The Challenge to Providence

John and Gaimar’s histories eschew explanation by Providence to focus more on short-term and earthly causes for events. For them, an English king has more causal responsibility than in their sources, but the sphere of his influence is less than it is for William and Henry. John and Gaimar tend to evaluate kings more based on their intentions and efforts than on the outcomes they achieve or on the scale of their successes. John’s history is a Latin monastic chronicle; Gaimar’s a poem in the vernacular, Anglo-Norman French: but the key similarities between John and Gaimar’s works show that the narrative phenomenon of royal responsibility is not a factor of genre or language.