As she moves abruptly from castle to castle, from England to France, with Warwick’s changing fortunes in the turbulent Wars of the Roses, Anne is a pawn in the dangerous games of political intrigue that she struggles to understand. The third son of the ambitious Duke of York, later King Richard III, is a hero in the eyes of the shy and bewildered Anne, and the key to her understanding of the great events happening around her. Their love, almost wrecked by the feud of York and Lancaster, culminates in great happiness and the last Plantagenet reign in England. The White Queen of Middleham is the first book in the Sprigs of Broom series, following the lives of Yorkist Plantagenet off-spring including "The Princes in the Tower" and Perkin Warbeck.

    In reality, however, the story of England’s most popular dynasty starts much earlier—and it starts with three courageous women who shaped their own destiny. The Tudor dynasty traces its origin to Elizabeth Woodville, Margaret Beaufort and Elizabeth of York—women who waged through blood and loss in order to finally emerge as the ultimate female survivors of the Wars of the Roses.Their posthumous images, however, couldn't be more different, and their lives are still shrouded in mystery. Elizabeth Woodville, the first commoner to marry a King of England, is chiefly remembered as a greedy queen who elevated her huge family, causing a stir in the realm. Margaret Beaufort, mother of the victorious Henry Tudor, is immortalised in history as an overly ambitious, scheming woman who ran her son’s court, pushing his wife aside. Elizabeth of York, the eldest daughter of Elizabeth Woodville and Edward IV, is perceived as a queen subjected to her mother-in-law and trapped in a loveless marriage to a man who ousted the last Yorkist King. It is time to dispel some of the most enduring myths about these extraordinary women who ultimately shaped the early Tudor dynasty.- Why were Elizabeth Woodville and her mother accused of witchcraft?- Was Margaret Beaufort a “mother-in-law from hell”?- Did Elizabeth of York have an incestuous relationship with her uncle, Richard III?These are only a few of the controversial questions discussed in this book. Within these pages, you will learn much more about the three women who emerged victorious from the Wars of the Roses, who tried to rebuild their lives while adjusting to the new, post-war Tudor era, and who founded a dynasty that would reign for more than a century.

    At the center of this fascinating period is the document that has become the root of modern freedom: the Magna Carta. It was a time of political revolution and domestic change that saw the Crusades, Richard the Lionheart, King John, and—in legend—Robin Hood all make their marks on history.The events leading up to King John’s setting his seal to the famous document at Runnymede in June 1215 form this rich and riveting narrative that vividly describes everyday life from castle to countryside, from school to church, and from hunting in the forest to trial by ordeal. For instance, women wore no underwear (though men did), the average temperatures were actually higher than they are now, and the austere kitchen at Westminster Abbey allowed each monk two pounds of meat and a gallon of ale per day. Broad in scope and rich in detail, 1215 ingeniously illuminates what may have been the most important year of our history.

    The result was an immediate war as Rufus’s elder brother Robert fought to gain the crown he saw as rightfully his; this conflict marked the start of 400 years of bloody disputes as the English monarchy’s line of hereditary succession was bent, twisted and finally broken when the last Plantagenet king, Richard III, fell at Bosworth in 1485.The Anglo-Norman and Plantagenet dynasties were renowned for their internecine strife, and in Lost Heirs we will unearth the hidden stories of fratricidal brothers, usurping cousins and murderous uncles; the many kings – and the occasional queen – who should have been but never were. History is written by the winners, but every game of thrones has its losers too, and their fascinating stories bring richness and depth to what is a colourful period of history. King John would not have gained the crown had he not murdered his young nephew, who was in line to become England’s first King Arthur; Henry V would never have been at Agincourt had his father not seized the throne by usurping and killing his cousin; and as the rival houses of York and Lancaster fought bloodily over the crown during the Wars of the Roses, life suddenly became very dangerous indeed for a young boy named Edmund.

    Yet the reality was very different, as Kelcey Wilson-Lee shows in this vibrant account of the five daughters of the great English king, Edward I. The lives of these sisters - Eleanora, Joanna, Margaret, Mary and Elizabeth - ran the full gamut of experiences open to royal women in the Middle Ages. Living as they did in a courtly culture founded on romantic longing and brilliant pageantry, they knew that a princess was to be chaste yet a mother to many children, preferably sons, meek yet able to influence a recalcitrant husband or even command a host of men-at-arms

    Now, with the discovery of Richard III's bones under a parking lot in Leicester, England, interest in this divisive and enigmatic figure in British history is at an all-time high. It is a compelling story to scholars as well as general readers, who continue to seek out the kind of strong narrative history that David Horspool delivers in this groundbreaking biography of the king.Richard III dispassionately examines the legend as well as the man to uncover both what we know of the life of Richard, and the way that his reputation has been formed and re-formed over centuries. But beyond simply his reputation, there is no dispute that the last Plantagenet is a pivotal figure in English history--his death signaled the end of the War of the Roses, and, arguably, the end of the medieval period in England--and Horspool's biography chronicles this tumultuous time with flair.This narrative-driven and insightful biography lays out a view of Richard that is fair to his historical character and to his background in the medieval world. Above all, it is authoritative in its assessment of a king who came to the throne under extraordinary circumstances.

    It is an undoubted fact that, were it not for the work of Alfred, there might never have been the possibility of an English kingdom in the sense that we now understand it. It is also true that Athelstan was the first explicitly to rule over an English kingdom in roughly its present shape and extent. What, then, was the contribution of Edward to the evolution of what his son was to inherit? As a child, he saw his father at the lowest point of his fortunes; as a boy, he grew up under the constant threat of further Danish invasion. Edward came to adulthood in the knowledge that it was his responsibility to safeguard his country. By his death, he was undoubtedly the most powerful and respected ruler, not only in England but in western Europe, and he achieved this through both martial and legislative prowess. Edward built on his father’s work but he immeasurably expanded it, and the chroniclers who wrote in the centuries which immediately followed his death remembered him as ‘greatly excelling his father in extent of power’. Edward the Elder succeeded Alfred as king of the Anglo-Saxons; he died as king of the English. And yet virtually nothing has been written about him. Until now. While biographies of Alfred and studies of the achievements of Athelstan pour from the press, Edward is forgotten. Yet he was the first ruler to leave behind him the possibility of a united England, a country in which men thought of themselves as English, speaking a language which all would have described as English, which had never existed in quite this form before. Anyone looking to fully understand and appreciate the making of medieval England must look to understand and appreciate Edward the Elder and his reign.

    Females in this time are imagined to be damsels in distress, trapped in a high tower, and waiting for knights to rescue them, all while wearing traffic-cones for a hat. After rescue, their lives improved little. Their career choices were to be a docile queen, housewife, or be burned at the stake for witchcraft. But what if this image of medieval women is a complete fiction? It turns out that it is. Powerful female rulers fill the Middle Ages. Anglo-Saxon queen Aethelflaed personally led armies into direct combat with Vikings in the 900s and saved England from foreign invasion. Byzantine Empress Theodora kept the empire from falling apart during the Nika Revolts and stopped her husband Justinian from fleeing Constantinople. Catherine of Siena almost single-handedly restored the papacy to Rome in the 1300s and navigated the brutal and male-dominated world of Italian politics. Joan of Arc completely reversed the fortunes of France in the Hundred Years War and commanded assaults on English fortresses despite being an illiterate 17-year-old peasant. This book will look at the lives of the ten most powerful women in the Middle Ages. Whether it is the famed scholar Anna Komnene, who wrote the first narrative history, or Ottoman Queen Mother Kösem Sultan, who ruled the Islamic empire through three of her sons – all these women held extraordinary levels of power at a time when women were thought to not have any. It will explore how they managed to ascend the throne, what made their accomplishments so notable, and the impact they had on their respective societies after their deaths. It will also describe the historical background of these women, their cultures, and what about it helped or hindered their rise. Their stories still echo down to today. They are a testimony to the resiliency of individuals to accomplish extraordinary things, even if society puts on them enormous constraints.

    In Shadow King, Lauren Johnson tells his remarkable and sometimes shocking story in a fast-paced and colourful narrative that captures both the poignancy of Henry's life and the tumultuous and bloody nature of the times in which he lived.

    Costain's four-volume history of the Plantagenets begins with THE CONQUERING FAMILY and the conquest of England by William the Conqueror in 1066, closing with the reign of John in 1216.The troubled period after the Norman Conquest, when the foundations of government were hammered out between monarch and people, comes to life through Costain's storytelling skill and historical imagination.THE CONQUERING FAMILY is the first in A History of the Plantagenets, and is followed by THE MAGNIFICENT CENTURY.

    In The Sisters of Henry VIII, Maria Perry brings history alive by examining the lives of these extraordinary women and their influence on Europe in the Tudor Age. Margaret became queen of Scotland at age thirteen; family members arranged beautiful Mary's betrothal to the aging king of France when she was twelve. But both women chose their second husbands for love: Margaret married and divorced twice after Henry's advancing armies slaughtered her first husband and kidnapped her children; Mary risked execution by proposing to the handsome duke of Suffolk. Groundbreaking in both depth and scope, Perry's work rescues two remarkable princesses from the shadows of history and offers a fresh interpretation of a royal family and an era sure to fascinate readers of Alison Weir and Antonia Fraser.

    "Marion Meade has told the story of Eleanor, wild, devious, from a thoroughly historical but different point of view: a woman's point of view."—Allene Talmey, Vogue.

    Since Tudor times he has been painted as the "black legend," the murderous uncle. However, the truth is much more complicated and interesting. Rather than looking at all the killings Richard III did not commit, this book focuses on the one judicial murder for which we know that he was responsible. On Friday, June 13, 1483, Lord Hastings was hustled from a meeting of the Royal Council and summarily executed on Tower Green within the confines of the Tower of London. This book solves the mystery of this precipitate and unadvised action by the then Duke of Gloucester and reveals the key role of William Catesby in Richard’s ascent to the throne of England. It explains his curious actions during that tumultuous summer of three kings and provides an explanation for the fate of the "Princes in the Tower."

    Traditionally, he has been perceived as a villain, a bloody tyrant and the monstrous murderer of his innocent nephews. To others he was and remains a wronged victim who did his best for kingdom and family, a noble prince and enlightened statesman tragically slain. This work explores the story of Richard III and the tales that have been woven around the historic events, and discusses his life and reign and the disappearance of the princes in the tower. It also assesses the original sources upon which much of the history is based. A number of picture essays explore particular aspects of Richard III's life and reign - his birth sign of Scorpio, historical paintings, the symbolism of pigs and boars, Richard's saints, his books, the Princes, and cartoons and caricatures.

    Reared in a dangerous and unpredictable world Margaret of York, sister of Richard III, would become the standard bearer of the House of York and 'The menace of the Tudors'. This alluring and resourceful woman was Henry VII's 'diabolical duchess'. Safe across the Channel in modern-day Belgium and supported by the Emperor she sent Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck with thousands of troops to England to avenge the destruction of her brother and of the House of York. Both rebellions shook the new Tudor dynasty to the core. As the duchess and wife of the wealthiest ruler in Western Europe, Margaret was at the centre of a glittering court and became the patron of William Caxton. It was at her command that he printed the first book in English. Her marriage to Charles, the dour, war-mad Duke of Burgundy, had been the talk of Europe. John Paston, who was among the awe struck guests, reported in the famous Paston Letters that there had been nothing like it since King Arthur' court. Yet within a decade Charles was dead, his corpse frozen on the battlefield and within another decade her own family had been destroyed in England. Childless and in a foreign land Margaret showed the same energetic and cautious spirit as her great-grand-niece Elizabeth I, surviving riots, rebellions and plots. In spite of all her efforts, the Tudors were still on the throne but Margaret, unlike the Yorkist kings, was a great survivor.