Sharon Kay Penman’s The Sunne in Splendour: A Book that A Song of Ice and Fire Fans Should Read

The Sunne in Splendour is a 1983 historical fiction epic by Sharon Kay Penman. Within its 900 page bulk, the reader follows the life of King Richard III of England, a figure much maligned by history as a Machiavellian, kinslaying villain (perhaps most famously in Shakespeare's Richard III), from shortly before the Battle of Wakefield in 1459 to the aftermath of his death at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485. It is a vast, sweeping narrative, told in the third-person omniscient perspective common of that time, and follows not only the life of Richard III (commonly called Dickon), but of Anne Neville, his love; Edward IV (commonly called Ned), his older brother; Francis Lovell, his close friend; Elizabeth Woodville, his bitter rival; and countless others.

The book is meticulously researched and very historically accurate as far as I'm aware (in her author's note at the back of the book, Penman notes that she only created one entirely fictional character for the novel), but it doesn't come off as info-dumpy as say Colleen McCollough's Masters of Rome series. I would not, however, say that it reads quick, and there is certainly a lull in pacing towards the middle of the book, most of which comes as a result of the fantastic depiction of the Battle of Tewkesbury at the end of part 1 and the fact that there isn't another large battle depicted until the very end of the book.

I very much enjoyed this book and aim to read more Penman soon. But the big thing that I took away from this book is the influence that it seems to have on GRRM's A Song of Ice and Fire series. I'm not sure if I'm drawing false connections, but I don't think its out of the picture that GRRM read this book and it later affected his characters in A Game of Thrones. Penman's specific depictions of a few historical figures seem very close to how GRRM writes others in ASOIAF, which is known for taking influence from the Wars of the Roses, which is the war that occurs in The Sunne in Splendour. Off the top of my head, Cecily Neville is very similar to Catelyn Stark; Elizabeth Woodville is very close to Cersei Lannister; King Edward IV is very similar to Robert Baratheon; Johnny, Richard's bastard son, may be inspiration for Jon Snow; the Duke of Buckingham is very Little-Finger-esque.

It may not have dragons or much ice or fire, but The Sunne in Splendour, I feel, is a great novel for ASOIAF fans. I wonder how anyone else that has read both feels. I may be theorizing over nothing, but this book seems to have been an inspiration to the same degree as Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn or the Accursed Kings.