Magna Carta Day: The Meadow Where a King Was Made to Yield, and the Woman Who Saved It from Ruin
HistoricalEvents, WomeninHistory Hedgehog Books Admin HistoricalEvents, WomeninHistory Hedgehog Books Admin

Magna Carta Day: The Meadow Where a King Was Made to Yield, and the Woman Who Saved It from Ruin

Magna Carta was not born in a peaceful ceremony, but in a tense meadow surrounded by armed men, suspicion, and civil war. On Magna Carta Day, explore the real drama of Runnymede, King John’s tyranny, and the forgotten role of Nicola de la Haye — the woman who helped save England and Magna Carta itself.

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Battle of Lincoln 1217: The Woman Who Held the Castle That Saved England
HistoricalEvents, WomeninHistory Rachel Elwiss Joyce HistoricalEvents, WomeninHistory Rachel Elwiss Joyce

Battle of Lincoln 1217: The Woman Who Held the Castle That Saved England

The Battle That Nearly Erased England

On 20 May 1217, the fate of England came down to one woman holding a battered castle against a French invasion. It's a story that should be far better known — and on its 808th anniversary, it deserves to be told properly. It's also the story at the heart of my novel Lady of England, the third book in my Nicola de la Haye trilogy, which will be published late 2026/ early 2027.

By the spring of 1217, the situation for the nine-year-old King Henry III looked desperate. King John was dead. Prince Louis of France had landed with an army, rebel English barons had welcomed him to London, and much of the south-east had fallen. The Plantagenet dynasty appeared to be finished. Three fortresses still flew Henry's colours: Dover, Windsor – and Lincoln Castle.

Lincoln Castle was held by a woman.

"The Woman Who Saved England": Who Was Nicola de la Haye?

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The Saxon Secret to Avoiding a Bad Ruler
People, WomeninHistory Rachel Elwiss Joyce People, WomeninHistory Rachel Elwiss Joyce

The Saxon Secret to Avoiding a Bad Ruler

What if the worst rulers in English history didn't have to happen?

Bad kings - the weak, the cruel, the catastrophically incompetent - weren't inevitable. They were the consequence of a system that handed the most powerful job in the kingdom to whoever happened to emerge from the right womb in the right order!

Primogeniture, succession by (male) birth order, gave England Edward II, whose personal failings and political incompetence ended in his deposition and probable murder. It gave England Richard II, whose erratic tyranny triggered a constitutional crisis and cost him his throne. It gave England Henry VI, whose mental collapse plunged the country into thirty years of civil war. These weren't accidents of fate. They were what happens when a system prioritises birth order over every other human quality.

But before the Normans locked this system in place, the Anglo-Saxons did something far more interesting.

The Aetheling System: Choose the Best, Not the First

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Nicola de la Haye
HistoricalFiction, WomeninHistory Hedgehog Books Admin HistoricalFiction, WomeninHistory Hedgehog Books Admin

Nicola de la Haye

The inspiration of Brienne of Tarth, Nicola de la Haye saved England twice. Watch the video below and discover the legend. (Spoilers alerts!).

And when you’ve finished, it’s time to find out more about the medieval heroine, the world she lived in, the corrupt men she had to deal with, and how the medieval badass sorted them all out!

Buy the first book in the Nicola de la Haye series, Lady of Lincoln, here.

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