The Sunne in Splendour — Sharon Kay Penman

He was the last-born on of the Duke of York and the last Plantagenet king. He was Richard III, a complex man living in tumultuous times....

Caught in the vicious power struggle that history has called The War of the
Roses, Richard had been raised in the shadow of his charismatic brother Edward.
At nineteen and against all odds, Edward had defeated the House of Lancaster and claimed the English throne for York. Famous for his sensual appetites and his preference for the expedient over the correct, Edward nonetheless found in his younger brother Richard an unfailingly loyal ally.

Richard himself was repaid for his allegiance; he was denied nothing, except the one thing he wanted most in life--the right to wed the woman he adored, Anne Neville. Their love would haunt them both, and add to the tragedy of Richard's eventual defeat at the hands of the Tudors.

In this stirring historical novel, Sharon Kay Penman redeems Richard III from his villainous role in history as the hulking, evil hunchback. This dazzling recreation of his life is filled with the sights and sounds of battle, the customs and lore of 15th-century daily life, the rigors of court politics, and the passions of the highborn. Most of all, it brings to life a gifted man whose greatest sin was that he held principles too firmly for the times in which he lived and loved too deeply to survive love's loss.