Customer Reviews

The Wars of the Roses

5 star:		(31)
4 star:		(24)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The Wars of the Roses are one of the most confusing periods of English history. From the origins in the rivalries between Edward III's children to the final resolution with the founding of the Tudor dynasty by Henry VII, there are eight kings, including some of the best and worst England has had; and literally scores of major figures and families: the Nevilles, the Percys, the Woodvilles, the Beauforts, the Cliffords, the Bourchiers -- the list is endless.

Making this all comprehensible the first time through is simply impossible. Weir almost manages it, though; her style is very readable and friendly, and exciting without being sensational. Weir begins with a short section describing what England was like in the fifteenth century; then she starts the story proper with Edward III, whose five sons and their families are the central players in the history.

She ends her story in 1471, with the defeat of the Lancastrians and the subsequent murder of Henry VI. She only gives a page or two to the remainder of Edward IV's reign, and to the story of Richard III and the princes in the tower, and Henry VII's ultimate accession in 1485. This is almost certainly because she has covered this ground in another book, "The Princes In The Tower". The omission is understandable but still rather a mistake -- the conflict doesn't end till the Tudors are on the throne (and not even then, really -- there were pretenders for years).

The only other criticism I have is that the genealogy tables at the back are too small to read easily. I tried using a magnifying glass but the reproduction is poor enough that some letters are blurred into unreadability. Even when it's readable, it's more work than it should be; this is a real problem for a book about the Wars of the Roses, where understanding the genealogy is crucial to keeping your bearings.

Overall I can recommend this strongly, just because it'll give you the overall narrative clearly and excitingly, but you'll need another source to cover the period from 1471 to 1485.

This is a wonderfully readable history, covering the finalconflict between cousins (the House of Lancaster and the House ofYork, and then the House of York and the House of Tudor) over the crown of England. As the author states in her introduction, the full story begins in 1400 begins with a murder and ends in 1471 with another murder.

Weir writes a history of people who come alive on her pages. The characters history has given her are ambitious, incompetent, promiscuous, indolent, and lustful. The tale history has given her is one of these characters acting outside the law, each for his/her own purposes and, in so doing it is an early story of violent "politics of destruction" in the literal sense. This story changed forever the history of England.

I often judge how good a book is by whether I am moved to read another one by the same author, or on the same subject. I am now reading Weir's book on Elizabeth. If you are interested in a well written history of a pivotal period in English history, I would highly recommend that you give The Wars of the Roses a try.

In terms of her attention to detail, the author has clearly done a thorough job. However, I've read much (if not all) of Weir's work (concerning Eleanor of of Aquitaine, Princes in Tower, wives and kids of Henry the VIII, and Elizabeth I), and I had to *push* myself through this one. I don't know how much of this is her fault, and how much of it is the fault of the Yorkists who were slow in finally eliminating Henry VI as a challenge to the throne- at one point I thought "I'm gonna kill Henry myself if nobody else does soon."

It is a taxing read and while I really enjoyed the other books, this one was more frustrating. The reversals of fortune were particularly frustrating- for example on one page, Jaspar Tudor has the title to Pembroke, which is stripped from him, given to somebody else who is called Pembroke repeatedly but then is killed about two pages later and the name of Pembroke is given back to Jaspar Tudor. So on one page, the name Pembroke is for the House of Lancaster, but then any reference to "Pembroke" means the guy is for the house of York, and then when it switches back to Jaspar, Pembroke is pro-Lancaster again-- So at some point you think to yourself, "Wait, why is Pembroke for Edward- I thought he liked Henry... Oh yeah..." One wonders why (for the sake of clarity)- Jaspar Tudor just can't be called Jaspar Tudor throughout. She is accurate, but at some point I wish clarity had become a priority. While this is a complaint that I and others have had about all of Weir's (and other historians' books), it's particularly troublesome here because of the vast number of people involved, as well as the number of years that it covers.

If you are interested in the wars of the roses or the succession of the British monarchy, please, by all means get this book. My primary purpose in this recommendation is to set your expectations- I'm very glad I read the thing- I just wish I'd known what a task it would be. Reading this book is like going to the gym- I don't actually like doing it, but I like having done it.

I really enjoy learning about British history - and Alsison Weir does a great job. I did find, however, that The Wars of the Roses was the most complicated of her books that I have read. I believe this is because she almost has too much information and tries to share it all. Additionally, the names of people become very confusing in that people take on the names of their title. For example a man would be the Duke of York, then when he died, his son would be the Duke of York. Weir would say "York..." and it would be tough to know whether or not the switch had happened, and because there may be more than 2 people with this name through out the book, it serves to require a lot of effor to understand who was who, while reading the book. The charts at the back help, but again, it would have been nice to have a little more information to make the story easier to follow. Overall I find Alison Weir to be a great teller of history, but I were a new reader to this, I would start with The Six Wives of Henry VIII.

"The Wars of the Roses" is an altogether fascinating account of what may be, I suspect , a not so well understood era of English medieval history. Alison Weir tells the story of the wars between the Houses of Lancaster and York in 15th century England in a most compelling manner. She allows the reader to get to know such disparate characters as the weak and unstable usurper Lancastrian King Henry VI and his ambitious and ruthless queen, Margaret of Anjou; the Duke of York, who led the fight against the Lancasters, at first attempting to establish good government in England under Henry VI, and later, with an eye toward taking the English throne for himself; and York's son, Edward, conscientious and competent, who, after the Duke's death, picked up his father's fallen banner and deposed Henry VI, becoming King Edward IV, and ultimately ending the Wars of the Roses.

Weir weaves personalities and a highly complex series of events into a well organized, easily understandable and highly entertaining narrative. I found "The Wars of the Roses" to be thoroughly enjoyable and very well written indeed.

Weir does nothing so well as interpret fact. She succeeds more than most writers in conveying historical context, which is critical for a reader of history. It is almost impossible for us in the 20th century to put ourselves in the places of the people who participated in the Wars of the Roses without the help of someone like her. I especially recommend this book for readers of historical fiction. Weir's prose flows almost as smoothly as any novelist's, but you are left with history (as best as it can presented), not some fantasy.

The Richard III fans out there should read this BEFORE reading the Princes in the Tower. While it is sometimes easier to read history when you already know what happens next, this book will hammer home needed perspective; such as, why pretenders to be kings (and princes) were doomed to death and not just doomed to losing their crowns.

I can say nothing but huge amount of praises for Allison Weir's War of the Roses. Its superbly readable, entertainingly fun and quite educational. But why would an author of her scholarship end the account of the War of the Roses at Battle of Tewkesbury in 1471? This is supposed to be a book on the War of the Roses, right? Its like writing a book on World War II and ending it at Stalingrad and Fall of Tunis in first half of 1943!! I read Weir's Princes in the Tower and that book is more like an investigation of their death and the blame. War of the Roses stuff were basically background material. So it can't be considered as "second volume" of this book. Since anyone who knows anything about War of Roses knows that the war "officially" ended with Battle of Bosworth in 1485 which saw the fall of Richard Plantagent to Henry Tudor which resulted in the total change of the royal line (even if they are all related in one ways or another), this book should have gone on that point. Weir probably thought that after Tewkesbury, there wasn't much going on military wise for 14 years until Bosworth but politics can be considered as a form of warfare back then and there were a lot of that going on to make War of the Roses one of the more interesting military conflicts in history. But until she stopped, Weir does a very good job and maybe, she can write a real "second volume" of this book.

The time was fascinating enough for Shakespeare to have devoted three plays to it, and several more to its prelude. The various descendants of Edward III were fighting each other for the crown of England (and parts of France) throughout the middle 15th century, in a battle of cousin against cousin (even brother against brother) that later on became known as The Wars of the Roses. In this book Alison Weir gives a blow-by-blow account of the various conflicts in the reign of Henry VI and Edward IV. She has a long prelude wherein she sets the stage with the deposing of Richard II by Henry Bolingbroke (who became, then, Henry IV), his subsequent career, and that of Henry V, who died leaving the baby Henry VI king, setting the stage for the power struggles to come.

Weir has clearly mastered her material, but still this story seemed curiously lifeless. There are murders and betrayals aplenty, and even occasional selfless and heroic behavior, but presented rather matter-of-factly. Besides this, there are a couple of problems that I see.

One is perhaps typical of a history: unless the historian has the flair of a storyteller, it just becomes one damn thing after another. I found little that was compelling in a narrative with great possibilities, nor motivation for what seemed to be bizarre behavior on everyone's part.

Another problem here was simply in a lack of supporting material. Maps of territories being contested, and diagrams of battles, would help to place these events in space and give each fight an identity. What is more, a dense chronicle like this one needs to be bristling with dates, perhaps as a running comment in a margin. We are given the day and the month constantly as things go on, but I found myself having forgotten the year, and unable to find it. Rather than constantly wading through detail, a reader should be able to get out and see the wider picture from time to time, too.

It is with some relief that I turn to the Henry VI plays, even though the history is compressed and distorted to serve the drama. In Shakespeare, it all makes sense, somehow.

While Weir's book on the Wars of the Roses is very easy to read and very interesting, I find myself feeling lukewarm towards it. On the one hand, it is detailed just enough to be informative and not too convoluted; it is smoothly-written and gives a clear chronology of events; it begins at the root of the wars and continues until the Battle of Tewkesbury; and it attempts to illuminate the individual characters of important historical figures of the age. On the other hand, it was at times hysterically written, putting together known facts with completely unsupported statements (I still cannot figure out how, without any definitive accounts of Richard of York's appearance in existence, Weir confidently describes him as short, stout and square-faced, and then dismisses out-of-hand other possible descriptions of him). Then there's this gem taken from page 323:

"Edward was oblivious to the fact that [Elizabeth Wydville] was also calculating, ambitious, greedy, ruthless and arrogant."

Let us forget for a moment that Weir forgot to put a comma after "ruthless". What irked me about this statement was that, despite its condemning and final tone, it is never backed up with any substantial form of reasoning. The reader is simply told this and never given any explanation. Weir brings up the fact that Elizabeth Woodville made her mother serve her on bended knee and her brother kneel to her in public, but this was common practice for queens of the era. Weir also calls the family rapacious for taking positions in court, a practice which was, for one, natural of a new queen's family, and two, not as extensive as she makes it out to be. While a case can certainly be made--justly or unjustly, as it may be evaluated--that Elizabeth was in fact greedy, ruthless, or calculating, it should not be made based on the flimsy support that Weir has employed, and certainly not in such an absolute manner. This is where I believe Weir was using hysterical writing to heighten the dramatic and gossipy feeling of the book. It's entertaining, to be sure, but not necessarily in good judgment, and leaves the reader somewhat shortchanged.

The writing in itself is very standard and nothing special. In fact, it's almost average, but that did not hinder my reading of it because this is, after all, a history book which I was reading for history's sake. It's always nice when historians have literary talent too, but it's not strictly speaking necessary, at least in my opinion. One thing that did bother me, however, was the fact that the editor failed to catch a few mistakes where quotes were left open-ended (in other words, the end quotation mark was missing), leaving the reader to figure out where the quote ended and Weir's narrative recommenced. Though it was mostly a simple task to figure out, a few instances were hard to discern.

Also, though this is no fault of Weir's, I would warn prospective buyers that this book only covers the events up to and including the Battle of Tewkesbury in 1471. Those wishing to read further must then acquire Weir's book on the princes in tower. Overall, I found The Wars of the Roses to be a fun, entertaining history, although Weir can fall into the habit of overstating her conclusions about certain figures and events which begins to seem a little like bias, although it doesn't totally cross that line. It seems that she was, for the most part, trying to be balanced, and this is a useful tool for anyone who wants a basic knowledge of the Wars. Buffs will not gain much from its reading, as it is mostly a chronology of main events with the usual detail. 3 stars. Recommended.

Weir does a good job of portraying a complicated period in English history. With that said, following are the main reasons why I did not give this book 5 stars. First, Weir is not consistent in the way that she refers to people. She would do all of her fans a big favor by referring to people by the given names, surnames and titles. This is especially true in a book like this where people's titles changed throughout the book due to their loyalty to one monarch or another, to the death of a father or to their marriage. Second, Weir's sentence structure is overly complicated at times. Third, although Weir includes eight genealogies of the main families involved in the book, they are very difficult to read because they use script for the typeface, rather than a more readible typeface.

She does a masterful job of giving the reader a vivid picture of the personalities of the individuals involved in the Wars. Weir is also careful to point out the differences in opinion held by historians regarding issues like the number of people involved in the battles or the people responsible for deaths of certain individuals such as Henry VI.

For those who are interested in pursuing this period in more detail, I recommend Charles Ross' The Wars of the Roses (an excellent survey of the period) or his biographies of Edward IV and Richard III. Ross is an expert on this period and was a professor of medieval history prior to his death. Although Ross is a traditional historian who uses loads of footnotes, his books are very easy to read.