The 23-year-old Edward II succeeded his formidable father, Edward I, and was crowned at Westminster Abbey in a ceremony marred by disorganization and a collapsing wall that injured a knight. His reign would become notorious for his reliance on favorites like Piers Gaveston, provoking baronial fury that eventually led to his forced abdication and murder.
Edward II inherited a kingdom his father had spent decades trying to weld into a single dominant power over Scotland and Wales, but he lacked Edward I's ruthless political instincts. His coronation itself was chaotic: so many spectators crowded into the abbey that a wall gave way, and the feast afterward was delayed for hours because the kitchens could not keep pace.
What troubled the barons more than logistics was the new king's obvious infatuation with Piers Gaveston, a Gascon knight he elevated to Earl of Cornwall and seated in a position of honor above senior nobles at the coronation banquet. That single seating arrangement became a symbol of everything the aristocracy feared: a king who distributed patronage by affection rather than lineage or merit.
The reign that followed included humiliating military defeat at Bannockburn in 1314, repeated baronial ordinances stripping royal power, and ultimately Edward's deposition in 1327 by his own wife, Isabella of France, and her lover Roger Mortimer. Edward was murdered later that year at Berkeley Castle, becoming one of only a handful of medieval English kings to be deposed and killed.