This is a story that ends badly, with ‘A wretched and blundering youth’ hacking at the head and shoulders of an old lady dressed in new shoes. (Okay, yes, I think he was framed! Guess I am a conspiracy theorist now 😂) Such as how this modern view held of Richard largely stems from none other than his enemy Henry Tudor. Certainly it could happen, but I think the arguments put forth by those with doubts are compelling. Nobody will ever know if a beloved brother, loyal friend and kind leader, described by contemporary sources as having "a good heart" and never seeking land or power gains for himself, suddenly did an about-turn and murdered his nephew to steal the throne. Interesting that Jones is firmly on the "guilty" side of the Richard III debate, though I do wish he'd shared some of the opposing views.
Clearly he was not suited to leadership in the 15th century, preferring to help people and pour money into education than to wage wars with France. I'm pretty well-versed in Henry VIII and family, but have only held a very blurry picture of the wars preceding their reign until now.Īll I knew about Henry VI before this was what I got from The Sunne in Splendour, which is to say not a lot. It is about the Wars of the Roses and nothing to do with the later Tudors, which is what I wanted.
Includes six maps and four genealogies.This was good. The best-selling author of The Plantagenets traces the 15th-century civil wars that irrevocably shaped the British crown, particularly evaluating the roles of strong women including Margaret of Anjou, Elizabeth Woodville and Margaret Beaufort in shifting power between two ruling families. It also offers a long-overdue corrective to Tudor propaganda, dismantling their self-serving account of what they called the Wars of the Roses. With vivid descriptions of the battles of Towton and Bosworth, where the last Plantagenet king was slain, this dramatic narrative history revels in bedlam and intrigue. This was a period when headstrong queens and consorts seized power and bent men to their will. Some of the greatest heroes and villains of history were thrown together in these turbulent times, from Joan of Arc to Henry V, whose victory at Agincourt marked the high point of the medieval monarchy, and Richard III, who murdered his own nephews in a desperate bid to secure his stolen crown. Celebrated historian Dan Jones describes how the longest-reigning British royal family tore itself apart until it was finally replaced by the Tudors. The crown of England changed hands five times over the course of the fifteenth century, as two branches of the Plantagenet dynasty fought to the death for the right to rule.
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