Alright, so I figured I’d share a little project I tackled recently. The "War of the Roses map." Yeah, I know, sounds a bit niche, but sometimes these ideas just pop into your head, and you've got to run with them, right? It wasn't like I had a grand plan or anything. I think I was watching some historical drama, probably got the facts all mixed up from Hollywood, and thought, "I should actually figure out where all this went down."
Getting Started - The "What Am I Doing?" Phase
First things first, I had to actually, you know, refresh my memory on the whole thing. It’s been a while since history class. So, I spent a good few evenings just poking around, looking at old timelines, trying to get a handle on the key players – Lancastrians, Yorkists, all those blokes with similar names. It’s surprisingly messy stuff. Lots of he-said-she-said even in the history books, or at least, different interpretations of who was where and why. I wasn't aiming for academic perfection, just a decent overview for myself.
I decided pretty early on I wasn't going to buy any fancy software or anything. I’ve got an old tablet lying around, one of those ones you buy thinking you'll use it all the time and then it just sits there. It had some basic drawing app on it, and I thought, "Yeah, that'll do." Sometimes simpler is better, you know? Less faffing about with complicated tools means more time actually doing the thing.
Drawing Board Shenanigans
So, I started by sketching out a rough outline of England. Didn’t need to be Ordnance Survey quality, just something recognizable. Then came the tricky part: plotting the main locations. Castles, towns, and, of course, the battlefields. I had to decide how to show who controlled what. Went with the classic red for Lancaster and white for York. Easy.
Actually placing everything was a bit of a jigsaw puzzle. Some areas were absolutely packed with events, while others were pretty sparse. I found myself constantly zooming in and out, trying to make things fit without it looking like a dog’s dinner. There were a few times I had to scrap a section and start over because it just wasn’t working, or I’d found a new bit of information that changed things. It's funny how a little project you do for fun can suddenly feel like real work when you're in the thick of it.
Key things I tried to include:
- Major battle sites with dates.
- Key castles or strongholds for each side.
- A general idea of territorial influence (though this was a nightmare, as it shifted so much!).
- Maybe a few key figures, but I didn't want to clutter it too much.
The "Is It Done Yet?" Stage
After a fair bit of fiddling, tweaking, and a little bit of muttering under my breath, I got to a point where I thought, "Okay, this is pretty much it." It’s not going to win any cartography awards, that’s for sure. It’s a bit rough around the edges, a bit homemade. But it’s my map. I actually learned a fair bit, not just about the War of the Roses, but about how much of a pain it can be to visually represent historical stuff.
I guess the main thing was just the process of doing it. Taking an idea and just… making something. Even if it's just for your own satisfaction. Sometimes I think we spend too much time consuming things and not enough time just tinkering and creating, no matter how small or imperfect the result.
So yeah, that was my little adventure into 15th-century English geography. It kept me occupied for a bit. Maybe I’ll frame it, or more likely, it’ll just get saved on that old tablet and I'll forget about it until I'm looking for something else. That’s usually how these things go, isn't it?
