Elizabeth of York: A Tudor Queen and Her World in Pick-a-Shelf

Mar 03, 2015 Sandy rated it did not like it

This should have been called speculative fiction. Almost everything is based on "this is hypothetical" or "this is speculative" or "maybe this happened" or "one can imagine that." It appears that Weir has a desire to adulate Elizabeth of York, so we keep hearing over and over and over again how wonderful she is - but there's nothing there to support this except Weir's own statements about how wonderful she is (and occasional comments made by lackeys of Henry VII). I have nothing against Elizabet This should have been called speculative fiction. Almost everything is based on "this is hypothetical" or "this is speculative" or "maybe this happened" or "one can imagine that." It appears that Weir has a desire to adulate Elizabeth of York, so we keep hearing over and over and over again how wonderful she is - but there's nothing there to support this except Weir's own statements about how wonderful she is (and occasional comments made by lackeys of Henry VII). I have nothing against Elizabeth of York - in fact, I read this book because I know so little about her and wanted to learn about her. Instead, I came away with the picture of a young woman who was willing to marry anyone who would make her a queen, and who then had many babies. That's about it. Weir keeps saying that she really had influence on politics and such, but she doesn't give any evidence for this beyond her own supposition.

And sloppy, in her baseless assertions, too. One that jumped out at me - Weir said that Elizabeth was not fluent in French, so could not talk to ambassadors in that language, but used a translator. 30 pages later, she says that Elizabeth was delighted to hear that Princess Katherine (of Aragon) was making good progress in learning to speak French, because "it meant she would be able to converse more easily with the daughter-in-law whose arrival she so eagerly anticipated." Not really important, but just sloppy.

And, along with failing in providing any insights or basis for opinions other than Weir's own speculative assertions, the book was tedious. Way too many lists of every person in the household and exactly how much they were paid - presumably, because this was the only real information that Weir had. I didn't come away with any feel at all for the people involved, who they really were, what they were really like.

This was particularly disappointing because I have read and enjoyed other books by Weir, both the historical fiction and the "straight history" and did not come away with a feeling of having utterly wasted my time by reading them. ...more

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Oct 15, 2013 Tiffany rated it liked it

I was truly excited to read this story and attacked it the second I got my hands on it; however, my interest did decrease the further into the story I got. I was hoping to get some new information about Elizabeth of York, but I feel what I got, was a detailed history of everything else going on, with a bit of Elizabeth thrown in. The details were actually overwhelming at points and from other reading, I was familiar with much of the history that was covered (The War of the Roses, etc.). I did en ...more

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Nov 14, 2013 Susan (susayq ~) rated it liked it

Shelves: ebooks, nonfiction

I'm going to be honest and say that after reading the first three chapters I skimmed the rest of the book. Alison Weir did an AMAZING job with her research! Personally, I found it a little dry and found it focused more on the world of Elizabeth of York than on Elizabeth herself. This will be a great book to have as a reference when I teach this time period to my history class :)

ARC received from publisher via Netgalley ...more

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