John, King of England

John was King of England from 1199 until his death in 1216. He was the youngest son of King Henry II of England and Duchess Eleanor of Aquitaine, and was nicknamed John Lackland because, as a younger son, he was not expected to inherit significant lands; he became Henry's favourite child after his older brothers rebelled, and was proclaimed king after his brother Richard I died in 1199. He lost the Duchy of Normandy and most of his other French lands to King Philip II of France, resulting in the collapse of the Angevin Empire, and his judicial reforms had a lasting effect on English common law even as they raised revenue. His dispute with Pope Innocent III over the election of the Archbishop of Canterbury led to England being placed under interdict from 1208 to 1214 and to his own excommunication from 1209 to 1213, and the baronial revolt at the end of his reign led to the sealing of Magna Carta in 1215, a foundational document in English and later British constitutional history. Civil war followed when neither side honoured the charter, and John died of dysentery in 1216 while the war was still under way; he remains a recurring villain in Robin Hood folklore, though modern historians credit him as a hard-working and able administrator alongside his acknowledged faults.