Most Americans dismiss George III as a buffoon—a heartless and terrible monarch with few, if any, redeeming qualities. The best-known modern interpretation of him is Jonathan Groff’s preening and pompous take in Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Broadway masterpiece. This deeply unflattering characterization, says British historian Andrew Roberts, is rooted in the prejudiced and brilliantly persuasive opinions of eighteenth-century revolutionaries like Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, who needed to make the king appear evil to achieve their own political aims.

After combing through hundreds of thousands of pages of never-before-published correspondence as he wrote his book The Last King of America, Roberts offers a very different perspective: George III was a wise, humane, and even enlightened monarch who was beset by talented enemies, debilitating mental illness, incompetent ministers, and disastrous luck.

In a live-streamed talk from London, Roberts paints a more nuanced portrait of the much-maligned monarch and outlines his accomplishments, which have been almost universally forgotten. Two hundred and forty-five years after the end of George III’s rule of the colonies, he asks Americans to look back on their last king with greater understanding: to see him as he was and to come to terms with the final time they were ruled by a monarch.

The Last King of America: The Misunderstood Reign of George III (Viking) is available for purchase.

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