At the first battle of St Albans on 22 May 1455, the king’s cousin, Richard of York, and his allies including Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick – the ‘Kingmaker’ – defeated forces led by Somerset. But despite the breadth of the topic, Jones paints a vivid and detailed picture of the breakdown of England’s political system and the lust for power that followed it. As Henry VII’s reign progressed, he devoted much time and money to continuing to fight the Wars of the Roses.

The Tudors subsequently devoted a great deal of energy and propaganda to portraying Bosworth as the end of the story – but in a sense it was only the beginning. Jones doesn't just tell the story of the Wars of the Roses, but gives the reader an insite to why they occured and why they turned out the way they did.The baby king was watched over by two charismatic and extremely ‘royal’ uncles, John, Duke of Bedford, and Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester.

The Wars of the Roses is an extremely complicated conflict and I didn’t feel lost reading this book, so kudos to Jones for that. Even when he was all there, Henry’s inability to be a medieval monarch led to many in the nobility, including his cousin Richard, Duke of York, to contemplate replacing him, first as regent and later as King. Richard Duke of York believed he was more entitled to the privilege and positions bestowed on Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou’s favorites (de la Pole and Beaufort) and that he could do a better job than them, unfortunately his good intentions were lost when he became mad with power and believed that the only way he could rescue England from perdition was by declaring himself king (a bad move which even his closest associates thought was ridiculous); after her partially got what he wanted, Margaret (a formidable woman whose appearance in the book is tremendous, a well educated, and capable leader who had the great example of both her grandmother and mother taking positions of power during her father’s absence or imprisonment, and likewise she wanted to do the same with the same good intentions for her husband’s House) turned the tables on him by defending her only son’s right to inherit his father’s crown and her forces slew him and in his in laws. We navigate through several of the key battles during this era, even ones that many not know a lot about. On the jacket of The Hollow Crown, the Tudor rose is portrayed as a grim, five-pointed disc of steel, like a ninja star.The author of the New York Times bestseller The Plantagenets chronicles the next chapter in British history-the actual historical backdrop for Game of Thrones The fifteenth century saw the longest and bloodiest series of civil wars in British history. I believe that is simply that this period in English history is wilder than any storyteller could fabricate. It takes some effort at times to read the book as this period was very turbulent but I am enjoying it immensely.