Hardcover

The subtitle of this book should be: An essay on how many times you can flip-flop between two factions before your head gets chopped off and stuck on a pole somewhere.

We all know the famous Wars of the Roses, which came directly before the equally famous reign of Henry VIII and the other Tudors. But history, and in a large part Shakespeare's plays, have simplified the event into a (relatively) simple conflict between the two warring families of York and Lancaster, represented by the red and white roses respectively. Dan Jones sets out in this volume to prove that the Wars were actually far, far more complex than that. Oh, and if you have trouble keeping track of Roman numerals and of a million and one Henrys, Edwards, Richards, Elizabeths, and Margarets, you're in for a ride - no, but I'd recommend that you at least keep a character cheat sheet with you while reading this book.

One might wonder why the book starts in a seemingly unconnected time, some decades before the actual conflict begins, with Henry V on the throne, but I think Jones's point here is to draw a line between how some seemingly minor event occurring many decades prior (e.g. Henry V's widow, Catherine de Valois's second marriage to a relatively unimportant and unknown Welshman, Owen Tudor) to the major event that it will precipitate later on (e.g. Owen Tudor's grandson by Catherine, Henry Tudor, ostensibly ending the Wars of the Roses and ending up as King Henry VII). The butterfly effect on full display here.

As you might expect from the title, this book is chock full of military strategy, battles, treachery, uprisings, and a ton of violence. Still though, I found myself a little bored in the first half of the book when it concentrates mostly on Henry VI's ineptitude, and the power struggle between Richard, Duke of York, and Henry VI's wife, Queen Margaret of Anjou. There were so many Somersets, Buckinghams, Warwicks, Suffolks, Norfolks that were cycled through not just in terms who these noblemen are (their titles passed from father to son very quickly because they kept getting killed in battle or executed for treason by someone or other), but also whose sides they were on (even I couldn't tell you that right now, just assume that they have all at some point been on either side and have flip flopped at least once, if not multiple times). I skimmed through some parts of the book because there was just so many times I could read about yet another battle, but I paid attention to who won and who got his head cut off so that I could still broadly follow on the political action.

The most exciting parts of the book for me was after Edward IV, son of Richard Duke of York, took the throne and married Elizabeth Woodville, against the advice of everyone he knows. Even his most trusted advisor and ally, Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, who was also nicknamed the Kingmaker because of how he had been instrumental in bringing Edward and his father to the throne against Lancastrian opposition, eventually flip-flopped over to the Lancastrian faction after this act of defiance. This was, to me, the meat of the book. It was fun seeing how Edward struggled to hold on to his newly claimed throne against his predecessor, Henry VI (of Lancaster), and then later how he even condemned his own brother George, Duke of Clarence, because he was an annoying upstart who had already led two rebellions against him.

I'm also slightly more familiar with this time in history because of the very (in)famous Richard III, who was Edward IV's younger brother. He remains an enigmatic figure for me, previously a stout-hearted and loyal commander with an almost hero-worshipping attitude for his brother the King, Richard III is remembered by history to become some kind of misshapen villain in his later years, usurping the throne from his young nephews after Edward IV's death, locking them in the Tower of London and purportedly arranging for their mysterious disappearance. Thus, the legend of the Princes of the Tower was born.

And yet, how much of what we know about this period was influenced by Shakespeare's plays? How much have we actually bought into the Tudor propaganda that has persisted since then? I remain intrigued by this period simply because so much of it has been “taken for granted” because of those plays, like Edward IV's bravery, Richard III's villainy, Richard II's tyranny, and Henry VI's incompetence. It's like someone painted a picture of what they wanted us to see and pasted it over a a slightly more accurate photograph, and we have grown so accustomed to this picture over the past four centuries that have passed since then that we are only now just starting to peel back the layers to uncover more historically accurate information beneath.

The Wars of the Roses

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