First, I must
admit that I am stepping out of my area of historical concentration I have long
meant to discover more about England’s War of the Roses and especially Margaret
Beaufort, mother of Henry VII. However,
Philippa Gregory begins her series on the women of the Wars with The White Queen.
The white rose of Lancaster, is a commoner, Elizabeth
Woodville, which I knew little about before reading this novel, but who
certainly must be an interesting woman worth more investigation. Elizabeth, as portrayed by Gregory, is
dynamic and complex. At the beginning of
Edward’s reign, Elizabeth comes to the King with a financial dispute and wins
his love by her refusal to be his mistress.
The novel in fact depicts the first encounter between the two as a
violent one in which Edward attempted to force Elizabeth to have sex with him
and she had to pull a knife out to defend herself. Strange way to begin a relationship
certainly, but stranger still was that Edward returned and married Elizabeth in
secret which ultimately led to his estrangement from the Earl of Warwick, the
Kingmaker and would continually haunt both of them throughout their lives and
after Edward’s death.
Elizabeth is
portrayed as a political queen who seeks the promotion of her family with
ruthless ambition. Her mother,
Jacquetta, who had served Margaret of Anjou, Henry VI’s now exiled Queen, aids
Elizabeth in her political schemes with very unorthodox methods. Jacquetta claims the women are descendants of
the river goddess Melusina and both use this connection to the river goddess
combined with witchcraft to influence events and curse enemies.
Elizabeth and
her mother are safe while Edward IV remains in power but unexpectedly find
themselves vulnerable when Edward IV dies young and unexpectedly. Elizabeth with her mother and children flee
into sanctuary at Westminster Abbey while Edward’s brother, Richard, Duke of
Gloucester, named Lord Protector by Edward has control of Elizabeth’s son and
heir to the throne Edward V. Her younger
son Richard is with her in sanctuary until she is forced to surrender him. The Elizabeth that Gregory portrays would
never surrender the last hope of the Yorkist cause into Richard’s hands, which
adds to the mystery surrounding the Princes in the Tower. Could a changeling have been substituted in
Richard’s place while the true son and heir after his brother was hidden to
perhaps reappear in the reign of Henry VII as Perkin Warbeck? The story line is plausible if Elizabeth was
anything like the worldly women Gregory portrays. I would say we will never know, but since the
bones of Richard himself have been found perhaps the boys thought to be the
Princes, now buried at Westminster Abbey, will one day be exhumed for DNA
testing. While Gregory’s account is
fiction, and she admits in her author’s note that more than any of her previous
novels, The White Queen has the least
amount of true historical fact because so little primary documentation
exists, so enjoy it for what it is fiction with a tad of history.
Perhaps this
was the appeal for me of The White Queen. Unlike Gregory’s novels regarding the Tudor
era where I find myself unable to lose myself completely in the story because I
disagree with her take on the historical record. My reading of The White Queen was more pleasure based and thought provoking
prompting me to delve further into the Wars of the Roses in both fact and
historical fiction.
This review qualifies for the following challenges:
Historical Fiction Book Review #5
