Only nine months old when his father's sudden death made him king, Henry VI became a tormented and pathetic figure, weak, sexually inept, and prey to fits of insanity. Both Henry IV and his son, the cold warrior Henry V, ruled England ably, if not always wisely-but Henry VI proved a disaster, both for his dynasty and his kingdom. The first battle erupted in 1455, but the roots of the conflict reached back to the dawn of the fifteenth century, when the corrupt, hedonistic Richard II was sadistically murdered, and Henry IV, the first Lancastrian king, seized England's throne. In The Wars of the Roses, Alison Weir reconstructs this conflict with the same dramatic flair and impeccable research that she brought to her highly praised The Princes in the Tower. The war between the royal House of Lancaster and York, the longest and most complex in British history, profoundly altered the course of the monarchy. Old noble names were ruined while rising dynasties seized power and lands. For much of the fifteenth century, these two families were locked in battle for control of the British monarchy.
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