They are useful handles for us to use to identify a particular figure and they have become part of our collective memory. Such nicknames will be familiar but these names are not about history, they are about legend. History likes important people to have nicknames: Alfred the Great, Ethelred the Unready, William the Conqueror, Edward ‘Longshanks’, or the ‘Hammer of the Scots’, ‘Good Queen Bess’ or ‘Gloriana’, ‘Bloody’ Mary and ‘Bluff’ King Hal. I vowed to do something about it, so here’s my second offering which seeks to explode the myth that Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, justified the epithet of “kingmaker”. I have had a bit of a rant on Facebook about the common myths which persist about many aspects of the Wars of the Roses period.
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