Warwick – the Man Behind the Wars of the Roses

by Tony Riches

First published 2014

Amazon

4.0(1,270)

Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, inherits immense wealth and uses it to become one of the decisive political and military figures of fifteenth-century England. He fights for the Yorkist cause, helps Edward IV take the throne, commands Calais and builds a reputation powerful enough to earn the later title of ‘Kingmaker’. Yet success brings conflict with the king he helped create, especially when Edward’s marriage and independent policies weaken Warwick’s influence at court.

The novel follows the reversals that make Warwick’s career emblematic of the Wars of the Roses. Once the enemy of Margaret of Anjou and the Lancastrians, he eventually allies with them, restores Henry VI in the Readeption and stakes everything on overturning Edward IV. His death at Barnet ends the experiment. Riches uses Richard Neville’s shifting loyalties to examine a political culture in which noble affinity, marriage, military command and access to the crown were inseparable—and in which the most powerful subject in England could still be destroyed by one final change of fortune.