'He seems to have laboured under an almost child-like misapprehension about the size of his world. Had greatness not been thrust upon him, he might have lived a life of great harmlessness' The reign of Edward II was a succession of disasters. Inept in war, and in thrall to favourites, most notably the young nobleman Piers Gaveston, he preferred drinking, driving carts and rowing boats to the tedium of government. After twenty ruinous years, he was imprisoned and murdered. This remarkable book gives a glimpse into the abyss: the terrors of kingship.

This work was prepared in 1877 upon the announcement that a member of the Royal Family, Princess Louise, was coming to take up her abode in Canada with her husband The Right Honorable, the Marquis of Lorne, who was named to succeed the Earl of Dufferin as Governor General. In addition to the Introductory, the book includes a history of the House of Argyll, a Sketch of the Right Honorable, the Marquis of Lorne, the new Governor-General; a Sketch of H. R. H. the Princess Louise; the Political Situation in Canada; the Dominion Cabinet, 1878-1879; and a Parliamentary and Legislative Directory.

Britain's foremost female historian reveals the true story of this key figure in the Wars of the Roses and the Tudor dynasty who began life a princess, spent her youth as a bastard fugitive, but who finally married the first Tudor king and was the mother of Henry VIII.
Elizabeth of York would have ruled England, but for the fact that she was a woman. The eldest daughter of Edward IV, at seventeen she was relegated from pampered princess to bastard fugitive, but the probable murders of her brothers, the Princes in the Tower, left Elizabeth heiress to the royal House of York, and in 1486, Henry VII, first sovereign of the House of Tudor, married her, thus uniting the red and white roses of Lancaster and York.
Elizabeth is an enigma. She had schemed to marry Richard III, the man who had deposed and probably killed her brothers, and it is likely that she then intrigued to put Henry Tudor on the throne. Yet after marriage, a picture emerges of a model consort, mild, pious, generous and fruitful. It has been said that Elizabeth was distrusted and kept in subjection by Henry VII and her formidable mother-in-law, Margaret Beaufort, but contemporary evidence shows that Elizabeth was, in fact, influential, and may have been involved at the highest level in one of the most controversial mysteries of the age.
Alison Weir builds an intriguing portrait of this beloved queen, placing her in the context of the magnificent, ceremonious, often brutal, world she inhabited, and revealing the woman behind the myth, showing that differing historical perceptions of Elizabeth can be reconciled.

This Is A New Release Of The Original 1915 Edition.