"Nobody liked England's King John (1166-1216 A.D.) and history has not been especially kind to him. As the youngest son of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, he wasn't expected to amount to much, receiving the uncomplimentary sobriquet of "John Lackland" (he wasn't in line to inherit any property). Actor Nigel Terry played him as a drooling and cowardly idiot in the Academy Award winning movie Lion in Winter (1968). Similarly, Shakespeare's King John depicted him as weak and selfishly motivated, Sir Walter Scot's Ivanhoe painted him in an unfavorable light, and he has been repeatedly immortalized as Robin Hood's ultimate nemesis, in contrast to the cunning, yet villainous Sherriff of Nottingham. Even Disney turned him into a thumb-sucking lion. Sure, he had something to do with the proto-constitutional Magna Carta, but neither he nor the rebel barons he made the agreement with really stood by it for long, and Pope Innocent III annulled it. Later historians suggested that the medieval chroniclers were a little harsh on John, but most still agree that he had an unpleasant personality, a contentious upbringing, and traitorous siblings, also managing to lose the Duchy of Normandy by personally irritating French barons excessively. As a monarch, he is regarded as ineffectual. As a person, his moral character is often found wanting. As far as I can tell, it seems that most historiographers neglect the fact that John's tumultuous reign may have resulted from his attempts to come to terms with being a werewolf.
Henry II only seemed to notice his son John after the failed 1173 rebellion of his older brothers, after which John became the King's favored prince. His father appointed him Lord of Ireland in 1177. While his brothers William, Henry, and Geoffrey died relatively young, leaving only John and Richard I as royal offspring, and Henry II evinced a certain fondness for him, Richard I was nonetheless declared King in 1189. Richard promptly went off to fight the Crusades and John attempted an ill-fated coup. When Richard died in 1199, John was the last prince standing and was proclaimed King of England. And in general, everything went to hell in a handbasket. War with France broke out again, the Pope excommunicated him, English nobles rebelled over taxes and John's obnoxious attitudes towards them, and even after the Magna Carta was signed, civil war broke out among the baron signatories (aided by King Louis VIII of France, who invaded southern England in 1214). Basically, John was ill-mannered and fought with everybody. In assessing John, few consider that dude was dealing with some serious issues; lycanthropy, in particular.
John's turn towards the irredeemably feral may very well have coincided with his assumption of the title Lord of Ireland. In 1185, the future King John travelled to Ireland in the company of the Archdeacon of Brecknock and historian Gerald of Wales, touring Osraighe (Ossory), a medieval Irish kingdom comprising most of present-day County Kilkenny. Medieval Irish, English, and Norse accounts suggest that the Kings of Ossory are direct descendants of the legendary Laignech Fŕelad, a fearsome warrior who frequently shapeshifted into a werewolf. Thus, it was presumed that werewolves were thick on the ground in Ossory. The Norse work Konungs Skuggsjá, suggest that the entire population of Ossory, especially resistant to Christian missionizing, were cursed by St. Patrick himself…"
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