The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors

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York has selected a white rose – “with this maiden blossom in my hand/I scorn thee,” he spits – and the noblemen standing by have followed suit, choosing the colour of their rose to advertise their allegiance. Some of the greatest heroes and villains in history were thrown together in these turbulent times-from Joan of Arc and Henry V, whose victory at Agincourt and prudent rule marked the high point of the medieval English monarchy, to Richard III, who stole the throne and murdered his own nephews, the princes in the Tower.

Standing in a rose garden, he has plucked a red flower from a great bush that stands between him and his nemesis, Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York. The rivalry between the young king’s close relatives – his mother’s family, the Woodvilles, and Edward IV’s only surviving brother, Richard - was to be the final undoing of the House of York. There is fine scholarly intuition on display here and a mastery of the grand narrative; it is a supremely skillful piece of storytelling.They don’t think of the Wars of the Roses, the bloody, brutal conflict that preceded the Tudor Dynasty. But this was of little use in winning a war with France, and Henry’s gentle, bovine incompetence and lack of military leadership soon became a terrible problem. Jones’s material is thrilling, but it is quite a task to sift, select, structure and contextualise the information.

The pathetic detail of Margaret Plantagenet dying at the hands of the blundering axeman, while wearing new shoes, is typical of Jones’s ability to get under the skin of the reader to bring people and events alive. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. The writing is excellent as you'd expect from Dan Jones but as others have said, it is complicated to follow at times as so many of the men had the same names in those days. Jones, though a young man, is a traditional narrative historian in the mould of Starkey, Taylor and Trevelyan. Only after decades of chaos had the family rift been healed by the victory of a Lancastrian, Henry Tudor, over a Yorkist, Richard III, at the battle of Bosworth in 1485.The crown of England changed hands five times as two branches of the Plantagenet dynasty fought to the death for the right to rule. England coped for a remarkably long time – thanks chiefly to the efforts of William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk. They did not hive off into dynastic factions, but stuck together, kept the peace and attempted to preserve a normal system of royal government. Then a far more grotesque and insulting marriage was arranged between the twenty-year-old John Woodville and Katherine Neville, Warwick’s aunt and the dowager duchess of Norfolk.