This concise and interpretative book digs under the surface events of the Wars of the Roses to explore the underlying dynamics of a typical civil war. Beginning with a demonstration of why the well-worn storylines of the Wars are so misleading, it moves on to expose the pressure for reform that animated the conflict and helped to shape its outcomes. It continues by looking at the logics of division and the reasons why the Wars, once started, were so hard to resolve. It concludes by returning to debates long discussed by historians: the role of the economy in the conflict, and the interaction between English affairs and the politics of the British Isles and the near continent. Throughout, a central concern is to emphasise the fluidity and uncertainty of these civil wars: once authority broke down, anything could happen.

‘A brilliant, fascinating and profoundly thought-provoking analysis. The new light John Watts sheds on the Wars of the Roses from comparative and structural perspectives will shape debate about the fifteenth century for a long time to come.’

Helen Castor - author of The Eagle and the Hart: The Tragedy of Richard II and Henry IV

‘A masterwork of medieval political history, Watts’s thought-provoking meditation on the socio-political structures of England and its neighbours and the processes of division and distrust that led inexorably to conflict is an instant classic.’

Justine Firnhaber-Baker - University of St Andrews

‘In this extraordinary book, a model of comparative historical writing about a fifteenth-century civil war, John Watts manages not only to make sense of the Wars of the Roses, but to explain how and why they matter in our own age of uncertainty.’

Christian Liddy - Durham University