She wanted a man who was clever enough to see that her son might have a chance at the throne one day, and duplicitous enough to serve two sides at once. As Richard and Anne celebrated their accession, their apparently dear friend Margaret Beaufort played a double game, weaving the Duke of Buckingham into an alliance with her and with the former Queen Elizabeth.
But bad weather kept them in port and the Beaufort rebellion was washed out in a deluge of rain. The two princes in the Tower had disappeared. Whether Margaret had a hand in their disappearance or not, we still cannot know. She certainly had a motive: if the York boys were dead, then her son would be the next heir. Placed in London with a superb spy network and men loyal to her, she was probably able to do so.
King Richard knew Margaret had been plotting against him but he trusted her husband to keep her under house arrest. She never stopped plotting for her son, and when he finally invaded and rode onto Bosworth Field, it was Margaret who provided the ally, the husband she had married for this very moment.
His first act after marching into London was to retreat with her for two long weeks, to celebrate their triumph and to plan their future. She was a co-ruler of England, housed in every royal palace in the best rooms, often with interconnecting doors to her son.
She wrote the Book of the Royal Household, determining how state and private occasions should be performed. She was a keen landlord of her vast lands, and took an active part in the government of the kingdom. She outlived her son but survived long enough to see her grandson inherit the throne. Built by Better.
Share this post:. The Commoner Elizabeth Woodville was born in into a house of solid supporters of Lancaster. The Fighter Anne Neville was born into the wealthiest and most politically powerful family in the kingdom.
Image: Rebecca Ferguson as Elizabeth Woodville. Other News. The Mammoth Adventure - out today. Meanwhile, Lord Warwick had resurfaced after a time away from court, trying to oust Edward by allying with the Lancastrian forces.
The Lancastrians were winning, and Edward was forced to flee abroad, leaving a heavily pregnant Elizabeth in London. Elizabeth fled with her children to Westminster Abbey.
It was there in sanctuary that Elizabeth gave birth to a son, who she named Edward after his father. In , Edward returned to quash the Lancastrian forces, killing Warwick in battle. He then placed the new King in the Tower of London. Elizabeth was furious when she heard of the executions. She immediately entered into an alliance with Margaret Beaufort, the mother to the only Lancastrian heir Henry Tudor.
In Elizabeth retired to life in an Abbey. Elizabeth managed to live to see the Tudor line secured through the rule of two of her descendants before her death in April Elizabeth Woodville was a key figure in British history. Every tactful move Elizabeth made affected the outcome of the Wars of the Roses. She is a pivotal person, but one who is often forgotten about. You can follow her on twitter as historicwomen. Slight error in the history here, Edward was a boy of 13 who accompanied his father the duke of York at the first battle of St.
Pneumonia and typhoid have both been conjectured, as well as poison. Some attributed his death to an unhealthy lifestyle, as he had become stout and inactive in the years before his death. The king jumps down from his great horse, drops the reins, and walks towards me and my boys. I am a tall woman but he overtops me by a head; he must be far more than six feet tall. My boys crane their necks up to see him; he is a giant to them.
He is blond haired, grey eyed, with a tanned, open, smiling face, rich with charm, easy with grace. This is a king as we have never seen before in England: this is a man whom the people will love on sight. And his eyes are fixed on my face as if I know a secret that he has to have, as if we have known each other forever, and I can feel my cheeks are burning but I cannot look away from him. As seen in The Lady of the Rivers , even when he was only eleven, Edward was extremely handsome: tall for his age, with golden-brown hair, dark grey eyes, and a merry smile.
In The White Queen , where he had fully matured into adulthood, he was "a man whom the people will love on sight" , being more than six feet tall, his face tanned, and he radiated rich charm and easy grace.
His blonde hair had a faint scent of spices, his neck a clean smell, his merry smile heart-stopping, and his grey eyes bright with honesty. He also had a lean, well-defined, and well-muscled body: strong shoulders, broad chest, toned abdomen, and powerful legs.
In his later years, he became very fat. The stage is set for an almighty power struggle, with women pulling most of the strings. This may, on the surface, be a story of powerful men trying to snatch the crown from each other. But don't be fooled. The real story goes on well behind the throne, with three women locked in psychological and political warfare. The first is Elizabeth Woodville, whose ravishing, delicate beauty makes King Edward IV weak at the knees as soon as he sees her - even if she does happen to hail from the hated House of Lancaster.
It's a pivotal moment that makes the monarch throw caution to the wind, and changes the course of British history. Then, there's Margaret Beaufort, the so-called Red Queen the Lancastrians being represented by a red rose, and the Yorkists by a white.
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