I’m an English teacher at a college prep school, and for reasons I don’t quite agree with, I am required to a quarter on history despite the fact I am not really trained as a historian. It’s complicated. In the meantime, at least I can choose the period and the book I use. For the third year in a row, I went with Dan Jones’s The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors. And, as it is, my students tend to enjoy the book, at least one saying it was only the second book her ever read.
But, of course, if I am going to be teaching this era, I should read more than just the one book, and I was a little knowledgeable on the subject beforehand. However, I just finished my fourth reread of the book, so here’s a quick review.
Historically, the Wars of the Roses refers to a time when the House of Lancaster and the House of York fought for the English throne. Lancastrian king Henry VI wasn’t really up to the job, and numerous individuals vied for power, either using it through him or outright removing him from the throne entirely. The conflict was both a cold war and a hot one over the next seventy years until it was more or less settled with the ascension of the first Tudor king Henry VII.
Jones’s book covers that period, beginning with the death of Henry V until the coronation of Henry VIII, with a little on Elizabeth I in an Epilogue. His prose is fine, and makes for a good introduction to this era of English history that may not be overly familiar to a newcomer. I have read other, more detailed accounts, like author Alison Weir’s book with a similar title that ends with Henry VI’s death. But Jones is a good introduction to the subject. He covers a lot of ground, and it’s clear and readable.
There is a challenge to a work like this. People didn’t write memoirs or keep journals, so the internal thoughts of the various players is largely unknown. Jones offers good evidence to suggest that many of the players went into the Wars with the best of intentions for England’s future. For Jones, the real problem was Henry VI was completely incapable of doing much of anything towards running the kingdom effectively, but in a unique way in that he was a harmless man who really had no business being king of anything. I’ve read Jones’s history of the Plantagenet dynasty before and look forward to reading more in the future.
Grade: B+
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