The Blood of Princes

The Craft of Kings – Book 2

by Derek Birks.

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A savage tale of love, treason and betrayal.
A bloody struggle for power at the heart of the royal court.

In April 1483, the sudden death of King Edward IV brings his 12 year old son to the throne.

Restless young lord and ex-mercenary John Elder is newly-appointed to the service of Edward, Prince of Wales, and charged with the boy’s safety. His first task, escorting the new king to London for his coronation, seems a simple one but the accession of a boy king raises concerns among the leading noblemen of the land.

As old jealousies and feuds are rekindled, the new king’s uncle, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, seizes control and plunges the kingdom into crisis. But is Gloucester young Edward’s enemy, or saviour?

While John, outlawed and trapped, must wait to see how events unfold, other members of the battle-scarred Elder family are drawn, one by one, into his conspiracy. Soon they are mired so deep in the murky underbelly of London society, that there seems no hope of escape from the tangle of intrigue and murder.

In the end, all lives will hang upon the outcome of a daring incursion into the Tower of London itself.

A Word from the Author

In writing the sequel to Scars from the Past I was dealing with a very familiar – and very contentious – period of English history. Everyone has heard of Richard III and the disappearance of the ‘Princes in the Tower’. Everyone has an opinion on: ’did he do it or not?’ So, the challenge for me in building a story around these events was to avoid repeating the same old ideas, whilst also sticking closely to the history.

My priority was to write an enjoyable, exciting story about my fictional characters, the Elder family, so the story had to be focused upon them, not the princes. Yet the princes, Richard III, and so on could hardly be ignored – they had to feature prominently. Inevitably, I had to make a plot-based decision about their fate and, in doing so I was always going to annoy someone. In the end, I followed what I believe may have happened to them, but their fate was not the point of my story.

Contrasting with the royal court and the intrigue of its leading members, is an underbelly of London society, populated by men at arms, thieves and whores. That is the murky, dangerous world into which the outlawed John Elder, and eventually the rest of his family, is drawn in The Blood of Princes.

Will it end in tears? Well, if you enjoy it, book 3 – Echoes of Treason – will be out next year!

(Derek Birks, September 2018)