The best-selling author of The Plantagenets traces the 15th-century civil wars that irrevocably shaped the British crown, particularly evaluating the roles of strong women including Margaret of Anjou, Elizabeth Woodville and Margaret Beaufort in shifting power between two ruling families. Includes six maps and four genealogies.

Argues that Richard III's defeat at Bosworth Field was not inevitable using new archival discoveries to reveal new details about the battle and Henry Tudor's reliance on French mercenaries.

The prevailing trends, attitudes, and morals of medieval England as well as that of the Paston family from 1420 through the beginning of the 1500's is revealed through preserved correspondence and manuscripts.

On the morning of August 22, 1485, in fields near Bosworth, two armies faced each other. Richard III's army was pitted against the inferior forces of the upstart pretender to the crown, Henry Tudor, a 28-year-old Welshman who had just arrived back on British soil after fourteen years in exile. Yet this was to be a fight to the death--only one man could survive; only one could claim the throne. This legendary battle marked the only successful invasion...

"A young pretender raises an army to take the throne. Learning of his father's death, the adolescent, dashing and charismatic and descended from the old kings of the North, vows to avenge him. He is supported in this war by his mother, who has spirited away her two younger sons to safety. Against them is the queen, passionate, proud, and strong-willed and with more of the masculine virtues of the time than most men. She too is battling for the inheritance...