Philippa Gregory - The Red Queen

“We must prepare rooms for my son; he will come to visit me at once,” I say coolly.

The lady-in-waiting is all flushed; she was hoping that we would fall into each other’s arms and dance about in victory. “You have won!” she exclaims. She is hoping I will weep with her.

“I have come into my own,” I correct her. “I have fulfilled my destiny. It is the will of God.”

“It is a glorious day for your house!”

“Nothing but our deserts.”

She bobs a shallow curtsey. “Yes, my lady.”

“Yes, Your Grace,” I correct her. “I am My Lady, the King’s Mother, now, and you shall curtsey to me, as low as to a queen of royal blood. This was my destiny: to put my son on the throne of England, and those who laughed at my visions and doubted my vocation will call me My Lady, the King’s Mother, and I shall sign myself Margaret Regina: Margaret R.”

This has been a deeply interesting book to write, about a woman who triumphed in the material world and tried at the same time to serve God. She is remembered by feminist historians as a “learned lady,” one of the very few who had to struggle for the privilege of study; by Tudor historians as the matriarch who founded their house; and by less reverent memorialists as “t’ old bitch” who became a mother-in-law from hell. Trying to create for the reader a character who could grow from a child with a sense of holy destiny into a woman who dared to claim the throne of England for her son has been a challenge and a deep pleasure. Some parts of this novel are history, some are speculation, and some are fiction. In particular, we do not know who killed the princes in the Tower, nor even that they died in the Tower. Obviously, the claimants for their throne-Richard III, the Duke of Buckingham, Margaret Beaufort and her son-were the people with most to gain from their deaths.

I am indebted to the historians who have researched Margaret Beaufort and her times and especially to Linda Simon for her biography, and Michael K. Jones and Malcolm G. Underwood whose biography was the starting point for my own work. I owe Michael Jones many thanks for being kind enough to read my manuscript.

More research material and further notes are on my website at PhilippaGregory.com, and readers may like to attend the occasional online seminar there.

These are the most helpful books I have read:

Baldwin, David. Elizabeth Woodville: Mother of the Princes in the Tower. Stroud, Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing, 2002.

– . The Lost Prince: The Survival of Richard of York. Stroud, Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing, 2007.

Bramley, Peter. The Wars of the Roses: A Field Guide and Companion. Stroud, Gloucestershire: The History Press, 2007.

Castor, Helen. Blood amp; Roses: The Paston Family in the Fifteenth Century. London: Faber amp; Faber, 2004.

Cheetham, Anthony. The Life and Times of Richard III. London: Weidenfeld amp; Nicolson, 1972.

Chrimes, S. B. Henry VII. London: Eyre Methuen, 1972.

– . Lancastrians, Yorkists, and Henry VII. London: Macmillan, 1964.

Cooper, Charles Henry. Memoir of Margaret: Countess of Richmond and Derby. Cambridge University Press, 1874.

Crosland, Margaret. The Mysterious Mistress: The Life and Legend of Jane Shore. Stroud, Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing, 2006.

Fields, Bertram. Royal Blood: Richard III and the Mystery of the Princes. New York: Regan Books, 1998.

Gairdner, James. “Did Henry VII Murder the Princes?” English Historical Review VI (1891): 444-64.

Goodman, Anthony. The Wars of the Roses: Military Activity and English Society, 1452-97. London: Routledge amp; Kegan Paul, 1981.

– . The Wars of the Roses: The Soldiers’ Experience. London:, Tempus, 2006.

Hammond, P. W., and Anne F. Sutton. Richard III: The Road to Bosworth Field. London: Constable, 1985.

Harvey, Nancy Lenz. Elizabeth of York, Tudor Queen. London: Arthur Baker, 1973.

Hicks, Michael. Anne Neville: Queen to Richard III. London: Tempus, 2007.

– . The Prince in the Tower: The Short Life amp; Mysterious Disappearance of Edward V. London: Tempus, 2007.

– . Richard III. London: Tempus, 2003.

Hughes, Jonathan. Arthurian Myths and Alchemy: The Kingship of Edward IV. Stroud, Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing, 2002.

Jones, Michael K., and Malcolm G. Underwood. The King’s Mother: Lady Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and Derby. Cambridge University Press, 1992.

Kendall, Paul Murray. Richard the Third. New York: W. W. Norton, 1975.

MacGibbon, David. Elizabeth Woodville (1437-1492): Her Life and Times. London: Arthur Baker, 1938.

Mancinus, Dominicus. The Usurpation of Richard the Third: Dominicus Mancinus ad Angelum Catonem de occupatione Regni Anglie per Ricardum Tercium Libellus, translated and with an introduction by C.A.J. Armstrong. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969.

Markham, Clements, R. “Richard III: A Doubtful Verdict Reviewed,” English Historical Review VI (1891): 250-83.

Neillands, Robin. The Wars of the Roses. London: Cassell, 1992.

Plowden, Alison. The House of Tudor. London: Weidenfeld amp; Nicolson, 1976.

Pollard, A. J. Richard III and the Princes in the Tower. Stroud, Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing, 2002.

Prestwich, Michael. Plantagenet England, 1225-1360. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005.

Read, Conyers. The Tudors: Personalities and Practical Politics in Sixteenth Century England. Oxford University Press, 1936.

Ross, Charles. Edward IV. London: Eyre Methuen, 1974.

– . Richard III. London: Eyre Methuen, 1981.

Royle, Trevor. The Road to Bosworth Field: A New History of the Wars of the Roses. London: Little Brown, 2009.

Seward, Desmond. The Hundred Years War: The English in France, 1337-1453. London: Constable, 1978.

– . Richard III, England’s Black Legend. London: Country Life Books, 1983.

Sharpe, Kevin. Selling the Tudor Monarchy: Authority and Image in Sixteenth Century England. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009.

Simon, Linda. Of Virtue Rare: Margaret Beaufort, Matriarch of the House of Tudor. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1982.

St. Aubyn, Giles. The Year of Three Kings, 1483. London: Collins, 1983.

Vergil, Polydore. Three Books of Polydore Vergil’s English History Comprising the Reigns of Henry VI, Edward IV, and Richard III, edited by Sir Henry Ellis. 1844. Reprint Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing, 1977.

Weir, Alison. Lancaster and York: The Wars of the Roses. London: Jonathan Cape, 1995.

– . The Princes in the Tower. London: Bodley Head, 1992.

Williams, Neville. The Life and Times of Henry VII. London: Weidenfeld amp; Nicolson, 1973.

Willamson, Audrey. The Mystery of the Princes: An Investigation into a Supposed Murder. Stroud, Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing, 1978.

Wilson-Smith, Timothy. Joan of Arc: Maid, Myth and History, Stroud, Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing, 2006.

Wroe, Ann. Perkin: A Story of Deception. London: Jonathan Cape, 2003.