(6) Tree Line

The Magna Carta's a whopping eight hundred years old and unless you're an expert on medieval taxes—are you? you're our hero—you'll need the glossary to help explain a few antiquated terms.

Also the voice isn't cohesive. Some of the clauses are written as general rules applying to everyone, while others are written as promises from the king who speaks in majestic plural, also known as "the royal we."

Helpful hint: whenever you see "we" and "our," that's the king talking about himself in first-person plural as if he were several pretentious people instead of just one.

Once you get used to these shifts, the basic ideas are fairly simplistic. This isn't Shakespeare—it's a list of complaints and most of them are so ordinary you'll find yourself thinking, "I can't believe they actually had to write that down," like when you're babysitting and you have to say, "No, you can't learn to juggle knives just because your parents are out."

The Magna Carta is an attempt to spell out some very basic ideas for a shockingly unwilling king.