Edmund and Richard de la Pole were the last princes of the House of York to actively seek the English throne – their epic thirty year struggle against Henry VII and Henry VIII saw them plunged into a murderous maelstrom of international intrigue. Although the brothers were nephews of Richard III, England’s last Yorkist king, neither had been born to rule and they were forced into rebellion by the relentless scheming of their Tudor rivals. During their miserable years of exile, both men would be pursued by assassins, beset by spies and betrayed by friends; but when Edmund found himself trapped by the shifting sands of medieval alliances, Richard took on the mantle of ‘White Rose’. Being far more shrewd than his irascible brother, Richard successfully recruited the French and Scottish kings to the Yorkist cause and his attempts to depose the Tudors would win him fame and fortune on battlefields from Naples to Northumberland - but not the crown he so desperately desired.
Through the lens of the influential de la Pole brothers, this book offers readers a chance to explore some of the lesser known aspects of Henry VII and Henry VIII’s rule, in particular their foreign wars and often duplicitous dealings with other European monarchs.
