Hello and welcome to this epochs which will be an old school history bro blind solo effort just from me

and we're going to continue the story of the English monarchy last time we finished off with the death of Edward the first,

Edward Longshanks so we go straight into the age of his son Edward the second and

longshanks had had four sons, it had loads of children, loads, like he had ten daughters, only five of which survived.

And he had four sons, only one of which survived.

So right there you can see that infant mortality, because all these children died in

infancy or in childhood, you can see that infant mortality in the 13th century was very very high.

Very very high. I mean it's very high even up to the 19th century, but you know in the early middle ages.

Only the strongest children really lived to adulthood.

And so Edward II had had older brothers and Alfonso,

remember Longshanks' his first wife was a Spanish woman, Eleanor of Castile, and a

John and a Henry had three older brothers, all of whom died. So when Longshanks himself finally died in 1307,

it passes to his fourth son, who's still quite young in his 20s and he was weak

Edward second just sort of famously weak when you look at the king lists you've got

three Edwards in a row, Edward the 1st, 2nd and 3rd.

And Edd with the 1st and Edward the 3rd are both very strong kings,

military kings, martial kings.

And Edward II just isn't.

He's very weak, so his reign is sort of bookended

by his father and son. But to begin with it wasn't necessarily very very obvious

that Edward II was going to be weak so he was physically large like a good

Plantagen like his father he was physically big and strong,

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