The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors

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As recently as 1448 York and the duke of Somerset had been granted lands in joint trusteeship—a sign that there was no division (yet) perceived between those two men. Throughout it all, Henry VI seemed desensitised: during one battle he sat under a tree, sang songs and laughed. We get to meet Margaret, who in my mind is the real power behind Henry VI and the Earl of Warwick, the King Maker.

It appeared that the Hundred Years’ War had been settled and England had regained much of the continental land that it had lost in the thirteenth century. The toddler tantrum that the one year-old king threw on his way to his first parliament in 1423 (only curbed by a sojourn in Staines) was a rare expression of royal will. I was feeding information back to my family members on the opposite side of the war, one in which was highly accurate for the time period—William Neville went from supporting the House of Lancaster to supporting the House of York in the later end of the war. In this follow up to his book, The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England, I felt the author, Dan Jones, has done an admirable job of explaining the whys and wherefores of the struggle that became known as the Wars of the Roses. Her death had more to do with her Plantagenet blood and the fact that she was the daughter of George, Duke of Clarence, than with any crime she committed.We then get a focus on the wives, of Margaret of Anjou and of Cecily Neville, two women on completely different sides of the war. In 1471 he killed Warwick at the battle of Barnet and Prince Edward at the battle of Tewkesbury, and had Henry VI murdered in the Tower of London. This war rocked English pride, wrought havoc on royal finances and created personal feuds (but not dynastic rivalry) between men such as Richard, Duke of York, and Edmund, Duke of Somerset. Over the next couple of weeks, I will review 10 books which all Royal History Geeks should add to their reading list.

I felt this was a solid 4 star read and whould recommend it to any one interested in English or Medieval history. Faber Members get access to live and online author events and receive regular e-newsletters with book previews, promotional offers, articles and quizzes. And it is worth noting that, though the white rose was one of a number of badges used by York and his family, the ‘Lancastrian’ royal family never used the red rose as a symbol during the conflict. 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.The situation was trickier back then because of how England claimed territory in France, which was seen in the Hundred Years’ War and the claims to the throne, thus adding the French monarchy into the mix.

The double rose created a number of false assumptions: that Henry Tudor was on a par, in terms of royal blood, with the white-rose Yorkists; that his marriage to Elizabeth of York put an end to the violence that had engulfed England in the second half of the 15th century; and that the “Wars of the Roses” (a 19th-century term) was simply a blood feud between two branches of the Plantagenet dynasty. If you want to begin a study into this time, I highly recommend you read, “The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors”. Fascinating detail, accurate history, keen political awareness, pithy and amusing comment, altogether you get a really wonderful picture of an otherwise confusing situation. Jones looks at how the English experience in France, the end of the 100 Years War, and the inability of Henry’s son, Henry VI, to be an effective ruler led to the conditions that gave rise to the civil war.

These questions and more are explored in Dan Jones’ book, “The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors”. While I do like Game of Thrones, I don’t really care that the War of the Roses is the back story to it. Since the discovery of Richard III’s remains, interest in the Wars of the Roses has reached fever pitch.