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Books > History > History of specific subjects > Genealogy, heraldry, names and honours
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Edward, Prince of Wales and Aquitaine - A Biography of the Black Prince (Paperback, New Ed)
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Edward, Prince of Wales and Aquitaine - A Biography of the Black Prince (Paperback, New Ed)
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"There are very few reliable personal anecdotes about him; there
are very few recorded actions which mark him off as a distinctive
character." Precisely. And in isolating the Black Prince's complete
orthodoxy of behavior as the reason for his popularity, and in
relegating the romantic myth nourished by Froissart to an epilogue,
Barber has almost done himself out of a book. Excellently
researched but too drily written, this account boils down - as the
life it chronicles did - to a succession of tournaments and
military campaigns (Crecy, Poitiers, Limoges, Najera), retold
stolidly and only rarely brightened by the excitement of
near-bankruptcy - Edward had the family taste for deficit spending.
Barber delves dutifully into every strategical move and motive -
one reason the English regularly trounced the French apparently was
their well-knit, homogeneous officer corps versus the French
polyglot every-knight-for-himself array - but he cannot bring color
to this narrative of a too typical knight. Like his father Edward
III, Edward was obsessed with gloire but stolid, and, as he did not
live to be king, his tale is not enlivened by disputes with the
emerging power of Parliament. Barber, the author of many medieval
biographies, is both a pallid writer and a confusing one -
relationships are often mixed up (two different princes, neither of
them John of Gaunt, are called King Edward's third son) and both
the prince and his father are regularly referred to as "Edward,"
with no indication of which is meant. For military historians and
scholarly devotees of the period. (Kirkus Reviews)
`...excellent study of the prince's career. A first-class synthesis
of the entire literature of this subject.' BRITISH BOOK NEWS
Edward, prince of Wales and Aquitaine, known as the Black Prince,
is one of the legendary figures of English history, victor of three
great battles and a model of chivalry and courtesy. Behind this
image, which many of his contemporaries accepted and eagerly
believed in, it is difficult to get at the realities of his
character and of the life that he led. Most of his biographers have
based their work on the splendid vision of chivalry conjured up by
Froissart, but the present book deliberately shuns this approach,
to see what can be found in official records, particularly from the
prince's household and those who campaigned with the prince.
Special attention has been paid not onlyto the confusing and
confused accounts of the great battles, but also to the prince's
early years, his close companions who contributed so greatly to his
successes, and to his government of Aquitaine, an obscure but very
importantpart of his career. A number of minor but persistent
errors in early histories, deriving from Froissart, are corrected.
A concluding chapter examines how the legend of the Black Prince
(and his curious nickname) came into being.By separating the image
and the reality, a clearer picture of the prince emerges. Dr
RICHARD BARBER is the author of The Arthurian Legends, King Arthur:
Hero and Legend, Tournaments, a biography of Henry II, The Penguin
Guide to Medieval Europe, and the recently revised seminal study of
The Knight and Chivalry.
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