Fortune's Wheel

‘Her interpretive flair and accurate descriptive detail put her head and shoulders above the rest of the field’ — Times Literary Supplement

1469.

Edward IV sits on the English throne, in no small part due to the support of the magnificent Warwick — the Kingmaker.

At his right hand stands young Richard of Gloucester, whose slight frame and young age belie his strength of will.

His unprepossessing features hide the fierceness with which he defends those he loves, from Edward to Warwick’s youngest daughter, Anne, with whom he grew up.

All is not well in Edward’s kingdom. His marriage to Elizabeth Woodville, a woman disliked by many, and the favour subsequently bestowed upon her extensive network of relations, has ruffled any number of feathers.

Discontented, treasonous rumblings have arisen amongst certain members of the peerage — including Warwick and George of Clarence, Edward’s boyishly handsome younger brother.

Their dissatisfaction draws them together, a union solidified by Clarence’s marriage to Warwick’s elder daughter Isabel, and sets in motion events that will test loyalties and fracture families.

Richard, who bears little love for Clarence, never wavers in his support for the king, but his deep and longstanding regard for Warwick and his love for little Anne mean that the bitter conflict that rages over England divides him between the passion he feels for his enemy’s child and his fierce loyalty to his brother.

For Anne, the clash between her father and the king takes her across the Channel as a pawn in Warwick’s political endgame.

Bearing witness to her sister Isabel’s frightening experience of giving birth to a stillborn son whilst still aboard ship, Anne is terrified by the prospect of marriage and bearing children of her own.

However, her father seeks to ally France and England and put Henry of Lancaster back on the throne, and so Anne is married off to Henry’s son.

When her husband dies, George of Clarence and Anne’s sister Isabel sequester Anne in the hope that she is with child — a son who may serve as the figurehead and pour new strength into the country’s treasonous troops.

Warwick’s and King Edward’s conflict culminates in two bloody battles that resolve, at last, their argument…a civil war with repercussions for family, friends, and country.

For Richard and Anne, survival has come at a price.

Will they be able to overcome the events that have torn their families asunder and find happiness at last? Only the turn of fortune’s wheel can say…

Rhoda Edwards is also the author of Some Touch of Pity, which likewise focuses on Richard of Gloucester and which in 1976 won the Yorkshire Post’s Best First Work Award.

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