Eyza

Tudor-Chick:

I don't know whether it makes Edward I a good or a bad king. At the time, the Welsh and the Scots were both considered "enemies". And medieval warfare was not pretty. I guess Edward just "followed the customs", or something like that. Whether this was a good thing or a bad thing is something I'll leave for others to figure out.

Regarding Edward II, what do you think was good about him?
Anne G

Eyza

PADDYBOY:

Idi Amin was pretty outrageous, all right, but he wasn't living in the Middle Ages. He was living in modern Africa, which, at the time, was full of corrupt leaders. In some places, it still is.
Anne G

Tudor chick

This is another person who the world would have been better off with out!
I have not seem this movie are you refering to The last Scottish King?

Tudor chick

Hi Anne,

I don't think there was much to like about him at all. He was a weak man that was easily lead by others and never has been allowed to be a King.

This is what is says in a text book I have by Simon Schama -
"His entire disastrous reign was marked by a willful disregard of anything that could remotely be considered the shared interests of the community of the realm" It goes onto say that everyone was pleased when he was over thrown.
It then goes onto to say the his son Edward 111 was a King that at long last had "the voice of a ruler that understood that effective government depended on consultation and consent rather than on force".
Interestingly enough Ed111 built a magnificent gold tomb for his murdered father.
Edward 111 seems some one worthy of a closer look at! I have not read much about him before

PADDYBOY

Eyza

Idi Amin didn't live in the Middle Ages, nor was he a King, nor was he Scottish.
Oops, silly me

Eyza

TudorChick:

Well, that's pretty much my rather superficial understanding of Edward II. He seems to have been more interested in rewarding his friends, than running England. He rewarded his friends well(till other powers intervened, anyway)rather well, and ran England badly, as far as I can tell. I don't know, from what I've heard, that Simon Schama is the best historian around, but that, in a nutshell, is what I understand.
Anne G

Eyza

Paddyboy:

Hey, I never said that Idi Amin was any of these things! Someone was trying to be (confusingly) funny, and I just pointed that out in my bumbling way
Anne G

Edgewaters

They'd say much the same thing about our ways, I think. Submarines would be horrific; carpet bombing and firestorms would be beyond horror, I imagine. We just have different sets of values.

I also don't think it's entirely correct to say that medieval people regarded these things as normal or acceptable; if people 1000 years from now regard us as we regard medievals, they'll think we see atomic bombs, concentration camps, terrorism, torture, genocide, and history's bloodiest wars of expansion and conquest as normal and acceptable. They'll say that Pol Pot was not so bad, because there was also Hitler and Stalin and Mugabe and Foday Sankoh and all the rest of them.

Edward I was exceptional in his own time and I imagine feelings ran high (both in England and abroad) about his policies.

Eyza

Edgewaters:

Up to a point, I think everything you say is perfectly true. But in the time of Edward I, there were no "policies" regarding things like treatment of civilians during wartime. The Church tried to promote the idea of "just wars", which were governed by rather strict rules, but it doesn't seem as if anybody followed them --- in medieval times, at least. The idea of acceptable military conduct in a wartime situation in modern times is derived in part, at least, from "just war theory", and this is one of the reasons there are now written codes of conduct. But if, for example, your enemy was perceived as not quite "human", in medieval times, you could supposedly do anything you wanted. The Scots were regarded(by the English, at least, but I suspect the feeling was mutual)as "not quite human" and Edward I was a creature of his time. So the way the Scots were treated was, as I said, not pretty, but also as I said, there were no formalized "rules" governiing warfare at the time.
Anne G

NomadBard

Is it safe to say that the worst ruler in history probably depends on the biases of those they poorly ruled? Edward I was a great English monarch, but in the Celtic periphery, he did not receive the same image. Attila the Hun effectively brought together many tribal peoples into one amalgamated state, but the Romans viewed him as the Scourge of God. Unless we are ruled by a poor leader, which I am not saying I am not, we have trouble realizing a good leader. It could be seen in the same light as Heraclitus's works on differences and commonality. One is essential for the other.