The White Princess by Philippa Gregory: A review

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Philippa Gregory's series about the women of the Cousins' War, the 15th century conflict between the Yorks and the Lancasters over who would rule England, continues with this account of the life of Elizabeth of York. Elizabeth was born a princess of the House of York, daughter of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville, who we learned about in The White Queen.

As a youngster, Elizabeth is betrothed to Henry Tudor, who will become Henry VII and found the Tudor line. Henry and his uncle Jasper had fled to France when Henry was still a child to avoid being destroyed in the cousins' conflict. Eventually, Henry returns to England with an army and manages to defeat Richard III, the last of the York kings, on the fields of Bosworth.

In Gregory's telling, the princess Elizabeth had been in love with Richard III, her uncle, and, in fact, was his lover. She grieved for his death at Bosworth. Henry, who took the crown that day, chose to honor his betrothal to Elizabeth and to marry her in an effort to unite the country and put the Cousins' War behind them.

Thus, Elizabeth embarks on a loveless marriage, becomes queen of England, and bears five children with Henry. In time, as she learns to understand him better and to empathize with him, she even learns to love him.

Meanwhile, the issue of Elizabeth's brothers, the two York princes who were imprisoned in the Tower of London, continues to haunt the country and to haunt Henry. No one seems to know what happened to them. They disappeared, but their bodies were never found. Richard always claimed that he did not know what happened to them. And now, all these years later, with a Tudor on the throne, there are rumors that one of the brothers survived, that he is mustering an army and planning an invasion. Is he truly a York prince or merely a low-born pretender?

Henry becomes obsessed and fearful of this threat to his rule. He is paranoid, believing that the country will not support him if an invasion comes, and his paranoia makes him cruel.

Elizabeth is torn between her self-interest which lies with Henry and the inheritance of her children and the possibility that her beloved younger brother may actually be alive and the rightful heir to the throne.

This was in many ways a compelling story, although, frankly, the paranoia concerning the possibility of the survival of a York prince which consumes at least half the book becomes a bit tiresome after a while. Also, the constant reminders by our narrator, Elizabeth, about the outstanding beauty and charisma of the whole York family (including herself) as compared to the ordinariness and fearfulness of Henry Tudor become very repetitious and somewhat annoying after a while. I mean, we get it - the Yorks are rock stars and Henry Tudor is just an ordinary man. No need to keep whacking us over the head with it.

Anyway, if the Yorks were so charismatic and greatly beloved by everyone, why did all those people spend so many years trying to overthrow Edward IV? Why did the country spend two decades in constant conflict? But Elizabeth is a York daughter, so I guess we must allow her her prejudices.

This is a worthy addition to the saga of the women of the Cousins' War and it was, for the most part, an enjoyable read. It will be interesting to see if Gregory continues with this series. I wonder what she would make of the Virgin Queen?  


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The Kingmaker's Daughter by Philippa Gregory: A review

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Philippa Gregory's tales about the women of the Cousins' War (or War of the Roses as it later came to be known) continues with this fourth in the series, The Kingmaker's Daughter.

The kingmaker referred to was Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, whose prowess on the battlefield and in the political arena made him one of the most powerful men in fifteenth-century England. He cast his lot with the Yorks in the internecine war and helped them to gain the throne, but, always, his main aim was to put his own family on that throne. He did not have any sons and so his two daughters were used as his pawns in his political ploys to achieve greatness for his family.

Those two daughters were Anne and Isabel and, of course, the only use for daughters was to get them married advantageously. Meantime, he was successful in getting the York son, Edward, onto the throne where he became Edward IV. Warwick's plan was that he would be the power behind the throne, that he would in all except title be the king of England. Unfortunately for him, Edward did not prove an amenable subject for his machinations, primarily because of his queen, Elizabeth Woodville, who became in fact the power behind the throne and advanced her own family into positions of power, wealth, and influence.

Edward had two brothers, George and Richard, and as Warwick became disenchanted with the king, he schemed to replace him with his brother George. After he first got George married to his daughter Isabel. Again, his best laid plans went awry, when, on the battlefield, George abandoned Warwick and again joined his brother, the king.

The kingmaker's backup plan was to marry his younger daughter Anne advantageously and pave the way for her to attain the throne. He turned his coat and allied himself with the Lancasters for this purpose. Anne was married to a Lancaster, but, on the battlefield, with the Lancastrian forces arrayed against the York brothers, both the kingmaker and his Lancaster son-in-law were killed, leaving Anne fatherless and a widow of barely sixteen.    

After this debacle, Anne's mother is in sanctuary and her sister Isabel is married to the enemy (George). But then her fortunes turn when she is discovered and courted by her childhood friend, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, Edward IV's youngest brother. They marry secretly for love and that marriage puts Anne on a collision course with the powerful queen and her family.

The rest of the story follows the well-known series of events mined so successfully by Shakespeare in his plays about that period. ("Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this sun of York...")

Gregory, as always, tells her story from a woman's perspective, in this case Anne, the younger daughter, whom we meet as a delightful child of eight and watch her progress to finally sit on the throne when Edward dies, George is executed as a traitor, and Richard, the loyal brother and Anne's husband, finally finds himself in a position of power from which he takes the throne, ousting the powerful Elizabeth Woodville and imprisoning her two sons, his nephews, in the Tower of London. But the crown sits uneasily on Anne's head. She has come to believe that Elizabeth Woodville is a witch and that she has cursed Anne and her family because Anne's father had executed Elizabeth's father and brother. Anne becomes more and more paranoid in this belief and, indeed, certain things which happen in her life do seem to give her some evidence for her fears.

The writer weaves all of the known historical facts, along with her own imaginings of what happened, and comes up with a plausible and intriguing take on the characters and the events of this turbulent period in English history. In this telling, both Anne and her husband, Richard III, come across as sympathetic characters who were just trying to do the best for England and save it from bad rulers.

Gregory's style of writing can sometimes be rather turgid, but I found that this book flowed agreeably in the telling and I was never bored. It was a good read.    


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The Lady of the Rivers by Philippa Gregory: A review

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Philippa Gregory has made a very successful writing career by telling the stories of strong women in English history, women whose lives are generally overlooked or devalued by traditional (mostly male) historians. Her most notable successes have been in writing about women of the Tudor period in such books as The Other Boleyn Girl, which was translated into a money-making motion picture.

Most recently, Gregory has taken on the stories of the women of the 15th century Cousins' War, or War of the Roses as we generally think of it today. I had previously read the first two books of that series, The White Queen and The Red Queen and had enjoyed them. This summer, Starz had a series based on The White Queen. I watched a couple of episodes of it, but I can't recommend it; however, watching it piqued my interest once again in this historical era and I decided to read the next book in the series, The Lady of the Rivers.

This book tells the story of Jacquetta Woodville, who was the mother of Elizabeth, the White Queen. Jacquetta was of a Luxembourg family, the female side of which considered itself descended from Melusina, the river goddess. Those descendants were supposedly blessed with second sight, an ability to see into the future and to interpret signs. That ability is a recurring theme throughout Jacquetta's life.

The tale begins with Jacquetta visiting her uncle's household. Her uncle has a prisoner named Joan of Arc. Jacquetta meets her and recognizes in her the same powers which she herself possesses. She sees the young Joan accused of witchcraft because of those powers and watches as she dies a horrific death at the hands of the English rulers in France. From that experience, Jacquetta learns that the world is full of danger for a woman who dares to dream and to seek knowledge. It is a lesson that she will see repeated many times throughout her life.

The young teenaged Jacquetta is married to the Duke of Bedford, English Regent of France, a widower in his forties. He is only interested in her for her supposed second sight and he introduces her to a world of learning and alchemy.

The Duke has a squire named Richard Woodville who becomes Jacquetta's friend and protector and, when the Duke dies, her lover. The two young lovers marry in secret and return to England where they both serve at the court of the young Lancastrian king, Henry VI. Jacquetta becomes a close and trusted friend to his queen, Margaret.

From this point on, the story becomes one of incredible fertility and constant military campaigns.

Over the years, Jacquetta bears some 13 or 14 (I lost count after a while) children, which is a truly remarkable feat considering that she and her husband are almost always separated! He is forever being sent on military missions, usually to France, by the king. He comes home for a few days and when he leaves Jacquetta is pregnant again. The next year, she goes home to their place in the country to deliver her baby, stays a few weeks and then returns to London, to the court, leaving the newborn behind. Amazing.

Henry and Margaret are atrocious rulers, who make enemies on all sides and soon the York side of the family is challenging them for the throne of England. The constant war shifts from France to the English countryside and becomes fratricidal.

Gregory's method is to tell her story in very linear fashion - this happened, then this happened, and then this happened, and so on and on and on... It's not a very dynamic way of exploring history, and frankly, it got a bit boring after a while. The recitation of yearly pregnancies became drowse-inducing. It made me wonder how this story might have been handled by someone like Hilary Mantel or Barbara Tuchman.

Of course, Mantel is and Tuchman was very different kind of writers from the populist Gregory. Gregory is what she is and often that can be quite satisfying, although I found this particular book a bit wanting.

What kept running through my mind repeatedly as I read The Lady of the Rivers was a wish to know more about those anonymous women who raised those 13 or 14 children and kept the household going while Mama was off holding the hand of the queen and Daddy was off swinging his sword. What were their lives like? Did they have families of their own? How did the children left in their care feel about their caretakers? What happened to the caretakers once the children were raised? That's a story that I would be interested to read, but it's probably not one that Philippa Gregory would be interested in writing.



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The Red Queen by Philippa Gregory: A review

As a child, Margaret Beaufort of the House of Lancaster was obsessed with Joan of Arc. She was convinced that she was called by God to be England's Joan. In the War of the Roses, the cousins' war, she was devoted to the cause of the Lancasters because, obviously (to her child's mind), they were the ones anointed by God to rule. The Yorks were usurpers who were to be resisted unto death. But, of course, it wouldn't really be "unto death" because God was on the Lancasters' side and so they would, without a doubt, prevail.

Margaret's dream was to devote her life to study and the worship of God. At the age of twelve, her mother disabused her of that dream by informing her that the only purpose, the only duty, of a Lancaster girl was to breed a Lancaster heir, a boy who could sit on the throne. And so, Margaret would be married to Edmund Tudor and she would live in Wales and there conceive and bring forth the next generation.

Margaret's marriage to Edmund was a nightmare - a twelve-year-old married to a man in his twenties. There was no tenderness in the relationship. As far a Edmund understood, sex was rape. Thus, every night the child Margaret was subjected to rape. Alone in the world, with no one to take her part, Margaret had no choice but to submit.

Fourteen months later, at the age of fourteen, after two days of agony during which she learned that her mother had instructed the midwives that if the child she carried was a boy and there was a choice between saving the baby or saving the mother, the mother was to be sacrificed, Margaret gave birth to a Tudor/Lancaster son. By that time, her brute of a husband was already dead, just another victim of the cousins' war. At fourteen, Margaret was a mother and a widow.

An unattached woman was too valuable a commodity to be allowed to languish and so, immediately, Margaret's mother contracted another marriage for her, to Sir Henry Stafford. After her year of mourning for Tudor was up, she was sent to marry Stafford. Her son was left in the care of his uncle, Jasper, Edmund's twin brother. From that time on, Margaret was never able to spend more than a few days at a time with him. He grew up essentially a stranger to her, although Jasper kept his promise to make sure that the boy, Henry, knew of his mother.

Henry Stafford was a very different kind of husband. He was gentle and kind. He encouraged Margaret's questing mind and gave her books to read and time to contemplate and pray. He was a man of peace who loved his home and cared for his tenants. He stayed as far as he could from the cousins' war. Margaret despised him as a coward.

Now, Margaret had a new obsession: To see her son on the throne of England. She constantly schemed and planned to make that happen. When the Yorks were triumphant and Jasper had to take young Henry and go into exile in Brittany, Margaret continued to work to make it possible for them to return and for Henry to eventually claim the throne. Every action that she took, every breath, every prayer (and there were plenty of those) was devoted to bringing that about. She prayed to God and to Joan for guidance. Amazingly, every heavenly directive that she received was in perfect accord with her own obsession of making her son king. Funny how that works.

Unfortunately, the thoughtful pacifist Stafford was not able to stay out of the wars forever and eventually he, too, became another victim, leaving Margaret a widow once again. By that time, she was also an orphan, her mother having died. This left her free to seek a marital alliance on her own, which she promptly did, contracting a loveless, sexless marriage with Lord Thomas Stanley, a man she saw as a likely co-conspirator in her grand design.

This was actually quite a fascinating book. In spite of the sympathy evoked by Margaret's early history, she turns into a thoroughly unlovable, unlikable, un-self-aware, venal, grasping, God-obsessed, jealous, power-obsessed woman whose only goal in life is to see her son on the throne and to be able to be addressed herself as "My Lady, the King's Mother" and to sign her name "Margaret Regina: Margaret R." She achieves her goal and Henry Tudor becomes Henry VII, but at what a cost!

Philippa Gregory did a good job of bringing Margaret Beaufort to life, as indeed she did with Elizabeth Woodville, The White Queen. Having now read both accounts, I can only marvel at what both women achieved in an era when women were totally powerless and were considered property of the men in their families, at least on paper. To be able to rise above such a system was an amazing achievement. Perhaps it took a single-minded obsession to be able to do that. Interesting women, but I don't think I'd want to sit down to tea with either of them.

The White Queen by Philippa Gregory: A review

I got the feeling early on that this book really wanted to be a historical bodice-ripper, but the narrative voice of Elizabeth Woodville is so laconic, so lacking in passion, that it never quite made it. The lack of passion is especially surprising in a woman who was twice married and mother to about a dozen children. In fact, it seemed that about half her life was spent being pregnant.

Woodville was a widow with two young sons at the time that Edward IV came out on top - at least temporarily - in the cousins' war known to history as the War of the Roses. Her husband had fought and died for the Lancasters, the faction that was also supported by her family, the Riverses. Edward was, of course, a York, the other side in the war. But as the newly crowned king rides by her family's holdings, Elizabeth the Lancasterite stands by the road and asks the assistance of the Yorkist king in regaining her dowry lands that have been taken from her. Elizabeth is a beautiful woman and the king is very susceptible to beautiful women. 

Theirs is a story of "love at first sight" and even though Elizabeth is a commoner and the king is expected to marry a princess to help secure his realm, the two do, in fact, marry in secret and Edward returns to his war. The war never really ends in all the years covered by this tale, but there are at least brief periods of peace. In one such period, Edward acknowledges Elizabeth as his wife and she is crowned as queen. In her new position of power, she immediately sets about putting members of her family into advantageous marriages and powerful offices which will further tighten their holds on the reins of government and the treasury of the kingdom.

Elizabeth's real passion, it seems, is for the advancement of her family. She spins her webs of schemes and conspiracies to try to ensure that that happens. But others are spinning, too. When it comes to gaining and holding the throne, there is no honor among the schemers, even when they are brothers.

The end of the story is well-known. Edward dies and leaves his brother Richard as the guardian and Protector of the Realm for his son and heir, Edward, and his younger son Richard. But Duke Richard proves false and sends young Edward to the Tower of London for safekeeping. Elizabeth is instructed to send her son Richard along, too, to be with his brother, but Philippa Gregory gives the story a twist just here and we are left with the possibility that perhaps at least one of the boys survived. In truth, of course, historians have puzzled over the fate of the two little princes for more than five hundred years. No one really knows what happened. Perhaps Gregory's story makes as much sense as any. 

The stories of the Plantagenets have inspired writers from Shakespeare's day to the present, but they have mostly told the tales from the perspectives of the men involved. Gregory takes the distaff side and gives us a glimpse of the strong and determined women behind the constantly warring men. While her writing might not quite rise to the level of "A horse, a horse! My kingdom for a horse!" it's still a rousing good tale.