Personality
John suffered from fragile health. He engaged little in physical activity, practised jousting rarely, and only occasionally hunted. Contemporaries report that he was quick to get angry and resort to violence, leading to frequent political and diplomatic confrontations. He enjoyed literature, and was patron to painters and musicians.
The image of a "warrior king" probably emerged from the courage in battle he showed at Poitiers, and the creation of the Order of the Star. This was guided by political need as John was determined to prove the legitimacy of his crown–particularly as his reign, like that of his father, was marked by continuing disputes over the Valois claim from both Charles II of Navarre and Edward III of England. From a young age, John was called to resist the de-centralising forces which impacted upon the cities and the nobility; each attracted either by English economic influence or the reforming party. He grew up amongst intrigue and treason, and in consequence he governed in secrecy only with a close circle of trusted advisers.
He took as wife Bonne of Bohemia, and fathered 10 children, in eleven years. Due to his close relationship with Charles de la Cerda, rumors were spread by Charles II of Navarre of a romantic attachment between the two. La Cerda was given various honours and appointed to the high position of connetable when John became king; he accompanied the king on all his official journeys to the provinces. La Cerda's rise at court excited the jealousy of the French barons, several of whom stabbed him to death in 1354. As such, La Cerda's fate paralleled that of Edward II of England's Piers Gaveston in England, and John II of Castile's Alvaro de Luna in Spain; the position of a royal favourite was a dangerous one. John's grief on La Cerda's death was overt and public.
Read more about this topic: John II Of France
Famous quotes containing the word personality:
“Fundamentally the male artist approximates more to the psychology of woman, who, biologically speaking, is a purely creative being and whose personality has been as mysterious and unfathomable to the man as the artist has been to the average person.”
—Beatrice Hinkle (18741953)
“It is in our interests to let the police and their employers go on believing that the Underground is a conspiracy, because it increases their paranoia and their inability to deal with what is really happening. As long as they look for ringleaders and documents they will miss their mark, which is that proportion of every personality which belongs in the Underground.”
—Germaine Greer (b. 1939)
“The habit some writers indulge in of perpetual quotation is one it behoves lovers of good literature to protest against, for it is an insidious habit which in the end must cloud the stream of thought, or at least check spontaneity. If it be true that le style cest lhomme, what is likely to happen if lhomme is for ever eking out his own personality with that of some other individual?”
—Dame Ethel Smyth (18581944)