White King

Name: White King
Rating: 4.4 (411 reviews)

by Leanda de Lisle

First published 2017

Amazon

4.3(411)

White King is a revisionist biography of Charles I, following his accession in 1625 through political and religious conflict, civil war, defeat and execution. Drawing on newly available correspondence and manuscript evidence, de Lisle presents a king who could be principled and courageous but whose misjudgements and inability to understand political opposition contributed to the collapse of royal authority. The book places his decisions within conflicts affecting England, Scotland and Ireland rather than treating the English crisis in isolation.

Henrietta Maria receives a major role as Charles’s political partner, fundraiser and wartime advocate, while de Lisle also examines the courtiers and opponents who shifted allegiance as the crisis deepened. The civil wars culminate in Charles’s trial and execution in January 1649, when Parliament’s victory produced an unprecedented regicide. The biography asks how later partisan traditions turned a complicated monarch into competing images of traitor, tyrant and martyr.