Anne Neville Richard III Tragic Queen eBook Amy Licence
Download As PDF : Anne Neville Richard III Tragic Queen eBook Amy Licence 
Shakespeare's enduring image of Richard III's queen is one of bitterness and sorrow. Anne curses the killer of her husband and father, before succumbing to his marriage proposal, bringing to herself a terrible legacy of grief and suffering an untimely death. Was Anne a passive victim? Did she really jump into bed with the enemy? Myths aside, who was the real Anne? As the Kingmaker's daughter, she played a key role in his schemes for the throne. Brought up in the expectation of a glorious marriage, she was not the passive manipulated pawn of romantic legend; in fact, she was a pragmatist and a survivor, whose courage and endurance were repeatedly pushed to the limit. Her first marriage, to the young Lancastrian, Prince Edward, should have brought her riches and a throne, but when she returned to England to claim her right, she found herself fatherless and widowed. Her second marriage, to her childhood friend Richard of Gloucester, proved to be a successful and peaceful union. Then, in the spring of 1483, everything changed. Anne found herself catapulted into the public eye and sitting on the throne beside Richard. The circumstances of their reign put an unprecedented pressure on their marriage; amid rumours of affairs and divorce, Anne died mysteriously, during an eclipse of the sun, just weeks before Richard's death on the battlefield. This fascinating and elusive woman is shrouded in controversy and unanswered questions. Amy Licence reassesses the long-standing myths about Anne's role, her health and her marriages, to present a new view of the Kingmaker's daughter.
Anne Neville Richard III Tragic Queen eBook Amy Licence
As a historian and overall student of Plantagenet and Tudor history, I have had the chance to read several of the author's works by now. As a fan of the underrated Anne Neville and generally enjoying the author's written style, I was looking forward to reading this as a child would relish a special treat. However, I was left rather disappointed and must caution any readers who are new to this era in history and are still finding their footing. Something I noticed in the first book of hers I read was mistakes, easy mistakes that the author or an editor should have noticed and corrected before the finished product was sent out for public consumption. These errors consisted of giving persons the wrong name or the wrong title, major historical figures like Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, known to history as the Kingmaker, and several kings themselves. The page before could have these people identified correctly, the current page addressing them with the title of their enemy or a monarch who had been dead for years, and then the following page would return to the correct names and titles. With the first book it was only one, perhaps two mistakes, and I was able to overlook them and still enjoy the book while understanding what she had actually meant. But with each subsequent book I read, the errors became more numerous and glaring while occurring earlier in the books than the last until finally they were appearing in the very first pages of poor Anne Neville's story.The author obviously does her research and is passionate about the subject matter, so it saddens me to see her work tarnished by these mistakes in what are otherwise excellent books. She tackles some of my favorite "heroines" in this extraordinary era of history. Women that have for the most part been overlooked and written off in academia until fairly recently, like Elizabeth of York and Cecily Neville. She gathers up the few contemporary breadcrumbs left to us about these women and tries to bring them back to life with love and respect while trying to maintain objectivity. I can still recommend her work to modern veterans of the Wars of the Roses as well as novices dipping their toes in for the first time; I just do so for the novices with slight hesitance. The names, politics, motivations, battles, etc. can be a bit overwhelming for these people and I worry these lamentable mistakes will only make matters worse. So for these most welcome newbies, please be aware of this issue and if you suddenly find yourself feeling confused or asking yourself "Wait... who is this?", you've most likely encountered one of these errors.
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Anne Neville Richard III Tragic Queen eBook Amy Licence Reviews
I was excited to read a biography based on Queen Anne herself as I have read biographies on her husband, father, Edward IV, The Princes in the tower, Elizabeth of York, Henry VII... sadly this book is made up of speculation and assumptions. The words perhaps, possibly, it’s possible, might have, it’s suggested... I hope to find a book based on fact.
This biography of Queen Anne Neville by Amy Licence is what we could call ‘popular biography’ and personally I understand that to ‘fill the gaps’ in the source material Licence padded the many pages with numerous descriptions of castles, toys, clothing, food that was served, a very quick skim of personalities (she doesn’t actually know anything about even the key figures of the period) - the problem is how many paragraphs and narrative moments can use the following ‘helpers’ that she falls back on repeatedly “… Anne may have … There is the possibility … their class would have … they may have had … “ and that is just on p 39 before it becomes annoying?
Licence is readable, just don’t stop here with her biographies - she has left out enough material about both Anne and Richard to fill several MORE biographies. That is not to say she should have written a stiff, scholarly, academic biography – the fault lies here with her unfamiliarity with both the House of York and the War of the Roses. If I had to hazard a guess I would suggest her area of expertise is the 16th C Tudors but this is not to say Licence writes with any noticeable bias toward her subject, possibly because traditionally Anne Neville, seemingly invisible in her own life, has been characterized as an almost featureless victim, “tragic,” to use Licence’s own term. Of the many, perhaps too many, individuals who were swept up in the WoTR none can truly be more tragic than Anne’s own young nephew, Edward of Warwick, who after 14 years of virtual neglect and isolation as a captive in the Tower he was brutally executed by Henry VII to appease the parents of Katherine of Aragon - as long as the rightful heir was alive their daughter would not be marrying any Tudor (by the way, the Tudors did not even use that name, they went by Beaufort, the one link they had to the royal family fourth son to Edward III was John, who also had several natural children by his mistress – as adults Richard II complied with his uncle John of Gaunt's bizarre request to legitimate them. That in itself is curious, Gaunt had no danger of not continuing his line, his legitimate heir, Henry of Bolingbroke had himself four healthy sons at the time of this odd request. As king Henry IV he made sure to ban these legitimated Beauforts from the crown).
Back to Amy Licence, it is not her fault that she did not pursue a heavy scholarly biography with Anne, not that she couldn’t, but it would require far more research than she was either willing to do or felt warranted. While Michael Hicks lives to scream the Tudor mantra from the mountain top, apparently till his last breath, much has been done in recent years to see around the massively successful smokescreen that the Tudors constructed even before Richard went on his royal tour in1483! Licence could have produced a cutting edge biography, not something that at times reads like she patched together favorite bits of earlier author’s observations and summations. Anyone really on top of material on the WoTR or Richard will cringe through most of this book, and it isn’t just the lame mistakes (poor proofreaders perhaps? Really, I ask you, Edward of Westminster did have Edward III has his forebear, but it was not his grandfather, E3 was his great great grandfather! p.94) What is so frustrating with Licence, who has talent, she is a fine writer, is that she just lets every solid opportunity to posit something original or even current when she bites into one of those meaty questions, particularly about Richard, she just falls flat, and this is where her grasp of the period betrays her.
A most telling example is the question of the fate of both King Edward V and his 10 year old brother, Richard of Shrewsbury, duke of York (pps 154-5), in lieu of her own research and developing her own opinion she found it easier to simply state Richard had to have had them killed, I mean, if Michael Hicks says so and we do know that he was there, what more do we need to question? Someday I would like to know from Hicks why with three nephews ahead of him for the throne why does Richard hide away two of them but place the third one in his own household in the North, with his many of his cousins, knight him, and basically treat him as if he were a real person, with a real future? And don't mention the attainder... WHO wasn't attainted in the 15thC? it was a positive resume enhancement in the WoTR, and attainder could alwasy be overturned in Parliament. Edward IV was himself attainted, twice!
And using “sources” such as Mancini or (worst of all) Guillaume de Rochefort is the giveaway … Licence knows not the very period she writes of.
Mancini, to those who know their material, was an Italian ‘visitor’ to London, oddly enough, not a merchant nor diplomat, was not visiting family, had no known sanctuary, knew little English, was a hopeful ‘poet’ who seems to only know certain unnamed men who may or may not have done a thing about getting him into court on bended knee to offer deathless epics in the name of his hoped for patron, Edward IV. No, he heard rumor, innuendo, gossip, perhaps all planted for the purpose of him carrying such tales back to FRANCE - perhaps that was all Mancini was interested in. Much was inaccurate and probably none of it mattered. The Archbishop of Vienne, a fascinating man named Angelo Cato, was the king’s intimate council, and astrologer, and sometime ‘physician.’ He sent Mancini to London and then just as quickly recalled him once Edward V was deposed and Richard III declared king. When Licence then tells us about Guillaume de Rochefort those interested this period can be heard screaming! De Rochefort?! Really???
De Rochefort was a longtime intimate and nobleman with the Burgundian court of Charles the Bold, he easily changed his sympathies and went to work for Charles’ most despised enemy, Louis XI of France (NO friend of Richard either by the way) in 1477. That means de Rochefort, who will indeed blather on about Richard in his set speech at Tours in 1484, is so unknown to Licence she is not even aware of HOW the ‘report’ by Mancini was written, and finished just that December 1483, while living in the household of Cato, and next to the current residence of the new French king, the young Charles VII, who was in fact NOT in charge of his own realm - no, both he and his realm were held under the regency of his older sister Anne de Beaujeu, who would not relinquish control, as she was expected to do when the boy turned 14 (French law), no she would maintain control until the ‘king’ was 21. As soon as Louix XI died late August 1483 there began an escalating court crisis between Anne as regent and her cousin Louis duc d’Orleans, young and eager to be king himself (as he would become after the early death of childless Charles VII). This feud spilled over to the nobility, who chose up sides, and came very close to fracturing the PR of a smooth transition between kings – the nonsense that de Rochefort blathered on about dealt with obvious (to the French) differences between the civilized superior French manner of kingship and inheritance AND that loathsome list of endless murdered English kings and outrageous betrayals … the speech was to quell the surge in those willing to side with Louis duc d’Orleans, and those who wanted tradition upheld by Anne de Beaujeu. The material he used about Richard was no doubt prepared by various adherents of Cato while Mancini was in residence. Poor Mancini, I wonder if he had a clue how he would be used, certainly not as anyone’s poet.
Licence concludes the chapter, as if she has figured it all out, with the assumption that Perkin Warbeck was not the younger of the two boys, Richard of Shrewsbury. Warbeck was tortured; whatever ‘confession’ he gave was written for him, as was Tyrell’s a few years later; oh, and Anne Askew, she was racked and then burned at the stake by a Tudor (her brand of Protestantism a bit too hearty for the king who made Catholicism illegal. If the Tudors’ knew anything it was quality of torture and quantity of execution).
As Licence chose the non-academic biography glean what you can from the embroidery of material, in lieu of actual sources for Anne, and in lieu of writing a very different kind of biography, Licence does provide what you could call ‘context’ – a sense of place and the times, her bibliography tells you everything you need to know about what she would be able to write (Hicks, but no Horrox; Philippa Gregory but not Vaughan, or Carson, Gill, Jones & Underwood, Weightman, Wroe, Okerlung, Kleineke, Pierce, Hipshon, P A Johnson ? And be very careful with Thomas More, his “history” was never finished, and very likely for a good reason).
Highly disappointing. Many problems with this book. 1. There are many simple errors that should have been caught by the author or her editor such as Richard Neville, Earl of Salisbury was confused with his son Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick on occasion. 2. There was too much history of the time period or events going on versus information about Anne and her life, 3. There were too many "assumptions" about what Anne looked like, what she was doing and what she was thinking. No clear insight was to be learned about Anne that you could not already read in another book about the War of the Roses, Warwick the kingmaker, or Richard III. I would only recommend this book to someone who knows very little about the War of the Roses.
As a historian and overall student of Plantagenet and Tudor history, I have had the chance to read several of the author's works by now. As a fan of the underrated Anne Neville and generally enjoying the author's written style, I was looking forward to reading this as a child would relish a special treat. However, I was left rather disappointed and must caution any readers who are new to this era in history and are still finding their footing. Something I noticed in the first book of hers I read was mistakes, easy mistakes that the author or an editor should have noticed and corrected before the finished product was sent out for public consumption. These errors consisted of giving persons the wrong name or the wrong title, major historical figures like Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, known to history as the Kingmaker, and several kings themselves. The page before could have these people identified correctly, the current page addressing them with the title of their enemy or a monarch who had been dead for years, and then the following page would return to the correct names and titles. With the first book it was only one, perhaps two mistakes, and I was able to overlook them and still enjoy the book while understanding what she had actually meant. But with each subsequent book I read, the errors became more numerous and glaring while occurring earlier in the books than the last until finally they were appearing in the very first pages of poor Anne Neville's story.
The author obviously does her research and is passionate about the subject matter, so it saddens me to see her work tarnished by these mistakes in what are otherwise excellent books. She tackles some of my favorite "heroines" in this extraordinary era of history. Women that have for the most part been overlooked and written off in academia until fairly recently, like Elizabeth of York and Cecily Neville. She gathers up the few contemporary breadcrumbs left to us about these women and tries to bring them back to life with love and respect while trying to maintain objectivity. I can still recommend her work to modern veterans of the Wars of the Roses as well as novices dipping their toes in for the first time; I just do so for the novices with slight hesitance. The names, politics, motivations, battles, etc. can be a bit overwhelming for these people and I worry these lamentable mistakes will only make matters worse. So for these most welcome newbies, please be aware of this issue and if you suddenly find yourself feeling confused or asking yourself "Wait... who is this?", you've most likely encountered one of these errors.
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