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Originally Posted by gmw
We might say that the first message is not to rely fictional sources (Shakespeare). The second is probably that what you learned in school x years ago could well be out of date by now. Another is that people with bias and prejudice don't make for reliable sources - whether contemporary or not (eg. John Morton and information based on him as a source). And then, with all those things taken into account, primary sources - where available - are preferable to secondary sources. If this last is a priority of the book, then the thing with the painting should have been addressed, because is that most definitely not a primary source, and that's how this all got started in the first place.
And at the end we have Carradine going off to write a history book - a secondary source that the our lesson for today has been not to trust. Is there a mixed message in here somewhere?
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Don't rely on fictional sources, but here's a work of fiction disputing those other works of fiction ...
Primary sources are still giving you only a slice of the reality; historians are supposed to distill a variety of primary sources into something that may be closer to the reality and more trustworthy.
Quote:
Originally Posted by gmw
Unlike Grant, I have little difficulty in seeing that Richard might suddenly have decided the crown was in reach and decided to take it, or why the mother of the boys might have had no good choice but to accept the situation (she had other children to be concerned about). Motives are not hard to come up with, actual evidence is much harder.
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Absolutely. Why in the world would Richard NOT have wanted to take the crown, especially when the family that would otherwise have it were his enemies? Children generally seem to have been pawns in royal machinations--e.g., arranged marriages for political gain--why think that getting rid of inconvenient children was somehow off the table in a high-stakes power game?