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

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As with his earlier volume, The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England, Jones has developed narrative nonfiction covering a complicated era of history and made it a pleasure to read. He clearly establishes that the Wars of the Roses were about so much more than who had the strongest royal blood. Summer of Blood: the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 by Dan Jones: review". The Daily Telegraph. London. 30 May 2009 . Retrieved 11 February 2012. The politics of blood has always amused me. The idea that someone is automatically deserving of something – a crown, for instance – because of who their father or mother was, is probably the most absurd, unjust thing ever thought up. So we have Dan Jones’ book “The War of the Roses” in which many characters run about claiming that this person has more of a right to wear the crown than that person because they’re supposedly a more direct descendant of a former king or queen.

Dan Jones (30 September 2012). "Blood Sisters: The Hidden Lives of the Women Behind the Wars of the Roses by Sarah Gristwood". The Sunday Times. London. Archived from the original on 28 July 2014. Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil. Discover the real history behind The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses, the PBS Great Performance series of Shakespeare's plays, starring Judi Dench, Benedict Cumberbatch, Sofie Okenedo and Hugh Bonneville. At first Henry VI, seemed merely gentle and weak. As a young man he was a loving – if not very potent - husband to his loyal wife, Margaret of Anjou, and a kindly half-brother to the recent, and very embarrassing, Tudor additions to the royal family. His widowed mother had married a Welshman ‘of no birth neither of livelihood’, one Owen Tudor, with whom she had fallen in love after he had fallen drunk into her lap at a party (or so legend had it).

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Jones describes the fascinating rise of the Tudors. It is probably even more remarkable than the rise of the Stewarts in Scotland. Owen Tudor was a Welsh nobleman. He claimed some ancestry from Welsh kings. Jones is dubious of the claims, but, of course, Welsh kings would include Arthur. He became the lover and then the wife of King Henry V’s widow. When the Yorkists were in power after 1460, the Tudors were in France and Brittany for safety. Owen’s son Edward had one son, Henry.

When discussing the Lambert Simnel plot, Jones mentions that Margaret of York, the dowager Duchess of Burgundy and the sister of Edward IV and Richard III, "ruled the Netherlands...on behalf of her son Philip the Fair." In fact, Margaret had no children; Philip was her step-grandson, the son of her deceased stepdaughter Mary (the daughter of Margaret's husband, Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, from his first marriage) and her husband, Maximilian of the Habsburg dynasty (later Holy Roman Emperor). King Arthur! Yes, these British folk were positively obsessed with King Arthur. Except that naming your child Arthur seems to be ensuring them an early death. Alas, there has never been an actual King Arthur, despite many attempts. Just imagine if Elizabeth II had named her son Charles, Arthur. That guy? The first King Arthur? He's not pulling any swords from stones!Okay, now the women. I remember reading The Life of Elizabeth I by Alison Weir and found out that while men fought battles, the women waged wars. Elizabeth York, Margaret Beaufort, those are some fantastic real-life characters that were tenacious and dedicated to their causes. I love reading about powerful women. They are not always have to be femme fatales, you know. Richard of Gloucester (later Richard III) is described as "still only 22 years old in 1472." In fact, he was born in October 1452, so in 1472 he was only 19 or 20, depending on the specific date.

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It doesn’t feel too far removed from today’s world either. A recent U.S. President and the current Canadian Prime Minister both got their jobs based not on their qualifications but because of whom their fathers were. Likewise, having a celebrity parent doesn’t just guarantee you a rich inheritance, but a plum posting on television as though you were some sort of expert on anything other than how it felt to be born with a silver spoon in your mouth (looking at you, Meghan McCain, among others).