Wars of the Roses

The War of the Roses by Alison Weir, educated at the North Western Polytechnic as a history teacher.  She writes “popular” history, which is history aimed less to the scholar and more for the masses, using layman’s term and emphasizing narrative, personality, and detail rather than academic analysis.  After writing The Princes in the Tower, a popular history novel about last half of the Wars of the Roses between the Tudor and York families, Alison felt that she needed to write a prequel, about the first of the Wars of the Roses, between the Lancaster and York families.  Her main intention was to portray the human side of history - the people and their personalities, the main players in this feud (Weir xiii).  This is a story about not only the history of the Wars of the Roses; the causes, the facts, the analysis, but also the people; who they were, what they were like, why they did what they did.  With primary sources, Weir starts off with the events leading to and indirectly causing the Wars of the Roses.  The characters are portrayed, not as names, but as people, who had dreams, issues, personalities, hobbies, and lived in troubled and peaceful times.  Certainly, with her layman terms, she shares this rich history beautifully, making the characters seem more alive with choice events, such as the vivid death of the usurper King Henry IV.