1987, ISBN: 9780389207030

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U.S.A.: Barnes & Noble Imports, 1987. 1st Edition 1st Printing. Hardcover. Fine/Fine. 8vo - over 7¾ - 9¾" tall. Illustrations and family trees. "This is a bo… Meer...

U.S.A.: Barnes & Noble Imports, 1987. 1st Edition 1st Printing. Hardcover. Fine/Fine. 8vo - over 7¾ - 9¾" tall. Illustrations and family trees. "This is a book of alternative kings and queens of England from the 11th to the 19th centuries, an account of those who claimed the crown but failed to succeed. Royal pretenders do not pretend in the modern sense of the word. They are claimants with pretensions, whether hollow, flawed or valid. Those included in this collection make a rich assortment: the eldest son passed over (Robert of Normandy), an early protagonist for women's rights (Empress Matilda), the grandee reaching for a foreign crown (John of Gaunt), the lucky winner (Henry Tudor), the disinherited or their impersonators (Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck), the child victim (Lady Jane Grey), the rival queen (Mary, Queen of Scots), the eldest but illegitimate son (Monmouth) and the legitimate but rejected heirs (the Old and Young Pretenders and Cardinal York). There are also the lesser known: Edgar Atheling, William Clito, Edward of Warwick, Edmund and Richard de la Pole, Arbella Stuart and the Sobieski Stuarts. 'Pretenders' presents a view of English history from an unusual perspective, that of the loser. Some who failed suffered a traitor's death on the scaffold; some endured long years of imprisonment or hopeless exile; others survived, disgruntled but unscathed. Here the various misfortunes of His Majesty's disloyal opposition are traced over 800 years of armed conflict and political intrigue in England, Scotland, Ireland, France and Flanders. They illustrate that in the struggle for a crown, whatever the winner may assert and his chroniclers dutifully record, right does not always prevail. Who shall be king, and who pretender, is decided by the sword., Barnes & Noble Imports, 1987, 5<