The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England by Dan Jones
510 pages
Published 2012
Read from July 7 to July 12
Rating: ★★★★ out of 5
Another
serviceable, competently written kings-and-wars history. It's
interesting to contrast the more traditional emphasis here with the
avowedly feminist reading of many of the same events in Helen Castor's She-Wolves.
Edward II's reputed homosexuality is taken as fact in the latter book,
whereas Jones brushes it aside within two paragraphs, saying we'll never
know for certain but hinting it was simply pro-Mortimer propaganda. For
that matter, Castor makes Isabella the prime actor of her husband's
deposition, while Jones relegates her for the most part to an accessory
and puppet of Roger Mortimer. Despite the egalitarian tone suggested in The Plantagenets' subtitle, queens and female agency in general are given short shrift in Jones' survey of Plantagenet dramas and battles. But The Plantagenets is a good, absorbing read despite all that.
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