PLANTAGENET

When the long tally is added

And all the castles are counted

And significant others such as

Kings College,

Cambridge

Eton College

Westminister

Are included

Then Plantagenets ruled.

But kingship was transformed

By weak Rulers

And compromises such as Magna Carta

And when the Hundred Years’ War is reckoned up

And the houses of Lancaster and York

And their internecine strife

Called the War of the Roses, is included

And their last Plantagenet king, Richard III

Dying ingloriously on a muddy Bosworth field

Only to be dug up,

A legless collection of bones

In a car park in Leicester

Some five centuries later,

Then the question to be asked is this;

WAS IT WORTH IT?