S9 E9 | Madness Descends

THIS IS HISTORY — A DYNASTY TO DIE FOR

Sony Music

History, Society & Culture

4.8 • 2.5K Ratings

🗓️ 3 March 2026

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Royal favourites, we want your voice notes in our new miniseries on historical failures. Look out for Producer Al’s callout post on patreon.com/thisishistory. It’s there where you can listen to this week’s bonus episode, where Dan discusses what likely triggered Henry VI’s descent into silence, while he also gives a primer on England’s warring noble families: the Nevilles, Percys, and Courtenays. Henry VI isn’t responding to anyone. Not to his physician, nor to his newborn son, Prince Edward. He’s just inert, catatonic. If the king’s health is said to be a mirror of the health of the realm, then England’s in big trouble (which it is). The Hundred Years’ War is on the verge of being decisively over in France’s favour. England has lost Gascony, Normandy, and Maine, with only the small Garrison at Calais left. This a full-blown crisis that is usually left to the king to solve, but instead, Parliament decides to make Richard Duke of York the Protector of the realm — angering Queen Margaret and York’s nemesis, Edmund Duke of Somerset. Then something remarkable happens: Henry wakes up. – A Sony Music Entertainment production. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts To bring your brand to life in this podcast, email podcastadsales@sonymusic.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices – Written and presented by Dan Jones Producer - Alan Weedon Senior Producer - Dominic Tyerman Executive Producer - Simon Poole Production Manager - Jen Mistri Production coordinator - Eric Ryan Mixing - Amber Devereux Head of content - Chris Skinner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	I won't sugarcoat things for you. It's about to get a whole lot more chaotic in Plantagenet England.
0:07.4	Stick around for the end of this episode to hear why Do-Eyed King Henry VI isn't going to find peace.
0:15.6	Now, over the course of this season, you might have figured out that Henry the 6th is possibly one of the most
0:22.3	ineffectual kings of the entire plantagenet era, a failure, you might say. And failures are
0:31.3	exactly what's on my mind at the moment, because I'm gearing up to launch a brand new mini-series with my friend and fellow
0:39.7	history buff, Elizabeth Day. It's called History's Greatest Failures, and together Elizabeth and I
0:47.1	are going to learn about how losers make history. That'll be landing in your feeds in April,
0:53.9	and for its bonus episodes, I want to summon
0:56.6	my royal favourites in voice note form.
1:00.1	I want to hear your favourite historical failures of any era, and producer Al and I will discuss
1:07.1	them.
1:08.8	To record your favourite failure, look out for the links on our royal chat threads on
1:14.1	Patreon. That's patreon.com forward slash this is history. Now on with the show after this short break.
1:24.8	Hello, I'm Dan Jones, a medievalist, and I'm thankful I'm not actually in the Middle Ages.
1:31.0	Why? Because a restless boss didn't bode well for employees.
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	...

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