Customer Reviews

The Last Medieval Queens: English Queenship 1445-1503

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I wouldn't recommend this book as a "good read" necessarily, this writer isn't Alison Weir or Carolly Erickson, but there are good details throughout that illustrate the idea of queenship in the last half of the 15th century. The cover claims that it is about Margaret of Anjou, Elizabeth Woodville, Anne Neville, and Elizabeth of York, however don't be confused into thinking this is a biography of these four women. Rather the book is split into four subjects, such as ceremony, motherhood, households, etc. and uses those particular queens to illustrate certain points.
If you have a background in the subject area than this book offers some interesting details, however if you are new to the war of the roses time period than I would suggest starting elsewhere.

This book was quite a disappointment. What little bits of new information you might glean were buried in disorganized details. Example of two sentences from page 192 on the role of the queen's family: "Richard II was more fortunate, and perhaps more careful, with his half-brothers than Henry III had been. John Holland and his nephew Thomas Holland were members of Richard's inner circle in the 1390s, but were spared by Henry IV, probably at least in part because John had married Henry's sister Elizabeth, but possibly also because their influence over the king was not considered as malign as that of the chamber knights of the 1380s, nor had Richard aroused resentment against them by so heaping them with honours as he had his cousin the earl of Ruland or William le Scrope." Huh? This is a book about Margarent of Angou, Elizabeth Woodville, Anne Neville and Elizabeth or York?