| Anne Neville: Queen to Richard III (England's Forgotten Queens series) | 
 enlarge | Author: Michael Hicks
Publisher: Tempus
Category: Book
List Price: $19.95 (€15.76)
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Avg. Customer Rating:   (2 reviews)
Sales Rank: 656492
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 4.9 x 0.9
ISBN: 0752441299
Dewey Decimal Number: 942.046092
EAN: 9780752441290
ASIN: 0752441299
Publication Date: September 28, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Anne Neville was queen to England?s most notorious king, Richard III. She was immortalized by Shakespeare for the remarkable nature of her marriage, a union which brought together a sorrowing widow with her husband?s murderer. Anne?s misfortune did not end there. In addition to killing her first husband, this fascinating new biography also reveals how Richard also helped kill her father, father-in-law, and brother-in-law, imprisoned her mother, and was suspected of poisoning Anne herself. Dying before the age of 30, Anne Neville packed into her short life incident enough for many adventurous careers, but was always the passive instrument of others? evil intentions. In this book,Anne's storyis told in her own right, uncovering the real wife of Richard III.
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| Customer Reviews:
Interesting book December 4, 2008
Anne Neville is an enigma, so I was interested in reading more about her. It definitely IS a good book about HER. I enjoyed reading it. However, if you're not interested in her - i.e., if you just want a biography to read - you might be disappointed.
A unique but flawed biography June 28, 2006
68 out of 72 found this review helpful
Anne Neville is one of the most poorly documented queens of England; Hicks originally doubted that he could find enough material. I applaud his effort, but 4 stars is somewhat generous: I award it for the uniqueness of the work and the lovely cover. This book should be of interest to the people interested in the Richard III controversies. The history and politics that determined the course of Anne's life are not well explained; anyone unfamiliar with the Wars of the Roses may want to read up on them first. Since the people mentioned here were the main actors, a few encyclopedia articles would probably be enough for a start.
The book begins slowly with a chapter on Anne and Richard as fictionalized by the unavoidable William Shakespeare. Is there a law in the UK that the Wars of the Roses can't be discussed without extensive reference to the Bard? Hicks next tells us about Anne's noble ancestry; the reader should consult the genealogy at the end of the text to keep all the Richards, Annes, Isabels and Cecilys straight. Hicks might at least have included the stories about her semi-mythic ancestors: Guy of Warwick and The Swan Knight since he mentions the names. After this, Hicks launches into Anne's life history and the book is fairly good until after Anne is widowed.
The rest of the book is chiefly concerned with the (dubious) dealings of her second husband, Richard, Duke of Gloucester; Anne is scanted. One would think that the death of her sister Isabel would be an event in Anne's life, let alone the attendant drama of illegal executions leading to a confrontation with Edward IV and Clarence's death, but it is mentioned almost parenthetically in a discussion of inheritance. Certainly there is room for more information: the book is only 215 pages, much of it is redundant: on p.71 Hicks tells about the consanguity between Clarence and Isabel. On pp.132-133, he gives us similar information about Richard and Anne, much of it the same. Since Clarence and Richard were brothers and Anne and Isabel were sisters, the reader probably knows a lot of this from p.71; the problem with their being cousins is obviously the same, only the issue of now being additionally related by marriage is added. Then on pp.143-144 he recounts it all again and recaps it on p.205.
I belong to the Richard III Society; that does not require me to think of him as a saint (I checked before I joined), but a lot of this is silly. Hicks seems torn between trying to be fair and trying to find almost any excuse to scald Richard. This accounts for a certain amount of the redundancy: issues may be visited twice, once with a neutral interpretation, than again with an anti-Richard interpretation. At least he does include the neutral interpretations.
He claims that their marriage was scandalous to their contemporaries, without quoting any who were scandalized. Related multiple times, Anne and Richard required dispensations to marry. Hicks argues that this may have been impossible, then mentions cases where such permission was granted. Proper documentation has not been found, but the marriage was accepted by their contemporaries. Hicks cites the property settlement as proof of a lack of proper dispensation, since it provides for the event of the marriage being annulled. As I recall, so did the marriage agreement for Richard's nephew, the Duke of York - this was outrageously unfair to the bride, but was this a standard provision for princes? There is also what I call the Obvious Problem: if the settlement makes it obvious that there was no dispensation, why didn't their contemporaries realize this? It was an Act of Parliament: how secret can it have been? I am much more cynical about dispensations: I think they involved more money & politics and less theology than Hicks seems to.
There is no evidence that Richard and Anne married chiefly for love, but as Hicks mentions, that was typical for their time and it made sense for them to join forces. Anne had a vast inheritance which she couldn't access, Richard was possibly the only man with the influence to get it. I do not see why Richard shouldn't have fought for Anne's share, nor do I see how this necessarily "exploited" her; Hicks finds it unseemly. Anne probably wanted her share for herself (to the extent that married women had any control), and her heirs as much as Richard did.
He makes provocative statements such as: "One must moreover deplore the immorality of the match. A custodial sentence and registration would result today for any man like Duke Richard [then 19] guilty of having sexual intercourse with a fifteen-year-old girl, but fifteenth century standards permitted such relations and indeed regarded them as normal and legitimate." [p.130] That's certainly having it both ways! Hicks has already told us, without any evidence of disapproval, that Margaret Beaufort was married at 12 [her husband was about 25] and a mother at 14. Anne was a already a widow before she married Richard: at 14 she had a consummated marriage with 17-year-old Edward of Lancaster. It certainly wasn't necessary to tell us again that early marriage was common; Hicks apparently just wanted to associate Richard, and only Richard, with sex offenses.
On the other hand, while discussing the possibility that Richard poisoned Anne, which Hicks certainly should, he surprised me by concluding that she probably wasn't.
Given the lack of personal detail for Anne's life, I think that it would have been better if Hicks had spent more time describing the usual life of a woman of her status, details of pageants that she may have attended, etc. One of the pleasures of reading biographies of ill-documented people is that the authors, not having to cram in a large amount of material, often create a better picture of the age than they do with major figures.
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