What Was The Cause Of Edward II's Sexuality?

Although Edward II’s sexuality is disputed, his outrageous fondness for men was not necessarily a problem. In the fourteenth century, God’s anointed was free to make love to whomever they wished. But not only was he incapable of recognising a brazen charlatan and incapable of learning from past mistakes, he was their willing accomplice. His first favourite had been Piers Gaveston. The nobility chopped the head off Edward’s first favourite, but a couple of others followed before Hugh de Spenser, son of the Earl of Winchester, recklessly abused his position to carve out a vast domain covering most of south Wales. In a world where land was power, nobody was safe from Hugh’s depredations and could lose everything he owned on the basis of a quiet chat between de Spenser and the king.

A sensible king should have foreseen the
If the nobility had feared him before, little now held him back. Aristocrats were dispossessed in their hundreds. When in 1324, Isabella’s brother, the king of France, threatened Edward’s possessions in Gascony, Edward issued an edict commanding the arrest of all French aliens in England and Wales. Having been at loggerheads with Isabella for years, Hugh took advantage of the legislation to settle scores, placing her under house arrest and dragging away her children. As she watched her husband do nothing, her opinion of her husband changed from one of long-suffering distrust to unquenchably violent contempt.

The war was a catastrophe, and Edward was soon begging his wife to intercede with her brother to arrange a peace. He might have been surprised when she agreed, tripped off to France, and rapidly negotiated a peace treaty, on condition that the king’s eldest son be sent to pay homage to the French king. The heir to the English throne under her control, Isabella refused to obey Edward’s instruction to return to England, and commenced organising an