The Wars of the Roses

February 1, 2015

In the 15th century, the English crown changed hands five times as rival branches of the Plantagenets--the Lancasters and the Yorks--schemed and fought for the right to rule. The premature and sudden death of Henry V in 1422 left his infant son, Henry VI, on the throne, surrounded by quarreling councilors. In time, Henry VI grew to be a feckless leader whose ineptitude encouraged his ambitious kinsmen to plots and treason. As lawlessness and intrigue escalated, the throne fell to Edward IV and then his brother, Richard III, who had his two nephews killed to secure his crown. At the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, the Lancastrian Henry Tudor defeated Richard III, becoming King Henry VII. His subsequent marriage to Elizabeth of York merged the feuding families and launched the Tudor dynasty. Jones persuasively argues that the entire narrative of a war of white versus red roses is, in no small part, semiotically rich Tudor propaganda conceived to aggrandize the regimes of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I by contrasting 15th-century chaos with the subsequent period of relative peace and cultural efflorescence. Narrator John Curless does a superb job of enlivening this dense and complex story. VERDICT The dazzling wealth of detail and the sometimes confusing custom of referring to various nobles by their estates may require more focus than the casual listener might wish to invest, but the book is, simply, brilliant. Recommended for serious students of English history. ["This excellent and fairly accessible contribution to the history of the Wars of the Roses serves as a helpful corrective to previous mythologized versions," read the review of the Viking hc, LJ 10/15/14.]--Forrest Link, Coll. of New Jersey Lib., Ewing

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Starred review from August 25, 2014
It’s not often that a book manages to be both scholarly and a page-turner, but British historian Jones succeeds on both counts in this entertaining follow-up to his bestselling The Plantagenets (currently in production as a television miniseries). Previously, Jones explored the Plantagenets’ rise to power, while here he examines their destruction. He begins in 1422 when Henry V dies, leaving the throne to an infant, and continues for the next 100 years through the reign of Henry VIII. Following Henry VI’s descent into madness and the utter collapse of royal authority, dynastic “wars of politics and personality” erupted as England’s elite families fought over the throne. Jones breathes new life into an oft-told account of how the crown changed hands five times before a young Welshman with a dubious claim wrested it from Richard III in 1485. Only during a period of utter chaos, Jones argues, could the Tudors have risen so high so quickly. But, he contends, due to their weak claim, they were forced to annihilate the Plantagenets, going so far as Henry VIII having the elderly Margaret de la Pole executed in 1541. Jones sets a new high-water mark in the current revisionism of the Tudor era.