Ah, yes, I've heard a lot about Helen Castor recently although I'm trying to figure out if she's mostly writing fiction or nonfiction these days. She wrote a great book on the Pastons a few years ago that I enjoyed a lot but I haven't read anything else of hers.
But you're completely right--I think the closest I've managed to come to a linear, relatively impartial account of the Wars of the Roses was E.F. Jacob's The Fifteenth Century, which is massive and so incredibly dry and because it was written in the 1940s completely ignores all the women, but it and the Oxford DNB are what I tend to check when I need specific dates and/or locations. There are some good biographies--Charles Ross generally does a good job of being even-handed about both Edward IV and Richard III, although he does throw a lot of generalizations in Elizabeth Woodville's direction. Better for her is David Baldwin from 2002, while the best bio of Margaret of Anjou that I know of is hands down Helen Maurer's from 2003. There's apparently a new one of Margaret Beaufort that I have not read, but that has been getting some good buzz.
My book isn't a history book, per se--it's about representations of queens and queenship and what that tells us about the writing of history (and fiction, for that matter). On the subject of Richard, I actually fall right in the middle. I used to be a die-hard Ricardian (read Sharon Penman at an impressionable age and in spite of her faults and the things I would do differently, I still love The Sunne in Splendour and it still makes me cry buckets), but writing a doctoral thesis on the Wars of the Roses will, I think, erode pretty much anybody's agenda simply because you realise very early on that there ARE no answers. Each and every one of the sources is partial and therefore not entirely trustworthy. So, what do you do? You follow the patterns, and unfortunately, the patterns do not generally run in Richard's favour. Granted, history was written by the winners, etc, so pretty much anything coming out of the court of Henry VII must be taken with many grains of salt--for instance, I don't buy Richard trying to marry his niece and my view on the Princes is that they were either an awful impulse decision (and we do know Richard made those, c.f. his death); that it was someone close to Richard who was actually responsible but that Richard gave the order, much like his brother did with Henry VI in 1471; or that it was Buckingham. That's Penman's theory and I think it holds water to an extent, but only if you assume Buckingham was actually aiming for the throne for himself.
(In fact, one of the things that drives me completely up the wall in Tudor fiction, Gregory's included, is the fact that nobody talks about history. If you look at what was actually being written at the time, they were obsessed with the Wars of the Roses, but none of the modern fiction reflects that at all.)
Very glad you enjoyed Kynges Games! It was a lot of fun to write, and I did have a great time playing around with More and Wolsey. ;) I admit, I love both Ten and Eleven for very different reasons but I do think that in spite of my favourite RTD-era episodes having been written by Moffat, and my love for so many of his concepts, Moffat seems to be doing too many things at once.
no subject
But you're completely right--I think the closest I've managed to come to a linear, relatively impartial account of the Wars of the Roses was E.F. Jacob's The Fifteenth Century, which is massive and so incredibly dry and because it was written in the 1940s completely ignores all the women, but it and the Oxford DNB are what I tend to check when I need specific dates and/or locations. There are some good biographies--Charles Ross generally does a good job of being even-handed about both Edward IV and Richard III, although he does throw a lot of generalizations in Elizabeth Woodville's direction. Better for her is David Baldwin from 2002, while the best bio of Margaret of Anjou that I know of is hands down Helen Maurer's from 2003. There's apparently a new one of Margaret Beaufort that I have not read, but that has been getting some good buzz.
My book isn't a history book, per se--it's about representations of queens and queenship and what that tells us about the writing of history (and fiction, for that matter). On the subject of Richard, I actually fall right in the middle. I used to be a die-hard Ricardian (read Sharon Penman at an impressionable age and in spite of her faults and the things I would do differently, I still love The Sunne in Splendour and it still makes me cry buckets), but writing a doctoral thesis on the Wars of the Roses will, I think, erode pretty much anybody's agenda simply because you realise very early on that there ARE no answers. Each and every one of the sources is partial and therefore not entirely trustworthy. So, what do you do? You follow the patterns, and unfortunately, the patterns do not generally run in Richard's favour. Granted, history was written by the winners, etc, so pretty much anything coming out of the court of Henry VII must be taken with many grains of salt--for instance, I don't buy Richard trying to marry his niece and my view on the Princes is that they were either an awful impulse decision (and we do know Richard made those, c.f. his death); that it was someone close to Richard who was actually responsible but that Richard gave the order, much like his brother did with Henry VI in 1471; or that it was Buckingham. That's Penman's theory and I think it holds water to an extent, but only if you assume Buckingham was actually aiming for the throne for himself.
(In fact, one of the things that drives me completely up the wall in Tudor fiction, Gregory's included, is the fact that nobody talks about history. If you look at what was actually being written at the time, they were obsessed with the Wars of the Roses, but none of the modern fiction reflects that at all.)
Very glad you enjoyed Kynges Games! It was a lot of fun to write, and I did have a great time playing around with More and Wolsey. ;) I admit, I love both Ten and Eleven for very different reasons but I do think that in spite of my favourite RTD-era episodes having been written by Moffat, and my love for so many of his concepts, Moffat seems to be doing too many things at once.