Book Review: Royal Blood
Royal Blood: Richard III and the Mystery of the Princes by Bertram Fields
My review
rating: 4 of 5 stars
I found this to be an excellent and logical survey of the problem of the disappearance of the sons of Edward IV of England from their residence in the Tower of London. Fields examines all the known facts with a lawyer's eye and assigns each of them the weight he believes it would command in a court of law. What a relief from the sometimes overheated arguments of both Traditionalists and Revisionists. The only reason I have withheld a fifth star is that on frequent occasions the book seems more inspired by a desire to discredit Alison Weir than to present a reasoned case.
Weir is, of course, the author of a widely read book on the same subject which makes no pretense at balance but is determined to prove Richard the villain, the archetype of the Wicked Uncle in all the legends and folk stories since his day. Fields is apparently outraged by her partisanship and spends a good deal of time demolishing her conclusions with mockery as well as documented fact.
Other than that flaw, the book is beautifully laid out with the history of the Wars of the Roses adroitly summarized so that the novice reader has some basis on which to follow the discussion which follows. Like the attorney he is, Fields states his argument as often as is required to connect each fact to the others on which it impinges. Some readers may find this an irritant; I was delighted to read such carefully constructed prose. The significance of the bones discovered during an renovation of the Tower in 1674 is not ignored nor is the possibility that one or more of the Pretenders who challenged Henry Tudor for the throne may have actually been one of the Princes, alive long after Richard was slain. Not even the physical appearance of Richard himself is neglected in this amazingly compact survey of the value of the texts which supplied Holinshed and Shakespeare with their images of Richard.
All in all, I have no hesitation in recommending this book to any serious searcher into the mystery of the Princes in the Tower. It is not light reading, so be warned however, it richly repays the effort it demands.
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