When his father and Edmund are killed, Edward leads the House of York to victory and becomes king as Edward IV. As Edward and Edmund support their father in his rebellion against the Lancastrians, Richard witnesses the horrors of war firsthand when his family home is sacked, and his mother sends him and his near-in-age brother George to Burgundy for safekeeping. The earliest chapters portray Richard as a sensitive child who idolizes his hedonistic oldest brother Edward and is mentored by his second oldest, the wise-beyond-his-years Edmund. The story begins in 1459 with Richard as a young boy, and ends in 1485 with his defeat at the Battle of Bosworth Field. Penman rejects the common belief that Richard killed the ' Princes in the Tower,' the sons of his brother King Edward IV, and attributes their deaths to the overly ambitious Duke of Buckingham.

She chose to write Richard's character this way after becoming fascinated with his story and researching his life, both in the US and in the UK, which led her to believe that 'his was a classic case of history being rewritten by the victor'. In the book, Penman characterizes King Richard III as a good, but misunderstood, ruler. The Sunne in Splendour is about England's Wars of the Roses. She eventually rewrote the book and by the time the 936-page book was published in 1982 she had spent 12 years writing it, while practicing law at the same time. When the 400-page manuscript was stolen from her car, Penman found herself unable to write for the next five years. She rewrote the manuscript, which was published in 1982.Īs a student, Penman researched and wrote The Sunne in Splendour, which chronicled the life of Richard III. Penman became interested in the subject of Richard III while a student and wrote a manuscript that was stolen from her car. The Sunne in Splendour is a historical novel written by Sharon Kay Penman.

The sunne in splendour book