Short answers, pulled from the story.
John was King of England from 1199 until his death in 1216. He was the youngest son of King Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, and was nicknamed John Lackland, or Jean sans Terre, because as a younger son he was not expected to inherit significant lands.
John was nicknamed John Lackland, or Jean sans Terre, because as the youngest son of Henry II he was not expected to inherit significant lands. His father Henry II jokingly gave him the name during his childhood.
John lost Normandy to King Philip II of France by 1204, after his treatment of Norman, Breton and Anjou nobles caused widespread desertions. His allies abandoned him following his victory at Mirebeau, Château Gaillard fell in March 1204, and by August Philip had taken Normandy and advanced into Anjou and Poitou.
John was excommunicated by Pope Innocent III in November 1209 after a dispute over the election of Stephen Langton as Archbishop of Canterbury. John barred Langton from England and seized church lands, and Innocent had already placed an interdict on England in March 1208 that halted most religious services.
John and his rebel barons agreed to Magna Carta as a peace treaty in 1215. The document is considered a foundational milestone in English and later British constitutional history, though neither side complied with its conditions and civil war broke out shortly afterward.
John died of dysentery in eastern England in late 1216, during the civil war known as the First Barons' War. The following year, supporters of his son Henry III defeated Philip's son Louis and the rebel barons.
Contemporary chroniclers were mostly critical of John's performance as king. Historian Jim Bradbury summarises modern opinion of John as a hard-working administrator, an able man and an able general, while Ralph Turner notes distasteful, even dangerous personality traits such as pettiness, spitefulness and cruelty.