern chroniclers, including their incorporation of tropes of the romance genre, and the impact of Marlowe’s Edward II.

Edward II and Piers Gaveston

2020

Edward II as Political Exemplum

2020

This chapter discusses the continuing political relevance of Edward II’s narrative during the late sixteenth and seventeenth century in England and France. As the first English King to have been deposed, and a paradigmatic example of the dangers of overmighty favourites, Edward was a compelling precedent for writers across the political spectrum. Analysis of the ways in which writers deployed his example provides a valuable case study for investigating how historical examples functioned in early modern political discourse, and reveals the hermeneutic agency of political writers in the process of ‘using’ history, when examples such as Edward’s deposition could be interpreted as supporting either side of a political debate.

Beyond Sexual Mimesis

2020

This chapter investigates how a consensus developed that Edward II was murdered by anal penetration with a red-hot spit. I question its interpretation by scholars as a self-evidently sexually mimetic, punitive murder method: in fact, the earliest accounts of this murder present it primarily as painful, torturous, and undetectable through outward inspection. Importantly, too, these earliest accounts emerge before the formation of a consensus on whether Edward’s transgressions were sexual, let alone whether they specifically constituted sex with men. This analysis prompts a reassessment of the place of this narrative in the history of queer sexuality, and of the murder scene in Marlowe’s Edward II, while also further illuminating the literary priorities of medieval and early modern chroniclers.