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1:44 am
February 14, 2013
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I just finished reading the White Princess by Philippa Gregory, and I really enjoyed it, although I was a bit confused as to whether Elizabeth of York really believed that Perkin was her brother or not. I was wondering, what are everybody else’s thoughts about the novel? Loved it or hated it?
10:42 am
September 8, 2013
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Don’t get me started on this book. I read a little bit of it on Amazon and couldn’t bare to even finish the sneak peak. Like really, Elizabeth in love with who she might think as her brother’s muderer. And i got that Elizabeth was a sad little girl on the first page!! No need to repeat it for the rest of the book!
And i really doubt that Perkin was Elizabeth’s brother and i don’t think Elizabeth thought they were. They grew up together and would have been able to recongnise each other instantly.
4:11 pm
October 28, 2011
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I loathed the first section (no spoilers but you know which part I mean) and enjoyed the rest. I thought it was the best one in the series so far. I don’t think Elizabeth ever thought Warbeck was her brother and nor did Henry. Henry refused the offer of witnesses to attest to his identity so he was quite confident in the matter.
Mimico in the book she doesn’t actually think Richard murdered her brothers or clearly she wouldn’t have been in love with him. As to the historical evidence of the “affair” there appears to be enough trusted historians who think Richard was planning on marrying his niece at some point. There’s evidence besides the Buck letter that is fairly compelling, it at least indicates they were very close.
6:07 pm
January 3, 2012
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A lot of us have mixed feeling about S W M N B N books, and one or 2 of us use her books for other uses, much to Olga’s disgust.
I did enjoy the Red Queen on a rating of 1/10 I’ll give it a 5. For the most part her fantasies and theories in her books get right up my bugle.
I’m afraid I still haven’t got over her maybe/almost certainly radio interview yet.
Olga I know books are precious things, but seriously when you read a book which is really crap the only thing you can do with it, is cover it in crap. My chipmunks are a dab hand at doing that, and all donations I know are gratefully recieved and shredded very quickly.
Semper Fidelis, quod sum quod
3:18 am
February 14, 2013
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I did think that it was a bit icky that Elizabeth of York and Richard were having an affair together. After all, he is her uncle! It’s incest (if he made love to her)! It seems to me, after re-reading the end of the White Queen, that Philippa Gregory is implying that Perkin is Richard (Elizabeth’s brother) but she is not stating it outright so it is left to the reader to decide whether Perkin is Richard or not.
Margaret B seemed a little nicer than in The Red Queen. Henry Tudor was a bit moody, and I wasn’t sure whether I liked him or not. I was disappointed with Elizabeth Woodville though; she married her daughter to Henry Tudor and then took part to a whole bucket-load of rebellions– meaning, she abandoned her daughter to support her son (or who she thought was her son). I’ll admit, it is not what I thought the real Elizabeth Woodville would do. And why on earth did she support the Lambert Simnel rebellion if the boy was so obviously not her son?
I just checked wikipedia’s article on Perkin Warbeck, and in the Warbeck in Popular Culture section it says that he is Richard in ‘The White Princess’. But wikipedia isn’t the most reliable of sources, I know.
4:01 am
November 18, 2010
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annacarina1 said
I did think that it was a bit icky that Elizabeth of York and Richard were having an affair together. After all, he is her uncle! It’s incest (if he made love to her)!
If you were rich/powerful enough, themn the Pope could issue a dispensation to allow an uncle/niece marriage. Certainly one of the latter Habsburg kings married his niece and had children with her.
It's always bunnies.
11:52 am
January 3, 2012
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The Habsburg line inbred terribly, which led to a lot of genectical problems.
As Anyanka rightly points out money talks if you were rich enough and greased enough palms you could get a dispensation to marry your own sister if you wanted too.
It sounds inhuman and sickening to us now but back then it was quite common for uncles to marry their nieces, and aunts to nephews. I have mentioned this some where else on one of the forums.
These type of marriages are called avunculate marriages. Here are a few examples of the marriages that have taken place.
Leonidas, King of Sparta and his half-niece, Gorgo[6]
Roman Emperor Claudius and his fourth wife and niece, Agrippina the Younger
Vietnamese Prince Tran Hung Dao and his consort and paternal aunt, Princess Thien Thanh
Joanna of Naples and her nephew, King Ferdinand II of Naples (1496)
Philip II of Spain and his niece, Anna of Austria (fourth wife) (1570)
Ferdinand II, Archduke of Austria, and his niece, Anne Juliana Gonzaga (1582)
Chiefess Kapohauola and her nephew, Chief Kakaʻe
Philip IV of Spain and his niece, Mariana of Austria (second wife) (1646)
Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet), lived in concubinage with his niece, Marie Louise Mignot Denis.[7]
Prince Augustus Ferdinand of Prussia and his niece Margravine Elisabeth Louise of Brandenburg-Schwedt (1755)
Pedro III of Portugal and his niece Maria I of Portugal (1760)
Infanta Benedita and her nephew, José, Prince of Brazil (1777)
King Kamehameha the Great of Hawaiʻi and his niece, Queen Keōpūolani (c.1796)
Sir John Acton, 6th Baronet, Prime Minister of Naples and his niece Marianna Acton (1799)
Francis IV, Duke of Modena, and his niece, Maria Beatrice of Savoy (titular queen of England and Scotland according to the Jacobite succession) (1812)
Infante Carlos, Count of Molina, and his niece, Infanta Maria Francisca of Portugal (1816), and later his niece, Maria Teresa of Portugal (1838)
Kamehameha II and his half-niece Kalani Pauahi
Ferdinand VII of Spain and his niece Maria Isabel of Portugal (1816), and later his niece Maria Christina of the Two Sicilies (1829)
Infante Francisco de Paula of Spain and his niece Princess Luisa Carlotta of Naples and Sicily (1819)
James Mayer de Rothschild, founder of the French branch of the Rothschild banking family, and his niece Betty Salomon von Rothschild (c.1825).
Richard von Metternich (son of the famous Austrian Chancellor) and his niece, Pauline von Metternich (1856).
Amadeo I of Spain and his niece, Maria Letizia Bonaparte (second wife) (1888)
Porfirio Díaz, president of Mexico (1876–80, 1884–1911), and his niece Delfina Ortega Diaz[citation needed]
Henryk Sienkiewicz, Polish novelist, and his niece, Maria Babska.[8] (1904)
Klara Hitler, daughter of Johann Pölzl and Johanna Hiedler and Adolf Hitler’s mother. Either her grandfather Johann Nepomuk Hiedler or his brother was likely her husband Alois Hitler’s biological father. Moreover, Johann was her future husband’s step-uncle. Even after they were married, Klara still called her husband “uncle”.[9][10]
And lets not forget that Cleopatra married her brother Ptolamy to keep the Egyptian throne free from native blood if you like as did King Tut as he married his sister as well. They even had children although they didn’t survive.
King Khufu of the great pryamid fame even married one of his own daughters.
By the way there is no evidence that Elizabeth of York and Richard 3rd, ever had an affair. Personally I don’t think so as why go to all the trouble of bastardising the York Children only to end up marrying Elizabeth. His flirtation with her was perhaps to try and blacken and discredit her, in the eyes of Henry Tulip (Henry 7th). He had pledged himself to her, but if Richard discredited her perhaps Henry wouldn’t bother comming to England as surely Henry wouldn’t want spoiled goods as his bride, if that makes sence.
Semper Fidelis, quod sum quod
11:54 am
June 3, 2013
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as far as we know, neither Elizabeth of York, nor any of her family, were asked to identify whether Perkin Warbeck bore any relationship to Richard of Shrewsbury – given that we also know that PW was held in the Tower of London for two years, and personally interogated by Henry VII as to his identity, the cynical might think that the reason for that is obvious…
Uncle-Neice marriages were rare within the nobility but Cousin-Cousin marriages were not, infact they were the norm.
personally i’m not convinced that the Elizabeth-Richard marriage was a serious proposal, more of a ‘bag of a fag packet’ idea that got shotdown pretty quickly in the cold light of day – Richard was, after all, at the time in serious negotiations for a marriage with Joanna of Portugal. she would have brought a dowery, legitimate Lancastrian claim (far more legitimate than Henry Tudor), no ‘eeuw’ factor, and without the tricky problem of legitimising Elizabeth of York without raising uncomfortable questions about where her (now legitimate) brothers were. the Joanna marriage also involved Elizabeth of York going to Portugal…
9:00 am
January 3, 2012
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One of things I don’t get is why Margaret of Burgundy backed both pretenders to the throne? I would understand it to a point if she had actually met the boys, but she was married and in Burgundy out the way when they were born. Did she support them just to cause trouble?
If she did she ended up with Ostrich egg on her face. What did she hope to gain by doing this?
Semper Fidelis, quod sum quod
3:04 pm
May 3, 2013
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Only a guess but…maybe it was something to do with the Woodvilles’ Burgundian heritage, Bo?
7:49 pm
February 24, 2010
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I always figured that Margaret decided to back Simnel and Warbeck out of family loyalty. Her brothers were gone. The House of York had fallen and Henry Tudor was the reason why. She wanted to cause Henry as much trouble as she possibly could, and backing these boys was her way of being a thorn in his side.
Margaret didn’t go to Burgundy until 1468. She was 22 years old. She was in England for the death of her father and elder brother, and for the battles her brother Edward fought to win the crown. She was there to see his triumph. And she was there for seven years of his reign. When Edward was forced to flee England in 1471, Margaret asked her husband to help. She was able to see him while he was in exile. When George fell from grace she asked that his life be spared. She stayed very involved with what was happening in England.
When the House of York fell, I’m sure she was devastated. All of her brothers were dead and Henry Tudor, who I’m sure she thought of as a usurper, was sitting on the throne. So why not make as much trouble for him as she could? All to the better if she could convince the courts of Europe to go along with her.
8:27 pm
January 3, 2012
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There is that I suppose Sharon. But lets just say for the sake of arguement, that one of the pretenders did managed to gather enough support from the people of England and turf Henry Tulip off the throne, and they were then crowned King. 1 where would that leave Elizabeth (Henry’s ball and Chain) 2 what about their Children? 3. What if Margaret changed her mind and backpeddled out of her support of the pretenders? Theorecially she herself could have claimed the throne.
Semper Fidelis, quod sum quod
11:02 am
September 8, 2013
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I always thought Margaret of Burgundy backed the pretenders to get back at Henry Tulip (I’ve started copying you Boleyn! Its seems contagious 
)
I think i read somewhere that with Henry on the throne, the money that her brother promised her wasn’t coming in and she wanted it. Or it could have been part of a larger plan, which (like Boleyn said) could have consisted of the pretenders defeating Henry for her but just before their butts were on the throne, Maragaret could yell; “Stop!” and plonk herself on the throne. Just my thoughts, which usually are wrong.
7:31 pm
June 3, 2013
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i’m with Sharon – its about personal loyalty to York and antipathy to Tudor.
however, its also Burgundian foreign policy: Henry Tudor had been brought up in France, he was supported in his invasion by the French King, he favoured a French model of monarchy/government – he was friendly towards France. you do not win £20 by guessing which country begining with ‘Fra..’ claimed Burgandy as its own territory, and that Burgundy was keen to keep busy by being at war with, or threatened by war with, England.
allways worth noting that Margeret of Burgundy would almost certainly not be able to recognise either Edward V or Richard of Shrewsbury – her contact with them had been limited in the extreme, and from when they were young children. she may have believed Simmel or Warbeck to be them, she may not – she did, imv, for the reasons Sharon gave, want them to be real.
and we all know about seeing things we want to see…
E2A: unlikely in the extreme, for me, to be a macheiavelian plot with Margeret ‘finding herself’ on the throne after the pretenders meet freak accidents after the defeat of Henry Tudor: while Margeret weided significant power in Burgundy, there had only been one previous attempt to put a woman on Englands throne before – Mattilda/Maude in 1135, and it had lead to a 20 year civil war…
