Richard III

Richard III became king of England in 1483 after the death of his brother Edward IV. As protector for the young Edward V, he arrested political rivals and accepted a declaration that Edward IV’s children were illegitimate. The princes disappeared from public view, and Richard’s responsibility remains debated. His reign faced rebellion and ended when Henry Tudor defeated and killed him at Bosworth in 1485.

Sharon Kay Penman’s The Sunne in Splendour offers a sympathetic fictional portrait, while Josephine Tey’s The Daughter of Time investigates his reputation through a modern detective framework. Philippa Gregory’s Cousins’ War novels also portray him. Fiction divides sharply between Tudor villain and misunderstood reformer, but neither position resolves the uncertain evidence around the Princes in the Tower.

In Robyn Young’s Sons of the Blood, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, assumes the protectorship, while Jack’s legitimate half-brother Harry Vaughan sees the family crisis as an opportunity to displace the bastard who has always received their father’s confidence. In Ethan Bale’s Hawker and the King’s Jewel, in August 1485, veteran knight Sir John Hawker serves Richard III while carrying guilt over an earlier deed. Other novels featuring Richard III include Philippa Gregory’s The White Queen, Philippa Gregory’s The Kingmaker’s Daughter, Joanna Hickson’s Red Rose, White Rose, Joanna Hickson’s The Tudor Crown, and Alison Weir’s Lancaster and York.

In non-fiction, Richard III is discussed in Dan Jones’s The Hollow Crown, A. W. Boardman’s The Rose, the Bastard and the Saint King, and A. W. Boardman’s The Medieval Soldier in the Wars of the Roses. In Dan Jones’s The Hollow Crown, Dan Jones follows Henry VI, Margaret of Anjou, Edward IV, Warwick, Richard III and the families whose shifting alliances turned disputes over government into the Wars of the Roses.