Since I started with "Eleanor of Aquitaine" and then moved to "Mistress of the Monarchy" and "Queen Isabella" I decided to move forward in history through Weir's histories and biographies. Chronologically that meant I had to read "The War of the Roses" before "The Princes in the Tower" or any of the Tudor histories. This book has a very different character from her biographies; the intimate, in-depth feel is gone because Weir has to cover more than three generations of English royal family nonsense and history. That doesn't make the book hard to read but you do have to keep track of that many more people - all of whom happen to have the same names (and titles in the cases of primogeniture). Weir starts her history with the deposition of Richard II by Henry IV (where "Mistress of the Monarchy" begins to wind down) and ends with Edward IV's triumph over the last few Lancastrians. The bulk of the book is spent detailing Henry VI's reign which is torturous and full of power-hungry magnates. Weir makes Henry VI a very sympathetic man, one who really wan't cut out for the job given him as an infant, but spares little sympathy for Henry's wife, Margaret of Anjou, who was the power behind the throne and about as bloodthirsty as any of the Yorks and Lancastrians. The only drawback to this volume is that Weir gives a rough one-page outline of the remaining histories of the central characters as the fifteenth-century draws to a close; she probably covered much of the time period in "The Princes in the Tower" but it would have been nice to have something a little longer.