Blood Royal:The Wars of the Roses 1462-1485by Hugh BichenoPegasus Books, 2017Blood Royal, Hugh Bicheno's follow-up to his immensely enjoyable 2015 book Battle Royal, concludes his account of the infamous Wars of the Roses that pitted the forces of York and Lancaster against each other for the English throne. And in a fascinating and often oddly touching chapter titled “Somewhat Musing,” Bicheno lets his mind wander over the various forces that haphazardly weave together into making a book – and in the process gives a large chunk of the credit for his own book to a perhaps unlikely source:Battle Royal and Blood Royal were inspired by George R. R. Martin's A Song of Fire and Ice saga, for which he in turn drew inspiration from the Wars of the Roses. Martin's genius lies not only in his multi-layered and compelling narrative, but also in the interwoven motives of his vividly developed characters. Within the constraints of nonfiction I have tried to do the same.It's a dissertation-worthy topic, this idea of serious works of history undertaken in creative response to pop culture works of pseudo-history; readers of a certain age might be reminded, for instance, of the wash of Cleopatra biographies that sprang up in the wake of the Elizabeth Taylor-Richard Burton movie, or the tidal wave of Tudor histories unleashed by the appearance of Philippa Gregory's The Other Boleyn Girl in 2001. In terms of literary genealogy, the phenomenon is a trifle worrying: serious history is set apart by its depth of treatment, after all.In this sense and in a few others, Bicheno has handily outdone his inspiration. His parade of spikey personalities striding across the 15^th century is the same one readers will find in any other history of this complicated period, but Bicheno exceeds most of his predecessors in both the power of his prose and the at times delightfully acerbic tone of his companionship. This is an author who is often, well, grumpy, and who hardly ever goes to the bother of hiding it. He looks at the furtive maneuverings of his players and never lets them get away with anything, but it's not just them – you get the strong impression that he's not all that fond of the 21^st century's excesses either. At one point he tells his readers that among many other motivations, the great captains and ladies of the Wars of the Roses could also be legitimately motivated by honor … which, he tartly notes, will make them seem even stranger to our current era:

The modern mind finds it difficult to comprehend their motives because the concepts of shame and honour play a reduced role in our society … It may seem absurd to suggest that honour played a life-defining role among men who schemed incessantly against each other, stole by force when they could not subvert the law to their advantage, and regularly broke the most sacred oaths. Yet it did, and provides the key to understanding why the new Yorkist dynasty was insecure and ultimately unsuccessful.

He maintains this stepped-back big-picture view of things all the way to the end of his story – and beyond, as he playfully traces the bloodlines of his counts and knights not only through the Tudor age to which they gave such a contentious birth but also, in the most fortunate cases, right down to the 21^st century (sounding along the way a couple of decidedly Wodehousian echoes):

If, as Darwinian absolutists argue, human beings are simply DNA's means of reproduction, then the winner's rosette in the competition among the bloodlines of senior titles of aristocracy goes to John Howard. Despite vicissitudes including two subsequent attainders under Henry VIII and Elizabeth I and a genetic bottleneck in 1975, his linear descendant is Edward William Fitzalan-Howard, since 2002 not merely the 18 ^th Duke of Norfolk and Earl Marshal of England, but also Earl of Arundel … of Surrey and of Norfolk, and Baron Maltravers, Beaumont and Howard of Glossop.

That tone – of cultured irony, of omnivorous reading, of pachyderm playfulness – is maintained throughout Blood Royal (and Battle Royal before it), and even amidst all the other strengths of this history, it's the main attraction. It's also an element that's almost entirely lacking from A Song of Ice and Fire, which only further adds to the mysteries of writerly influence.