A young boy spends the first decade of his life growing up on a farm in England, only to be told he’s secretly Edward Plantagenet, Duke of Clarence and the true heir to the throne of England.
If you’re unfamiliar with the War of the Roses, it all started when Edward V died, leaving his 12-year-old son as his heir, and his brother, Richard, regent.
At first, everything seems to be going fine, but then Richard claims his nephews are bastards due to his brother having been married to another woman before marrying their mother. So of course poor Richard has no choice but to crown himself king.
The boys famously disappeared. We still don’t know what happened to them. It’s widely believed that Richard had them killed so he wouldn’t have to worry about any challenges to his claim to the throne.
A couple centuries later, workmen discovered a wooden box containing two skeletons buried in a staircase of the White Tower (part of the Tower of London, where the boys were last seen alive.) One expert said they were the right ages to have been the two princes, but DNA evidence has not supported that theory.
But Edward and Richard had another brother, George, who is dead by the time all this happens, but, according to the people who take John Collan away from the only life he’s ever known, George, knowing Richard’s nephews have a bad habit of disappearing, allegedly swapped his son for a farmer’s son. The boy currently being held in prison by (now king) Henry VII is really just a farm boy and John Collan is the true heir to the throne.
But of course they can’t present a farmboy as a duke, much less a king. So they set about Fair Ladying him.
But they have to do it all in secrecy because of course Henry VII will have him killed if he finds out the truth.
So he’s hidden in a monastery, then secreted to France to live with his aunt, then Scotland, where he falls in love with a beautiful, whip smart, but psychotic young woman.
All along, the plan is to put Edward on the throne of England, but Edward doesn’t want to be king. He takes one look at just the handful of people who most recently either reigned as king or made a play for the throne: they’re all dead.
Possibly my favorite part of the book was when he tells his friend he doesn’t want to be king.
His friend responds, “So, you want to die in battle?”
And Edward realizes those are his only two options:
- Be king
- Die in battle.
End of list.
I knew he never ascended to the throne, so I was worried he was going to die in battle, but said battle came way too early in the book for that.
Turns out the book is based on a real person, about whom extremely little is known, giving Jo Harkin plenty of room to imagine what the poor boy’s life must have been like.
After he was taken, he was turned into a spy for the Crown. People who knew who he was and supported his claim to the throne would approach him and whisper that they were on his side.
He would then report on those people to the Crown.
What I loved about the book is that it’s never confirmed or denied whether he really is Edward or just a farmboy who looked like him. Much is made of the fact that he supposedly looks a lot like George Plantagenet, but he’s not quite the same age as the boy currently being held in the Tower.
Personally, I’m inclined to believe our hero is the real Edward Plantagenet. The book starts by talking about gossip around how his father became a wealthy farmer. There are plenty of rumors surrounding his sudden good fortune, which just happened to take place around the time John/Edward was born… That mystery is never explained either, leaving this blogger to suspect it was payment for taking the duke’s baby and doing so with discretion.
This book is fascinating and surprisingly funny. Not LOL funny, but subtly funny.
I loved every page and I highly recommend it to anyone who is as fascinated with Tudor England as I am.