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lady-plantagenet · 4 years

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Unsolicited Book Reviews (n3): The Sunne in Splendour

Rating:

⭐️⭐️⭐️(+1/2?)

Even before I had an account, I tended to go to tumblr to see people’s opinions before buying a histfic. Certain books are either severely underrepresented, where I feel like there needs to be something on them, whereas others, though talked about enough, something more can still be said about them. So for my quarantine fun, I have decided to start a series where I review every medieval historical fiction novel I read. Hopefully, it will either start interesting discussions or at least be some help for those browsing its tag when considering purchasing it.

TL;DR: Keep in mind that I’m harsh with my ratings. I don’t expect my historical fiction to offer some sort of insight about the human condition or be some perfectly manicured prose, but this book’s biggest detriment was its lack of depth. Some scenes packed a serious emotional punch, but then again I am attached to this era and given the length, it would be insane not to. I learned a lot - no lie, but while my background knowledge on the wars of the roses has become enriched, I feel no closer to Richard.

Plot: We follow Richard III from a young boy at eight right before the catastrophe that was Ludlow to his death and a few years after. This story seems to be told through omniscient third person point of view, which creates issues when it comes to voice - a lot of the characters sound the same (John ‘Jack’ Howard, Francis Lovell, Richard Catesby to name a few). This is only a natural consequence of the sheer amount of people Penman chose to portray. I’m honestly still grateful for this as I was not a fan of Richard III’s POV, but really enjoyed Richard Neville Earl of Warwick’s, Margaret of Anjou and Cecily Neville’s. Everytime these three were the center of the chapter, it was truly enjoyable and multi-faceted which comes to show that Penman is capable of writing complexity when she wants to. I would also like to add that the author’s knowledge of medieval life (e.g. the food, the dogs, the nature of battles) was a high point of this novel and did something to counter-balance the rampant late 20th century flavour in this novel. She tries way too hard to adapt a medieval man such as Richard to our modern values to propagate her Richardian Agenda, which ultimately underscored this.

It must be said though that the author clearly did her research as most of what she said regarding minutae such as: what day of the week it was, where the characters were at one time, details of documents, who did what in which battle, what laws were passed etc... I had just come back to this time period after some years and I thought I knew all there was to know, yet, here comes this book which springboarded me into a wealth of new research - I suppose I am grateful for that. However, do not let that delude you into thinking it is comprehensive. There were historical innacuracies which I can only guess were intentionally made for the sake of the author’s Richardian goal e.g. Anne Neville being forced into her marital duties when historicalMargaret of Anjou made it clear that there would be no consummation until Warwick would prevail at Barnet, Isabel Neville being ‘abandoned’ by her husband in France when really it was only about 4 months they were apart and it would have made no sense for Isabel to sail with an invasionary force, Richard III abolishing benevolence tax because he thought it unfair as opposed to the reality which was that he had failed in his initial attempt to raise them because the population opposed, Richard III allowing the marriage between Jane Shore and Thomas Lynsom when in reality he had initially opposed it... Historical fiction is entitled to innacuracies but given that the author made it clear in her afterword that the only time she strayed was setting a scene in Windsor as opposed to Westminster, it is dishonest to conceal the aforementioned blips, especially when they are so unobvious that it would take a seasoned enthusiast to spot them. As you can tell they either do have a negative bearing on Richard’s image as a saint or show detractors in a positive light, clearly neither that which she was in a mood to explain away.

Characterisation: I can not stress enough how well Cecily Neville was portrayed, every scene she was in, I felt. She tends to be a very difficult character to get because of the whole illegitimacy rumour which casts shades of doubt. She was proud but also pious, subservient but also commanding... just an incredible woman of gravity. I enjoyed Warwick in all his flamboyancy as well and Edward IV was masterfully portrayed as the intelligent but forgiving man that he was. You could clearly see how despite his indulgent character, he knew when it was time to be serious, it was a joy to read the scenes where he strikes people into subserviancy. Anne Beauchamp was also quite a treat for the little time we had with her.

There were also some portrayals of mixed quality: George Duke of Clarence for one, his warped sense of humour and charm were well presented, his unpredictability adequately captured. The issue I have though is that no man is unpredictable to themselves and while it may make sense for other characters to see his temperaments as those like a weather vane it would make no sense for it to be this way in the chapters where he is the POV. Penman’s basically wrote him off as crazy (I mean literally mad) for the majority of the story which is utter tripe given that the whole madness angle is a modern invention. I won’t write more on this now as it deserves its own post (btw if anyone wants me to elaborate on anything I said so far send me an ask). Last thing I will say though: the last scene we have with him is utterly tragic and still sticks with me today, honestly the best writing in this novel was during the ‘Anne’ Book and ‘Protector of the North’ in the years surrounding George’s death. Speaking of, where do I begin with Isabel Neville and Elizabeth Woodville? Their marriages with Richard’s brothers are portrayed negatively for no other reason than to set up Richard and Anne Neville as a perfect love story. This story-telling technique is cheap as hell and I did not expect to find it in a novel so highly acclaimed for its ‘quality’. Let me make this clear: The marriage which was hailed as a love match at that time was that of Elizabeth Woodville and Edward IV. Anne and Richard could have been just as much a marriage of politics as George and Isabel’s, or the latter’s just as much a love match. George fought for Isabel just as much, if not more than Richard did for Anne, George stayed loyal for a surety whereas Richard’s bastard John’s conception may have coincided with his marriage according to Hicks, Marrying Anne was highly advantageous for Richard as marrying Isabel for George... I could go on. Therefore, why is Isabel constantly described as wretched, miserable and at one point abused(!) by her husband whereas Richard was nothing but gentle to the happy Anne. The Mary of Burgundy proposal story is often cited as proof that George only cared about power... but what about Richard’s proposal to Joanna of Portugal one month after Anne died? This may sound minor but it’s a perfect example of the author trying hard to make Richard a modern romantic figure which he wasn’t. I think he may have loved Anne Neville, but that doesn’t change the fact that he was a medieval king and made marriage provisions after her death to secure the succession. For a 800+ page novel about Richard III some seminal pieces of information were left out such as his seizure of the aged Dowager Countess of Oxford’s Howard fortune, the mysterious circumstances in which George Neville Duke of Bedford died young and unmarried after becoming his ward. All in all, do not let the wonderful historical detail fool you into thinking this is a complete account of Richard III’s day to day life.

Don’t even get me started on the Woodvilles... They were all treacherous villains and social climbers who belonged in hell. EVEN ANTHONY WOODVILLE - what has he ever done to Penman or anyone? All scenes with Elizabeth Woodville at the beggining were bedding scenes pretty much, which shows that the author saw her as nothing more than a heartless seductress. There was even a point where Edward in his rage said: ‘you would lie with a leper if it meant you becoming Queen’ and I was just shocked at that. I was further shocked when her daughter Elizabeth of York was musing that if her mother had been a good wife her father wouldn’t have needed to stray and I was just like... ‘I thought we were trying to be sensible in this book 0_0’ - How is it appropriate to have a woman blamed for her husband’s infidelity? How can we have such blatant classism and sexism on the one hand and late 20th century wokeness on the other? It’s what I said earlier, the author can’t prop up Richard and Anne without putting down all other couples in this book. By the end of the book I was honestly finding myself cheering for Elizabeth Woodville as she was becoming the woman with sense and cunning as we all know her, the saving grace of this entire characterisation was that Elizabeth became the only person with a brain by the end (I doubt this was the author’s intention). Down here in this category of bad characterisation I will add Richard and Anne themselves. Anne Neville though often absolutely adorable to me lacked any personality trait apart from being in love with Richard and past sexual abuse by Edward (which didn’t historically happen). Anne’s father and only sister die and she barely thinks about them, which severely undermines her portrayal as a loving and empathetic person. Her death scene and wane was tragic and affected me as a reader but holy Christ before that the author was very heavy handed throughout the book with her martyrisation of Anne, even when she was a young girl and everything was going well she cried in nearly every goddamn scene. Yes, this is Warwick’s daughter we are talking about. Richard (unlike the real great man that once lived on this earth) was similarly flawless and any small flaw he had was something like: ‘too trusting’, ‘acts then thinks’ - essentially ‘too good for this world’ flaws. No one is like this, least of all the real Richard who would not recognise this weird contrived romanticisation of a man. The saving grace of all this is that he admitted around the end to himself and Anne that he did want to be king a little bit, which YES, at least we get that because no one goes through all the procedures he did and endangers the survival of their house, unless they wanted to become king, at least a little bit. All in all, if Penman’s Richard III is the real man, all I have to say is: thank god his reign was cut short because this character would have made a terrible and weak monarch.

Prose: And here is where another of the stars was deducted. The prose is largely very pedestrian. It was full of modern phrases such as ‘hear me out’, ‘He thinks I am in the wrong’ ‘he can’t get away with this’ and other such likes. Also, I know it’s difficult to write a book where everyone’s names are Elizabeth, Edward, Richard and Anne, but apart from ‘Nan’ which was a nickname of that time, the modernity of ‘Bess’, ‘Bella’ or ‘Lisbet’ and the use of them in-text and not just dialogue, did much to draw me out of the medieval era. This is not just a criticism towards Penman but a grand majority of historical fiction novelists of this period. Having said that, her choice to cut conjunctions and use the word ‘be’ intead of ‘is’ or ‘are’ did not bother me at all and I found it effective in dating the language a bit. I appreciate that writing in poetic prose for 800+ pages is extremely difficult, but other’s have done it. And even in other novel where that’s not the case, the writing is still profound and impactful and conveys a deeper meaning, whereas here it’s more of a fictionalised history book. The author appears to have some imagination as the few scenes she made up e.g. Catherine Woodville’s visit to Richard or Edward summoning Edmund’s previous carer John to talk about Edmund as he was trying to deal with the grief of losing George, any scene with Cecily Neville in it, Anne Neville and Veronique (OC lady-in-waiting to her) when they were in hiding, Rosamund and Richard at the end, Margaret of Anjou when she was lodged at that abbey, When Stillington visited George before his death to give him a rosary and last rites and he refused to get them from him, Anne and Richard going to Middleham and Isabel’s lying in state were just some of them. However, even if you took all those well-written scenes and stuck them together they would not be more than maybe 150 pages which is not good in such a massive novel. I really don’t know how I would rank the prose, I feel weird saying it’s at the low bestseller level because at least it’s not overwritten and annoying, however, it lacked a lot of soul most of the time, which is dissapointing given what Penman had to work with. I can see that the author has some strengths, for example she’s good at writing about the weather and the natural landscape, she’s also good at describing facial expressions. But her massive flaw is dialogue and flow - especially the latter. The flow is hindered by her abject inability to weave historical events and their happenings into the prose, so she often settles for an exposition dump, especially when it comes to some male chatacter’s POV such as John Howard, Francis Lovell or Buckingham. A lot of the characters exposited at each other too, which wasted the opportunity for some serious character profiles. Basically too much telling and not enough showing. In conclusion, It didn’t always feel clunky, expository or laboured, but it way too often did for the good to be redeemed by the bad prose-wise.

In Conclusion, I cheated on this book a couple of times when it dragged, but got right back into it whenever the good sections came along. It is one of these books which people cannot stop raving about and I can’t stress how much I wanted to love it when I got it. It’s nice being a fan of something a lot of people are too for once, but it was just not to be. But at least now I can say I have read the cult classic of this histfic niche which apparently everyone has read and cried over. Even though it took me 7 months where others got through it in a week through sleepless nights. Despite all the negativity in this review, I would still reccomend it as it is a solid book and written by someone who clearly gets the conflict and time period. You will learn lots with this book (I intend to keep it as a sort of timeline) regarding things that you might otherwise find too dry to research in depth e.g. battle strategies and sieges. But what you will not learn about is the characters’ psychologies and personalities though Penman tries very hard and heavy-handedly to exposit their feelings to us.

#lady-plantagenet’s book reviews #the sunne in splendour #sharon kay penman #Richard III #if anyone disagrees or agrees i’d love to know your opinion #just send me an ask #historical fiction #Anne Neville #George of Clarence #Edward IV #Elizabeth Woodville #House of York

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