The man who built Dover Castle's Great Tower was one of England's greatest kings - Henry II. He also built the largest European empire of his age, stretching from Scotland to the Pyrenees - the Angevin Empire.
Path to Empire 1120-1154
Like his great-grandfather William the Conqueror, Henry was French. However, France was not yet united - powerful nobles ruled its separate regions. Henry's father ruled Anjou (from where we get 'Angevin'), and his mother, Normandy.
When his father died, Henry inherited both. Then he married Eleanor of Aquitaine, gaining her lands. Headstrong and ambitious, she was to play an important role in the following years. A shipwreck which killed Henry's uncle, heir to the English throne, gave him a claim to the crown - a claim he grabbed.
By 1154, Henry was King of England and the most powerful lord in France. Seizing chances through marriages and deaths, he had forged a great empire.
Consolidation and Expansion 1154-1172
Over the next twenty years, Henry strengthened his possessions and expended his control in northern England and South Wales, in Normandy and Brittany, and in the east of Ireland.
The Seeds of Destruction 1172 - 1189
Rich in land and power, Henry was also rich in sons. But rivalries over the empire's division between them - and his estranged wife Eleanor - proved disastrous. As civil war erupted in England, sons Young Henry, Richard and Geoffrey tried to seize Normandy.
Later, Richard defended Aquitaine against Young Henry and Geoffrey, then against Geoffrey and John. Finally, allied with the King of France, Richard forced his father to submit. Exhausted, Henry died, and his troubled empire passed to Richard.
Decline 1189 - 1215
King Richard, despite going on Crusade, being shipwrecked on his return, then imprisoned in Austria, managed to hold the Empire together - mainly thanks to Eleanor. When Richard died, his brother John proved much weaker, losing Anjou to the French King, and then Normandy. And despite expansion in Ireland, his control slipped in Brittany and Aquitaine.
Fall 1215 - 1227
To add to John's woes, his English barons rebelled, prompting a French invasion, including a great siege at Dover Castle. Finally, under John's son, Henry III, the French were driven back across the Channel. But almost all the Angevin lands in France were lost.
However, although the empire Henry II had built in France had collapsed, his English descendants - the Plantagenets - retained the throne of England for 400 years.
