Rating: 
Summary: Richard was probably guilty, but the evidence is wasted
Review: In 1400s England, who bore the crown was determined more by war than hereditary right. The Princes in the Tower discusses what happened shortly after the death of Edward IV in 1483. His 2 sons, Edward aged 12 and Richard (10 years old), were next in line to the throne. But before the coronation of the young Edward could proceeded, both he and his brother disappeared in the Tower of London and were never seen again. Their uncle took over the throne to become Richard III.
Alison Weir delves into a mystery that has plagued historians for centuries. In particular, she sets out to demonstrate that the power hungry Richard III was himself responsible for the disappearence of the boys, and that he gave orders for his nephews to be killed.
Ms Weir adequately outlines the history of the royal house of York, including a thumbnail sketch of the preceeding Wars of the Roses (covered in her other book on the topic), and the factions and personalities of the court. She also provides a plausible motive and means for Richard III to murder his kin. Common sense dictates that he was guilty. But that is not the same as historical fact.
The book is well sourced with as many contemporary and near-contemporary scholars quoted as possible. But it is the way Ms Weir interprets this information that is sometimes frustrating. She has started with the assumption that Richard was guilty and makes the evidence match. The chapter concerning the relationship between Richard III and his niece Elizabeth of York is a prime example. While anyone can guess his political motive for wanting to marry her, there is little evidence to suggest he murdered his wife to "make room", or that he actually loved her. The suggestion that she herself was infatuated with her uncle is ridiculous - at this stage Ms Weir is simply throwing about ideas, without any quotations or references in support.
This book will show you why Richard III probably murdered his nephews to seize the crown, and proposes how he did it. Certainly my personal opinion was swayed to believe that he did it. Unfortunately, The Princes in the Tower cannot be the definative historical answer due to poor use and interpretation of the sources. Nevertheless, I recommend you form your own opinion. Also, it might be helpful to read Ms Weirs "Wars of the Roses" first.
Rating: 
Summary: Not her best work
Review: Alison Weir is one of my favorite biographers, as she has a certain style that makes her books seem more interesting and involving than other non-fiction. Unfortunately, she did a pretty bad job on this one. My biggest problem was that she said certain accounts involving Richard were inaccurate-but uses them to prove her point! Oh Alison! Stick to writing Tudor biographies-those are your best.
Rating: 
Summary: The case against Richard III proved.
Review: All right, I admit it, I was one of those people who read 'Daughter of Time' by Jospehine Tey when I was young and believed every word of it, what a nice man Richard was, he couldn't have possibly murdered anyone, he was kind to children and loved his mother etc. Then about ten years ago I read this book and realised how deluded I had been. Alison Weir sets forward all the evidence in a clear and concise manner that I think anyone could understand, even, I would have thought, the most fanatical Ricahrd III supporter. If you can read this book and still believe Richard was innocent, then I admire your loyalty but don't think much of your common sense. He did it. Case proven.
Rating: 
Summary: Very disappointing
Review: Although Weir's book does perhaps wrap up the details a little too neatly, overall I found The Princes In The Tower to be the most informative and best-balanced book on the subject that I've read to date. She does make mincemeat of Richard, but so did the majority of his contemporaries. I think the important thing to remember is that the late 15th century cannot be judged by 21st century standards. Life was cheap, particularly for royals. What I appreciate about Weir's book is the logical organisation of information, the blending of cruel fact with faint whispers of humanity. While she convinces me that Richard was the cause behind the disappearance of Edward V and his brother, she does reveal at least believable motivation for Richard's claiming of the throne. She doesn't leave the reader with the kind of one-sided view of Richard that Shakespeare did, for example. I thoroughly enjoyed Weir's book and it led me to read numerous other books about Richard and his nephews, each with a slightly different take on what happened in the Tower back in 1483.
Rating: 
Summary: A quick, solid read, but Weir seems too sure
Review: As one whose first foray into Richardology, Josephine Tey's Daughter of Time, was a pro-Richard book that inclined me to believe Richard killed the Princes, I figured I should look up an anti-Richard book and see whether it sent me in the other direction. I picked Weir because I had already enjoyed her nearly painless description of the complexities of the War of the Roses in her earlier book of that title.Weir's book is short, with strong prose and an emphasis on the fundamentals of the historical background, but it depends more and more on speculation the closer it comes to the actual question of Richard's guilt. This is, of course, a problem everybody has, since the one thing everyone agrees on is that the deaths of the Princes were shrouded in secrecy. Unfortunately, like Tey, Weir fails to admit the facts are hazy and instead uses the language of certainty right where everybody's case gets shaky. I guess it's beyond the abilities of even the finest historical writers (Tey and Weir are both excellent) to run the gauntlet of the mystery of the Princes in the Tower without coming out of it as a true believer one way or the other. In an atmosphere as charged as the Princes in the Tower controversy, the only way a reader will be able to get enough information to form an opinion is to sample the biases of both sides. Weir's book would be a valuable addition to anyone's fund of knowledge on the subject, particularly for its clear outline of the years before Richard III's reign began. However, it should not be taken as the final word on the subject. And in case anyone's interested, Weir's book left me leaning the same way it found me -- towards the belief Richard III had the Princes killed.
Rating:
Summary: Well researched and well written
Review: As someone who has no strong feelings either way in the controversy about Richard III, I found this book to be both scholarly and well written. Weir starts by listing all the available primary sources and giving an outline of what we know about them. Her arguments are always clear and logical. Opposing theories and points of view are carefully considered. She quotes extensively from the primary sources throughout the book, and discusses differences where they occur. Above all, she writes with plain common sense. Many of the criticisms I've read in other reviews are based on isolated paragraphs which have either been misunderstood or taken out of context. Exactly why people become so emotionally involved in events that took place more than 500 years ago, and of which there is insufficient evidence for certainty, is difficult to understand. For me the most convincing arguments (without going into any detail) are that 1) Rumours about the murder of the princes were widely circulating during the reign of Richard III. They were very damaging to him, and he lost a considerable amount of support because of them. Yet he made no effort at all to deny the rumors, or to display the princes to the public, or to give an alternative explanation for their disappearance while in his custody. 2) The general agreement of totally independent accounts by Mancini, More, and Croyden, each of whom had different sources of information. In addition, Mancini's account was an official report of the facts, written outside England for a foreign government. 3) The close correspondence between the skeletons discovered in the Tower and More's account of the burial of the princes. Weir gives Richard III credit where it is due, and praises some aspects of his character and his actions. She also concludes that he was not a hunchback. Her conclusion that Richard III murdered the princes seems to be a reasonable one, and one that is held by the vast majority of professional historians today.
Rating:
Summary: Richard did it!
Review: As with many of Weir's other books, I flew through this. What I love is the respect she has for storytelling, while at the same time giving the facts as they were laid before her, without shoving footnotes down your throat. This book explains the premise behind these murders, the War of the Roses, the end of the Plantegenet rule in England, and in all, gives life to a murder plot that half the historians still don't wish to share stance on. Her thorough background, dissections of people and premise, and the whodunnit aspect of the Princes' disappearance itself give this a well rounded feel. I agree with Alison Weir's findings by the time she is through, but once you read this, it is hard not to.
Rating:
Summary: Too myoptic
Review: I generally love Alison Weir's books. Her insights and research, especially in Eleanor of Aquitaine and Elizabeth I, are must-reads.
However, I found myself annoyed at how Ms. Weir doesn't even entertain the idea that someone else could have committed this crime and how easily she dismisses all other theories, most of which are not based on assumptions any weaker than the ones put forth in this book. After I finished reading the book, I found myself thinking that the Henry Tudor faction could just as easily have murdered the princes under the same circumstances before Bosworth. I was disappointed because I did not find this as compelling or enlightening as some of the other theories out there. Jack Leslau's theory is fascinating, for instance. He hasn't written a book, but there is a page on the internet where you can read about the painting to which he refers. It really changed the way I thought about Sir Thomas More, let me tell you. Even Ms. Weir admits it's possible that John Clement was Richard of York. Fascinating stuff, and that's why you might want to pick up a few different books on the subject in addition to this one.
Rating:
Summary: Who is the murderer?
Review: I spent much of my summer holiday reading this book, and I thought it was a rather good book. The family trees in the book are very helpful, and the information she gives about the main family members was very useful.
I have read one book about this topic before, but I preferred this book. It is easy to read and the pages turned quickly. The author explains how customs and laws were different in those days, and why people responded and things happened in the way they did. And even though the book is packed with information about so many events and people, it does not get boring.
So, I thought it was a rather good book, even though it somehow didn't reach my top 10 list. (On that list are books that I simply cannot forget and that I keep reading long after I actually finished them).
And I found it interesting that she came to the same conclusion as the other author whereas who murdered the two children.....
Rating:
Summary: Good story, brutal history
Review: I'm of two minds on Alison Weir's The Princes in the Tower. On the one hand, it is an immensely readable history of Richard III, king of England, and the mystery of what happened to his nephews who he had confined to the Tower of London. Weir comes down strongly on the side that Richard had his nephews killed. Weir writes well, and the reader is sucked in to the story. On the other hand, though, Weir's research and conclusions are atrocious and beneath what a proper historian should be. She makes many suppositions and then treats them as fact. Some of her timelines are wildly inaccurate, and since she uses these to support her theory, that puts the entire theory in doubt. Thus, while it's an enjoyable read, I can't really recommend the book unless the reader is aware of this and willing to read further on the subject without taking Weir's view as indisputable fact. Where to begin? Weir starts out by discussing the various sources of information on the controversy. Many of these sources weren't contemporary at all, being written after Henry VII had taken the throne. The one she bases most of her theories on, an unfinished history by Sir Thomas More, she claims is contemporary. However, Thomas was eight years old at the time these events occurred and didn't start his book until much later. He supposedly had access to many people "in the know," and Weir takes this as proof that what he says is, for the most part, accurate. What she fails to take into account, however, is More's history was written during the Tudor reign, when it wasn't exactly safe to be extolling Richard's virtues. Sure, More's sources may have been there, but do you really think they're going to risk their head by telling the truth? In fact, Weir states many times that many people who were involved in the events were still alive at this time, and surely would have been in a position to know if More wasn't accurate. This is complete hogwash, since it would have meant dire consequences to dispute these "facts." The other sources written during the Tudor reign suffer from this problem as well. Weir states at the beginning of the book that she wrote this book "...because there is a need for the subject to be dealt with from an objective viewpoint based on common sense and sound research." After saying this, however, Weir proceeds to write a hatchet job on Richard that shows no real signs of objectivity at all. She mentions the Tudor historians and the problems inherent in taking them at face value, but then proceeds to do just that when they support her theory. When they don't, of course, they may have gotten it wrong. She casually presents and discards some of the pro-Richard historical work that is around, dismissing them as impossible. Elsewhere in the book, she gets timelines wrong in ways that make what she says impossible. One of the most blatant is when she's discussing the timing of the murders. She says that the murders had to have happened on the night of September 3. However, later when she's discussing how other monarchs around Europe felt about Richard and the Princes, she states that Louis XI of France clearly believed that Richard had committed the murders. She goes on to say, though, that Louis died on August 30, 1483, 4 days before the murders supposedly happened! How can this be? There are other problems in Weir's logic that similarly cast her theories into doubt. Finally, many times in the book she says that something "could have" happened, or she claims that it's logical to assume something. She then goes on to base many more "facts" on these suppositions, making her conclusions balanced on a tissue-thin platform just waiting to collapse. One of the most outrageous is her assumption that More has credibility because he talked to some nuns. Thomas More used to go visit a convent in which Brackenbury's widow and some other Yorkist (a noble family at this time) ladies were in retirement. He could have talked with them, says Weir, and they could have known the real truth about the princes, and they could have told him. She then goes on to say that thus, More's tale has to be accurate, because these nuns would know. Huh? Weir has no idea if More actually did this, but she goes on to base her assumption on this. The book is filled with these "might have been" statements. It's a shame that such a well-written book has to be so poorly presented as history. I really like Alison Weir's books (though I am aware that many historians find her work shoddy), but this one is just too much. Even I, a historical novice, can see how badly done this book is. She did a lot of research, but the conclusions she has taken from that research are flimsy and not well-supported at all (though she attempts to show that they are). If you find yourself reading this book, please keep that in mind and read something else on the subject as well. As long as the beginning reader is aware of this, then it's not so bad and this book can be a good start on getting interested in the subject. However, if the new reader comes in unaware, then many "facts" will have to be unlearned later on.
|
