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Historical person
1452–1485
Richard III was king of England from 1483 to 1485 and the last ruler of the House of York. The younger brother of Edward IV, he had been a major northern magnate and military commander before becoming protector for his nephew Edward V after Edward IV’s death.
Richard took the crown after Edward IV’s children were declared illegitimate, while the disappearance of Edward V and his brother Richard became the central controversy of his reign. Opposition eventually coalesced around Henry Tudor, who defeated and killed Richard at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485. His death ended Yorkist rule and opened the Tudor dynasty.
Derek Birks’s A Guide to the Wars of the Roses follows Richard III from the crisis of 1483 through Bosworth and sets his short reign within the longer dynastic conflict between Lancaster and York. Shakespeare’s Richard III provides the most influential fictional portrait, turning him into a calculating usurper whose crimes propel him towards defeat. Hourly History’s King Richard III gives a concise modern account of his path from Duke of Gloucester to king and the controversy surrounding the Princes in the Tower. Rosemary Horrox’s Richard III (Penguin Monarchs) examines the political structures, loyalties and regional power on which his kingship depended. David Pilling’s Henry places Richard on the losing side of Bosworth, where Henry Tudor’s victory destroys the Yorkist regime and begins the Tudor dynasty.
Series
The Wars of the Roses series follows the dynastic struggle from the weakness of Henry VI’s government through the rise of York, Edward IV’s victories and exiles, and the final contest between Richard III and Henry Tudor. The novels combine court politics with the major military turning points…
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The Plantagenet and Tudor novels form a chronological sequence of connected but independently readable stories about women near the English throne. They move from the Lancastrian court and the Wars of the Roses through the rise of the Tudors, Henry VIII’s marriages, the mid-Tudor religious crisis and the…
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The Tudor Dynasty sequence traces the family’s survival during the later Wars of the Roses. First of the Tudors centres on Jasper and Edmund Tudor, Margaret Beaufort and the protection of the young Henry Tudor after the collapse of Lancastrian power. The Tudor Crown continues with Henry in…
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The Wars of the Roses series follows the fictional Elder family through the dynastic conflicts that divided England between 1459 and 1485. Beginning with a private Yorkshire feud, the family is drawn into the struggle between Lancaster and York and repeatedly finds its survival tied to the fortunes…
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The Tudor Trilogy traces the dynasty from its unlikely origins to the establishment of Henry VII’s monarchy. Owen begins with the Welsh courtier Owen Tudor and Catherine of Valois, whose secret relationship creates the family from which the Tudor claim will emerge. Jasper follows their son Jasper Tudor…
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The Tarnished Crown follows Isobel Fenton, later Isobel Langton, and Robert Langton through the political reversals of Edward IV’s reign. Beginning with Warwick’s rebellion in 1469, the series places their struggle for Beaumoncote Manor, marriage and family security inside the conflicts that divide the Yorkist court and repeatedly…
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The Swords of the White Rose trilogy follows Sir John Hawker, an ageing Yorkist knight burdened by past violence, after Richard III’s defeat at Bosworth. Charged with protecting Sir Giles Ellingham, Richard’s fictional illegitimate son, Hawker crosses England and continental Europe while Tudor agents, mercenaries and rival claimants…
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The York Family Novels are six overlapping biographical novels about the House of York during the Wars of the Roses and the opening of Tudor rule. Each book centres on a different historical or lightly documented figure—Kate Haute, Margaret of York, Grace Plantagenet, Cecily Neville, Jane Shore and…
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The Morland Dynasty is a thirty-six-book family saga tracing the fictional Morlands of Yorkshire from 1434 to the approach of the Second World War. Beginning with the marriage of Robert Morland and Eleanor, a ward of the Beaufort family, the sequence follows successive generations as Morland Place grows…
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New World Rising follows the fictional half-brothers Jack Wynter and Harry Vaughan through the dynastic upheavals that ended Plantagenet rule and opened the early Tudor age. Sons of the Blood begins in 1483 with Edward IV’s death, the disappearance of the Princes in the Tower and Richard III’s…
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The Tudor Rose Trilogy follows three generations of the dynasty through novels centred on Elizabeth of York, Henry VIII and Mary I. Beginning in the final decades of the Wars of the Roses and ending with Mary’s death in 1558, it traces how family memory, contested legitimacy and…
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Standalone books
Non Fiction
Biographies, histories and other non-fiction are listed separately from the historical novels above.
