By Illegitimate Means: How Birth Decides Dynasties

Legitimacy in medieval and early modern England was never private. Birthright could reorder kingdoms and spark wars. Historian Cheryl White traces how disputed heirs shaped dynasties—from William the Conqueror, mocked as “the Bastard” yet able to seize a throne, to the crises after Edward III and the tenuous claim of Henry VII. White reveals how the fate of a kingdom could turn on one enduring question: Who was born to rule?