ANARCHY IN THE (PRE-)UK:

House of the Dragon is loosely based on a real historical event - a bleak interlude in English history between 1135 and 1153 known as the Anarchy.

It begins with King Henry I, whose succession is thrown into disarray with the White Ship disaster of 1120, which claimed the life of his sole legitimate son, William Adelin.

Though Henry rapidly remarried - to a woman 35 years his junior - he would have no other sons, and so he named his daughter Empress Matilda as his heir, and forced his begrudging court to swear their allegiance to her.

In the case of the Anarchy, it was a cousin rather than a step-sibling who would prove to be the undoing of Henry's best-laid plans.

When Henry I died on 1 December 1135, some nobles declared that the king had released them from their oaths. They looked to continental Europe for an alternative, and they found one in the form of Stephen of Blois, second son of Henry's sister Adela. Twenty-two days after the king's death, Stephen was in London wearing the crown. But Matilda had not renounced her claim to the throne - and so their civil war began.

It wasn't called the Anarchy due to the ferocity of the conflict, but because of the supposed lack of control Stephen had over the country when he was king.

But was it really anarchic? Historian Matthew Lewis questions whether this badge of dishonour is deserved, or the product of revisionism.

"If King Stephen would have recognised anarchy, it was only in the sense of so many diverse threats emerging at once: Empress Matilda in England, her husband Geoffrey conquering Normandy, King David [of Scotland] in the north, and rebel barons," he writes.

Instead, he suggests, could the name be the result of Plantagenet spin? "Stephen's reign was not glorious, but that does not make it anarchic. Few wholly unsuccessful rulers lasted 19 years and died in their bed still wearing the crown."

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