John of Gaunt III's rule was becoming unpopular due to high taxation and his affair with Alice Perrers, political opinion closely associated the Duke of Lancaster with the failing government of the 1370s. Furthermore, while King Edward and the Prince of Wales were popular heroes due to their successes on the battlefield, John of Gaunt had not won equivalent military renown that could have bolstered his reputation. Although he fought in the Battle of Nájera (1367), for example, his later military projects proved unsuccessful. When Edward III died in 1377 and John's ten-year-old nephew succeeded as Richard II of England, John's influence strengthened.
A Protégée of the Mistress A Protégée of the Mistress A Protégée of the Mistress ("Vospitannitsa", Воспитанница; also, "The Ward Girl") is a play by Alexander Ostrovsky, first published in the No.1, January 1859 issue of "Biblioteka Dlya Chteniya". Refused the permission to be produced at the Imperial Theatres in October 1859, it premiered in Maly Theatre, Moscow, only on October 21, 1863. Ostrovsky conceived "A Protégée of the Mistress" in 1855 as a two-act play. On July 12 of that year he prepared a rough draft of the Act 1 and compiled a list of characters, some of which (retired official Zakhar Zveroboyev, merchant