The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors by Dan Jones
Review of The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors by Dan Jones
The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors by Dan Jones (2014). Published by Viking.
My introduction to the Wars of the Roses was when I was a senior in high school doing Model United Nations in a crisis committee. I was at the Johns Hopkins Model United Nations Conference in downtown Baltimore, where the committee I was in was split into two: obviously it was the House of York and the House of Lancaster.
I played the historical role of William Neville in the House of Lancaster, one in which I was the mole. I was feeding information back to my family members on the opposite side of the war, one in which was highly accurate for the time period—William Neville went from supporting the House of Lancaster to supporting the House of York in the later end of the war.
I chose this book as I was stumbling through the history section of my library with this history of the Wars of the Roses in mind. I knew the basic details of the nobility during the Wars of the Roses, but I wanted to understand the complicated historical situation even more than I already did, which led me to reading this book over the span of a week. Let’s begin the review after this little story time.
Find the book on Goodreads here.
Book Blurb
The fifteenth century experienced the longest and bloodiest series of civil wars in British history. The crown of England changed hands violently seven times as the great families of England fought to the death for power, majesty and the right to rule. Dan Jones completes his epic history of medieval England with a new book about the the Wars of the Roses - and describes how the Plantagenets, tore themselves apart and were finally replaced by the Tudors.
With vivid descriptions of the battle of Towton, where 28,000 men died in a single morning, to Bosworth, where the last Plantagenet king was hacked down, this is the real story behind Shakespeare's famous history plays.
Content
When many think of the era of English history that consisted between the years 1450 and 1603, they think of Queen Elizabeth, the serene Tudor Queen who brought prosperity and glory to England. Or perhaps of her father, who had many of his ex-wives beheaded for treason, or English colonialism, the beginnings of expanding into the new worlds and territories opening up on the opposite side of the world.
They don’t think of the Wars of the Roses, the bloody, brutal conflict that preceded the Tudor Dynasty. Before there were the Tudors, there was the House of Plantagenet, which ruled the land now known as England from 1103 to 1485, two years before the Wars of the Roses came to its formal conclusion.
And so this is the task that author Dan Jones is left with. The Wars of the Roses is an extremely complicated period of English history, one if you can’t describe well enough and in a way that isn’t somewhat simple and clear, your average reader is going to get lost pretty quickly.
There are a lot of noble people to remember in this story, as the bulk of the action and hostility is between the House of York and the House of Lancaster, the two houses trying to claim the throne for their own.
With problems inherited from the Hundred Years’ War and a weakened monarchy due to socioeconomic issues occurring due to feudalism and the Black Death, the wars officially began in 1455 as the Yorks captured King Henry VI. Thus began a thirty-two year long conflict that never seemed to end.
The situation was trickier back then because of how England claimed territory in France, which was seen in the Hundred Years’ War and the claims to the throne, thus adding the French monarchy into the mix. Jones begins our story, however, in 1422 with the birth of King Henry VI.
His birth isn’t the problem per say, but it’s the fact that his father, King Henry V, dies only nine months into his life, leaving an infant the ruler of England. Deemed mentally unstable, and definitely not fit to rule, as he grew older, this led to a power vacuum in the English monarchy over who actually needs to be in charge. When he lost the French kingdom in the 1450s, the Duke of York seized his opportunity and began his revolt.
We navigate through several of the key battles during this era, even ones that many not know a lot about. We then get a focus on the wives, of Margaret of Anjou and of Cecily Neville, two women on completely different sides of the war. We think all is lost for the House of Lancaster as the York monarchy takes over, but then the conflict becomes even more brutal.
There are family members murdering each other, and then we learn of the infamous Princes of the Tower, who I never actually knew were a part of this specific conflict. I knew of them and their history, but I had never connected it to the power struggles created during the Wars of the Roses.
This is absolutely fascinating history to read about in general. I think Dan Jones does an awesome job of navigating through the nuances that these civil wars created, as well as explaining why exactly things were the way there were. I firmly stand on the side that Jones presented in this book, one in which Henry VI was simply not meant to be a king.
We see this in a lot of other monarchs throughout history, ones who are thrust into the role of ruler at a young age and never recover from it. It’s too much pressure and they were groomed to be incapable of being good leaders, or they simply were not intended by fate to be rulers (e.g. the last czar of Russia, Nicholas, was similar in this way. He simply was not a good leader.). The Wars of the Roses is an extremely complicated conflict and I didn’t feel lost reading this book, so kudos to Jones for that.
Overall Thoughts
If you’re into medieval or English history, definitely give this book a chance. The Wars of the Roses is something I, an American with an American education, never actually learned about in school.
We tend to gloss over European history in the way that we skip from the Black Death and the collapse of the feudalism system in Europe to the Tudors, Queen Elizabeth, Shakespeare, and the beginnings of British imperialism.
Not once has the Wars of the Roses come up, and I’m grateful to this book as well as my experience in Model United Nations for introducing such a topic. All in all, I found this to be a fascinating and riveting book and would recommend it to anyone interested in the topic.
