The Percy Saga
(and one more...)
I recently acquired these titles by Carol Wensby-Scott which come highly recommended. They feature the Percy family as they feud against the Neville's during the reign of Edward II and ending somewhere when the first Tudor takes the throne. The following descriptions are from Goodreads:
Book 1: LION OF ALNWICK (1980)
Against a rich backcloth of chivalry, romance, treachery and plague in Medieval England is set the magnificent saga of the Percy family who planted the seeds which grew into the Wars of the Roses.
LION OF ALNWICK
This is the story of Harry Percy – descendant of kings, confidant of kings and eventual maker and destroyer of kings, and his defiant love for the fair Margaret Neville,
From the war-torn Scottish border to the glitter and intrigue of London the first Earl of Northumberland is drawn inextricably towards a violent destiny.
Book 2: LION DORMANT (1983)
Medieval England – a rich tapestry of chivalry and romance, of treachery and brutality, splendidly embellished by the exploits of a cast of characters as colourful and flamboyant as their backcloth.
For generations, the Percys had dominated the northern marches of England. But following the disgrace of Harry Percy and the death of his son Hotspur, they were stripped of their power, which fell to the Nevilles, deadly rivals and mortal enemies of the whole Percy clan. When a dynastic marriage – to a Neville – brought Hal Percy back from exile, the whole brutal saraband was to start again: Percy at the throat of Neville whether campaigning with Henry V, or skirmishing round the throne held so tenuously by Henry VI. In an age when calculated brutality and a talent for intrigue were the basic building blocks of survival, the savagery of the Percy/Neville contest was a by-word.
LION DORMANT – the second volume in the blood-stained saga of one of the families that made England great.
Book 3: LION INVINCIBLE (1984)
Medieval England: a cauldron of dynastic ambition, of unexpected chivalry, of ruthless treachery, where self-seeking and self-sacrifice could mark the same man, and family enmities were pursued to the third and fourth generation. Against this flamboyant backdrop is set the majestic saga of the Percy family, whose turbulent affairs – and unrelenting feud with their neighbors, the Nevilles – influenced the fate of kings and the history of a nation.
Released after nine cruel years in the Tower, Harry Percy is restored to his northern estates, and with quiet ruthlessness takes up once more his family heritage: the quest for the ruin of the Nevilles. To this end he forges a strange pact with Richard Plantagenet, pledging to support the House of York against the Lancastrians. But in a fateful revulsion of feeling he finds on the very eve of Bosworth Field that he cannot love the King of England as he had loved the Duke of Gloucester. And so the last of the Plantagenets fell to Henry Tudor, and English history lurched into a path entirely new.
The fourth book shown in the picture is Proud Conquest (1984, stand alone novel)
William the Bastard, Duke of Normandy, Conqueror of England. A man cruel and ruthless, even by the standard of his times.
And Matilda, the proud, willful daughter of the Count of Flanders, no woman to bend the knee under compulsion, charm the mighty never so wisely.
She hated him, would take the veil rather than submit to him. He was ready to defy the Church and risk his immortal soul to win her.
Against the turbulent background of intrigue, ambition, and military adventure, against the struggle for the crown of England, won and lost on the field of Hastings, their love, passionate, tortured, betrayed and always consuming, created, each for the other, a PROUD CONQUEST.
Goodreads reviewers seem to be favorable towards these for their historical value and I look forward to digging into these! The publication dates shown here are for the issues that I own, but it shows the author first published them a few years earlier, and probably only in the UK. However, you can locate the different publications of the novels through used books sites like this one quite inexpensively. It looks like there are two more historical novels by the same author: Rich Beyond Our Dreams and Coal Baron.
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