Customer Reviews

The Perfect Prince: The Mystery of Perkin Warbeck and His Quest for the Throne of England

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I really enjoyed The Perfect Prince for several reasons. First, it covers a fascinating period of English and European history, the late 1400s when the Europeans were beginning to stretch beyond their own borders into other continents like Africa and the Americas. At the same time the European nation states were in the final stages of coalescence, so that terms like "England" and "France" were beginning to have more than just rough geographical meanings. Secondly, I liked this book for its detailed coverage of the mystery of the vanished Princes and whether or not Perkin Warbeck was actually Richard, Duke of York. This is one of the oldest European historical mysteries, but it is just as intriguing as more modern conundrums, such as what happened to the Dauphin in 1793 or to two of the last Tsar's children in 1918. Thirdly, this book is beautifully written, with fine psychological insights into Perkin himself, King Henry VII, Margaret of Burgundy, and numerous others who tend to be considered mere names in dry as dust annals.

So I recommend this book to students of royal and/or English history and to anyone who enjoys a fine, well told tale of mystery and intrigue.

I first heard the story of the little princes when I was taking an undergraduate course in English history many years ago, and I really wanted them to have escaped death. Apparently, many people in late fifteenth century England hoped the same thing, even to the point of risking lives and fortunes to support someone who claimed to be one of the princes. Alas, as Ann Wroe recounts so well in her excellent book on the subject, it was all a charade. Regardless of the disappointment when one discovers that Perkin Warbeck was only a pretender and that the princes actually died in the Tower, it is such a pleasure to encounter a book that rises above the commonplace and takes one to another time in such fine fashion that even after 500+ pages the reader is left wanting more. This is a first-rate mystery that Ms. Wroe, whose writing skills have obviously been honed through her many years at The Economist, has turned into a tour of late fifteenth century England. The story is a compelling one of intrigue and treachery and betrayal, and Ms. Wroe has told it with elegance and wit. Hers is a book that I savored, only too sorry when it came to an end. Drawing upon her background as a historian of the medieval age, Ms. Wroe has presented us with a tour de force, a detailed journey through an age that is so far removed from our own that we might be talking about a different planet. This was a time when kings and princes and dukes and knights plotted and counter-plotted and Machiavelli was not just a name to be remembered in a "Jeopardy" contest, but an actual practitioner of the art of political intrigue. This is a book for those who want detail, for Ms. Wroe has looted and pillaged through every relevant archive and has brought to bear an enormous amount of scholarship. It is at the same time that rare volume that combines prodigious and meticulous research with writing that almost literally sings. There were times when I found myself reading sentences aloud just to hear they way they were put together. I highly recommend this book to serious readers of non-fiction, and even dare to suggest that those who normally read only works of fiction would find that it captures and holds their interest from first page to last. This book is, I am confident in asserting, the very last word on one of the most fascinating and little-known episodes in English history. A perfect read for a perfect prince.

I was so bemused by the vigorous attacks here, and such a fan of Pontius Pilate, that I put The Perfect Prince at the head of my reading list, jumping over a few long-waiting candidates, just to see what the problem was.

In a word, I haven't the vaguest.

I didn't find the book difficult to follow at all, and it rewards readers' attention with a wealth of fascinating detail that matches the drama of the story.

I don't care to speculate as to whether the intense hostility is motivated by short attention spans or the pique that some people inevitably display when a book they don't care for is praised, but I found Prince to be a rare, cherishable pleasure.

With respect to the above gentleman from Pennsylvania, I believe it is, I cannot quite credit that we read the same book. To my mind, Perkin is a majestic work of investigative, scholarly history. Wroe writes with verve and elegance about the closing of the medieval period and the opening out of the new world; it is no coincidence we find Perkin first of all in Portugal, among the adventurers and chancers who were to characterise his ascent. The mystery of Perkin naturally lends itself to speculation and Wroe lets the reader draw his or her own conclusions. I am still making up my own mind as to his identity (if not to his character). Perhaps the best compliment I can pay the book is that, eager to unravel the mystery, I lugged the hefty hardback version of it around Afghanistan through the autumn. The battered survivor (the tome that is) is still doing the rounds in Kabul, where intelligent reading is much in demand.

Those seeking a concise biography of the figure who has come to be known as Perkin Warbeck would best look elsewhere (an encyclopedia perhaps). But those with a taste for more profound, and more profoundly insightful history will be richly rewarded. Ann Wroe provides not just the definitive account of Warbeck in fascinating, meticulous detail but enlarges her narrative to encompass myriad aspects of life in late fifteenth-century western Europe. Readers truly enter into the world Wroe re-creates in almost sculptural dimensionality. This is an exemplary work by a deeply gifted scholar and writer, and also a fascinating read from start to finish.

As with her dazzling "Pontius Pilate," Anne Wroe breathes new life into the biography form while bringing to light the fascinating life of Perkin Warbeck.

While her almost pointillist detail may frustrate those (like the reviewer who calls himself "a voracious reader" who's read more than 10,000 books) who prefer a Cliff's Notes approach to biography, the more descerning reader will delight in the wealth of research wed to the prose of this master stylist.

Superb!

Ann Wroe has written a brilliantly rich history of one of the great mysteries of Europe. As with Anastasia Romanov, alleged to have escaped a Chekist firing squad, so too was Richard IV alleged to have escaped from the Tower of London and the clutches of his uncle Richard III (of Shakespeare's play.) Between 1491 - 1497, a young man claiming to be rightful heir to the English throne (and threatening the position of Henry VII) was recognized by many royal houses in Europe, married an aristocratic Scot, and gathered a veritable army of supporters. What Wroe explores isn't so much whether this person really was Richard IV, but if he was not, how did he manage to bamboozle so many into believing he was?

Wroe does not definitively state that the man claimed by so many to be Richard IV was, in fact, a lowly born son of a boatman from Flanders (as claimed by the Tudors.) That Richard and Edward died in the Tower is almost certain. The beauty and strength of _The Perfect Prince_ is the variety of sources used in examining why would people - including several members of the ruling houses of Europe - believe that Richard IV escaped? Because most of the extant documents surrounding this controversey are from Henry VII's court (which of course had a vested interest in destroying the credibility of the "imposter") Wroe is forced to examine the subtle nuances of early 16th century life: manners, dress, poetry, art and language. These are all part of the historical tapestry she uses in determining who this person was and how he pulled off what apparently was a charade for six years. Undoubtedly (given the 2 and 3 star reviews) the amount of detail is overwhelming - and I can empathize, as it can be difficult to see the forest for the trees. The patient reader, however is rewarded by gaining a depth of understanding of the early modern European mind that is unusual in most narrative histories. Recommended for the serious student of history.

... could possibly have held my avid attention through 500 packed pages as closely as this "Perfect Prince"! Fair warning, though! It's not casual reading. It's a book of speculative scholarship, in which the reader will need to distinguish between research and intuition. It's decidedly NOT a mere account of events as 'facts'. The events it examines were relatively minor in the course of the reigns of Henry VII in England, Maximilian in Austria, and Ferdinand and Isabella in Spain. A young man, the Prince of the title, asserted that he was the younger son of King Edward IV, supposed to have been murdered by Richard III (remember your Shakespeare?), and thus the legitimate heir to the throne 'falsely' occupied by Henry of Tudor. In short, the young man was a "Yorkist Pretender", one of several out of the many Young Pretenders who have stirred up turmoil in British history. This young man, however, came closer to success than most, receiving 'recognition' from Irish, Scottish, and Flemish supporters. Eventually, the young man attempted three serious invasions, all quashed easily. He was captured, kept prisoner in a bizarre fashion, escaped twice, and eventually was executed.

As I said, however, Ann Wroe's "The Perfect Prince" is not a mere history of doubtful events. It's a "history of mentalities" in the most modern, intellectual, 'French' style. Lovers of old-fashioned narrative history, take care! You may find this book a challenge to your presuppositions about the goals and the tools of history. Wroe draws upon cultural materials -- art and iconography, religious tracts and scurrilous ballads, literary accounts of the drama and fiscal accounts of payments for stabling of horses -- to probe the perception, the meaning, of those doubtful events for the people who observed or participated in them. In other words, Wroe aims to recreate the "World View" of Europeans circa 1490. As I read her book, she's come closer to that goal than any other historian I know.

And I know the period fairly well, from a perspective of involvement in it. No, I'm not 500 years old, although at times I feel it! My involvement is through the music of the times, particularly the polyphony of the great Flemish composers Obrecht and Desprez. Music isn't mentioned much in Wroe's book, but the art of Bruges and Ghent figure importantly. I've stared at that art. I've walked those streets. I KNOW that people of 1490 viewed "truth and deception" - Wroe's subtitle- as well as Love and Faith, in ways that were fundamentally different from ours today. It's the insights into their mentalities which make this challenging book worth the effort to read.

There is a romance in the book, nonetheless. The young Yorkist pretender is given a political bride, the most beautiful maiden in Scotland and the daughter of a mighty Earl, and the two seem actually to have fallen in Love. Theirs is as tragic a love story as any in literature. I hereby claim the movie rights!

There is also a Mystery. Indeed, the mystery is the heart of the history. The young pretender had many 'names' in the annals and probably in the mouths of his times: the Duke of York, the White Rose, Richard IV... or alternatively, form the opposite camp, "the boy", 'the feigned lad', Perkin Warbeck. His identity had fatal and passionate significance for both his supporters and his enemies. Was there any real possibility that the young man was what he claimed, the son of Edward IV? Or was he the extraordinary impostor that Henry VII spent vast sums to prove he was... the son of a brawling boatman of Tournai, of the lowest birth, a mere "Petey" (Perkin in Dutch). The surname thrust upon him - Warbeck - happens to be one I know well from another angle; a cousin of the real Warbeck clan was Gaspar de Waerbecke, a composer whose music I've played. Author Wroe examines both possible realities minutely; the 'facts', of course, were recorded by the victors, and the basic claim of royal identity is monstrously improbable, and yet nothing is quite so clear, no two accounts jibe, no account makes entirely plausible intuitive sense. The truth is unknowable at our remove. What matters is what 'sense' people made of Perkin/Richard THEN. The image of Perkin Warbeck, by the way, remained potent in the imaginations of Englishmen throughout the next century and a half; a contemporary of Shakespeare wrote a fine bombastic stage drama about him.

Ann Wroe is one of my favorite literary historians. Her other books include a speculative 'biography' of Pontius Pilate, a painfully factual history of the Iran-Contra misdeeds of Ronald Reagan and his aides, and "A Fool and His Money", the history of a miser in late Medieval Rodez, France.

I found the Perfect Prince to be a well written and superbly research book on Perkin Warbeck affair that plagued King Henry VII of England duirng the last decade of the 15th century. The research goes deeply into this blond pretender who claims to be Richard, Duke of York who somehow survived his days in the Tower of London while his older brother was murdered. The level of deception proves to be so great that many great monarchs of Europe gave their support of him and many English men great or small gave their support as well as their lives for him.

Ann Wroe investigates this interesting sideshow of European history, trying to determined the true nature of this blond fellow who fooled so many, often with their lives and his origins. The study of motivation of Perkin Warbeck, aka: Ricahrd, Duke of York proves to be an interesting and indepth look. One of the important side subjects of this book remains the fate of the princes of the tower, a subject that continued to interest many during the last decade of the 15th century as well as up to the 21st century.

If there was a weakness in this book, I believed it had a lot to do with the fact that the book was over written. Too many petty details were brought out in the book, too tedious at times in some sections. I thought the book could have been edited more tightly.

Still, this book proves to be an interesting read although it tailored to a specific subject matter. Anyone who got any interest in the fate of the Princes in the Tower should read this book. Of course, Henry VII make a dour subject matter but this booka also reflects upon his rule as well.

This is an extremely well-researched, well-written biography of an intriguing young man who may have been the rightful King of England. I give Wroe full marks for her fascinating, open-minded portrayal of a confusing and turbulent period of history that in other hands has often been handled so poorly that it's impossible to follow. Her work is highly readable, and her research is original, cutting-edge, nsightful and thought-provoking. If a reader is really interested in this period, then Ann Wroe's book must not be missed.