Anne Neville

I *really* wanted to like this book. There is so little nonfiction out there about Anne Neville. Unfortunately, Hicks is no fan of Richard III and makes no bones about it, so it was tough to read. He was adamant that there's not that much we can verify about Anne, but he jumps to some wild conclusions anyway. For instance, in the end he says that we can safely assume that Anne had a lot of sex in her life. Um, what? How can we assume that? Well, according to Hicks, she was married to Richard for twelve years and they only had one son. Since they shared a room almost constantly, which was unusual at the time (and remarked upon by their servants), Hicks says they must have been trying to conceive again. While I don't disagree, I also don't think we can make such a bold proclamation. Maybe (not that I'm suggesting this, I'm not) Richard was impotent and even though they shared a bed there's no way for us to know that they were having intercourse constantly. Maybe they just liked being together, did you ever think of that, Mr. Hicks? It's not uncommon. He also makes a big deal about the fact that no dispensation has ever been found to account for them being related in the first affinity (brother and sister in law). There's a dispensation to cover them being distant cousins, but Richard and Anne both knew they needed one to cover the fact that their siblings married and they obviously never sought one so therefore their marriage was never valid. Just because no one's ever *found* the dispensation doesn't mean it didn't exist. Good grief, it's been 500 years. Things get lost. They very well might have had one, and we'll never know. At any rate, the book had a little bit about Anne but more about laws and customs at the time. While interesting, not really what I was hoping for.