I just finished The Three Richards by Nigel Saul. For this review I'm stepping out of the character of the Persnickity Historian and just sharing my Goodreads review.
It's pretty disorganized though the premise seems simple enough, comparing the three English kings named Richard. There are a few issues with how Saul does this, however. The book is divided into topics, beginning with a biographical chapter for each Richard and then topical chapters-- religion, appearance, family, etc. and within that, each Richard in order. Things are admittedly skewed toward Richard II, in part because the most information on his reign survives, and also probably because Saul's main topic is Richard II, he's written the biography that's still the standard. It gets a little frustrating when trying to compare things that don't have the same amount of information. While comparing people of the same name and of such varying reputation is an interesting idea, the three Richards lived in different eras and covering such vast periods of time and changes in England is also going to be difficult. It'd be like trying to talk about the French and Indian War (Seven Years' War in Europe), the American Civil War, and the Vietnam War in one book, but structured as a biography of William Pitt, Ulysses S. Grant, and Creighton Abrams.
This book reminded me of the usual five paragraph essay structure, and especially a kind of paper assigned in my US history class-- three primary sources to be used to answer a question like "How did Americans before WWI define freedom?" The question here might be "In what ways were Richard I, Richard II, and Richard III similar? In what ways were they different?" Saul's major problem is there's no thesis, no reason to care about the information presented. I really love Richard II (including being sympathetic to him, not just an interest in him) but I don't know a whole lot about Richard I and definitely don't know anything about Richard III. Unfortunately (this may be my fault, I'm biased in my interests) I wasn't as interested in the sections on Dicks I and III. If it's not entirely my fault, it's probably because the topics didn't fit together well enough to show me why comparing the three is important.
There are also a few issues with Saul's information in general. Perhaps the most inexplicable is when in the sections on their wives, he talks about Margaret of Anjou (wife of Henry VI) rather than Anne Neville, wife of Richard III. I didn't get the sense that he hates Richard III, but I'm not a Richardian so I might not pick up on more subtle signs of dislike. He certainly doesn't show Dan Jones-level of hatred, with whom it's obvious how much he dislikes Edward II and Richard II; but I did notice he is 100% sure Richard killed his nephews and doesn't even mention any theories to the contrary, which isn't very fair. And on the subject of murders, he says all three died violently, which is only partly true. Richards I and III did indeed die in war, but Richard II most likely died of starvation at Pontefract, though the whole being actually physically murdered with a knife version is most well-known and certainly exciting-- but there is no sign of violence on his skeleton. Being starved to death still counts as murder but it's not exactly violent.
The conclusion was disappointing. As I said above, he has no thesis and just states what he already has earlier, at the beginning of the final chapter and the end of it. I was left thinking "so what?" The information was interesting (aside from the things I've mentioned above, there may have been other issues I didn't catch) but it wasn't organized in a meaningful way so I wouldn't really recommend it.
