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A review by mailorenzo
Richard III: The Maligned King by Annette Carson
informative
reflective
fast-paced
3.0
This could easily have been a 4 or 5 starts considering the flow of the reading is so good and keeps you SO invested that you even forget this is a non-fictional biography. But here are the reasons this was a worth 3 stars:
The annoyances about the book:
1) Sometimes this books sounds like a collective crirticism of all other authors before Anette Carson. Not to say she isn't right in some aspects, but there's definetly some passive-agressive tone when she thinks her opinion is the only one that is right and truthful.
2) which brings to the second problem about all of this: like any die-hard ricardian before her (so nothing new here) the author puts too much of her own opinion on things. I do think Richard was excpetional but he also made mistakes that isn't aknowledge in this book.
3) If you don't know what happens then this one will be just confusing since the story is all over the places. Carson works with theories and explanations while covering multiple years and aspects of the facts and rumours. It's just all over the place if you haven't had any basis from where to start.
The amazing things about this book:
1) The first chapter where she presents Richard Collins 1996's treatise outlining his suspicious that Edward IV was actually poisened. The authors implies that the Woodviles had something to do with it and it was definetly one of the most interesting chapters that actually makes you believe and suspect that his death was indeed a bit odd, to say the last.
2) Richard's parliment and laws were also a worth topic, He showed interested in the proper interpetation of the law (the publish of the parlament acts were in English instead of latin for the first time) and fair dealings between nobles and commoners that might have turned him into a not so popular figure among the the nobility.
3) Lastly, the relationship between Richard and Elizabeth of York kept me until the end of the chapter, from Elizabeth's supposed infamous letter to Norfolk showing she had hopes of a marriage
to Richard's negotiation with Portugual to marry Joana of Portugal (apparently joana had a prophetic dream of Richard dying and within days of her decision they had news of Richard's death in Bosworth, crazy right).
Overwall this was an excellent book if you want something that shares new lights in the well known subjects regarding Richard and the last years of his reign. No matter how umpopular the theories and opinions, Annette Carson conveys her beliefs in a very clear and persuasive way.
The annoyances about the book:
1) Sometimes this books sounds like a collective crirticism of all other authors before Anette Carson. Not to say she isn't right in some aspects, but there's definetly some passive-agressive tone when she thinks her opinion is the only one that is right and truthful.
2) which brings to the second problem about all of this: like any die-hard ricardian before her (so nothing new here) the author puts too much of her own opinion on things. I do think Richard was excpetional but he also made mistakes that isn't aknowledge in this book.
3) If you don't know what happens then this one will be just confusing since the story is all over the places. Carson works with theories and explanations while covering multiple years and aspects of the facts and rumours. It's just all over the place if you haven't had any basis from where to start.
The amazing things about this book:
1) The first chapter where she presents Richard Collins 1996's treatise outlining his suspicious that Edward IV was actually poisened. The authors implies that the Woodviles had something to do with it and it was definetly one of the most interesting chapters that actually makes you believe and suspect that his death was indeed a bit odd, to say the last.
2) Richard's parliment and laws were also a worth topic, He showed interested in the proper interpetation of the law (the publish of the parlament acts were in English instead of latin for the first time) and fair dealings between nobles and commoners that might have turned him into a not so popular figure among the the nobility.
3) Lastly, the relationship between Richard and Elizabeth of York kept me until the end of the chapter, from Elizabeth's supposed infamous letter to Norfolk showing she had hopes of a marriage
to Richard's negotiation with Portugual to marry Joana of Portugal (apparently joana had a prophetic dream of Richard dying and within days of her decision they had news of Richard's death in Bosworth, crazy right).
Overwall this was an excellent book if you want something that shares new lights in the well known subjects regarding Richard and the last years of his reign. No matter how umpopular the theories and opinions, Annette Carson conveys her beliefs in a very clear and persuasive way.