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Elizabethan political theory held that the monarch is God’s anointed; disobedience and rebellion are grievous sins and invite divine wrath. Richard is the legitimate king, yet Bolingbroke appears to be the abler ruler. What is more to blame for Bolingbroke’s challenge to Richard: The former’s temerity or the latter’s inadequacies? And can a rebel terminate the damage done by an erring (yet lawful) king only at the cost of damaging the realm even further?
