Five years later, in 1420, the king was regent of France, heir to the French throne, and married to their princess, Catherine of Valois. Yet Dan Jones’s thrilling account ‘of the Wars and the Roses & the rise of the Tudors’ begins so very differently.Ĭhildren dressed as angels, with gold painted faces, sang ‘Hail flower of England, knight of Christendom’, as they greeted Henry V on his return to London following the great victory at Agincourt. She is the last Plantagenet, executed on the orders of the Henry VIII. 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.

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