Elizabeth of York: A Tudor Queen and Her World
by Alison Weir
My rating: 4 out of 5 stars
We hear relatively little from historians about this fascinating queen consort, whose blood claim to England’s throne was far greater than that of her husband, King Henry VII, the first Tudor monarch with whom she founded the famous dynasty. Her emblematic White Rose of York, paired with Henry’s Red Rose of Lancaster, formed the Tudor Rose, that great diplomatic solution to the Wars of the Roses which remains England’s official floral emblem.
Born in Westminster Palace, the oldest child of King Edward IV, it was because of her gender that Elizabeth was never considered for rulership in her own right. This biological ‘handicap’ would be rethought for her granddaughter and namesake, Queen Elizabeth I, the last Tudor monarch, for the politics of post-reformation religion. In Elizabeth of York’s youth there were too many male claimants, virulently competing, for women to be considered. Towards the culmination of the protracted ‘Cousin’s War’ it was every man for himself, and every woman put forward by her male guardian for politically advantageous marriage stakes.
Alison Weir has always been one of my favourite historical non-fiction authors. Here she again treads where others have not, using her characteristic inventorial detail and commonsensical personal reasoning to draw a literary portrait of an erstwhile somewhat two-dimensional figure. Traditionally drawn as a somewhat stiff, obedient character not unlike her future daughter-in-law Jane Seymour, Elizabeth had other sides explored at length in this entrancing biography. She was no dark horse, no villainess, but no bland Pollyanna either.
She was the older sister of the ‘princes in the tower’ who mysteriously vanished leaving room for their Regent-uncle Gloucester to become King Richard III. Once widowed, King Richard even considered marrying this niece, to strengthen his shaky claim to the throne. The incestuous notion, however, triggered mass repulsion, further weakening, rather than strengthen, his profile, already in damage control after so cunningly and callously usurping his uncrowned juvenile nephew. Elizabeth, not only having expressed no objection to the proposed match, was even put out when he decided against marrying her (astonishing, considering that, to justify his own coup, Richard had earlier declared Elizabeth's parents' marriage invalid, deeming Elizabeth and her siblings illegitimate and ineligible for the throne).
But such was Elizabeth's cool determination to claim her due place on the throne of an England offering princesses few independent choices. Regardless of whether as ruler or consort, she believed herself destined to sit there, as did the English people, who would in time come to revere her.
Almost married off to first George Neville, nephew of the 16th Earl of Warwick (‘The Kingmaker’), then to Louis XI of France’s son, the Dauphin Charles, her destiny had been uncertain for much of her early life. Eventually a mother of seven, she was reputedly pious, benevolent, dutiful yet quietly resilient, having endured much adversity during her mother’s early widowhood, when they lived in the sanctuary of Westminster Abbey after King Edward IV’s death at aged forty from an acute and unspecified illness.
The daughter of the legendary ‘White Queen’, Elizabeth Woodville, Elizabeth of York was thought beautiful, inheriting her father’s good looks but most notably he mother’s fair complexion and distinctive red-gold hair, passed down to her infamous son, King Henry VIII, and grandchildren King Edward VI and Queen Elizabeth I (their elder sister, Queen ‘Bloody’ Mary I, had auburn hair, darkened perhaps by her Spanish mother’s genes).
According to folklore, Elizabeth of York is the ‘queen ... in the parlour’ in the nursery rhyme ‘Sing a Song of Sixpence’; her husband, the famously parsimonious King Henry VII, being the ‘king ... counting out his money’. Her marriage, forged by dynastic necessity, became a rare true love match.
She died in the Tower of London, then still a royal residence, on her 37th birthday, following a postpartum infection from giving birth to Princess Katherine who lived for only eight days. Henry VII was so grief stricken he became ill, disallowing all but his mother Margaret Beaufort into his presence. His intense grief lasted for years, his reputation for miserliness and paranoia becoming markedly worse. The Tower of London was thereafter abandoned as a royal residence.
Afforded a more lavish funeral than even her father, Edward IV, Elizabeth lay in state at the Tower and was interred at Westminster Abbey's magnificent Henry VII Lady Chapel commissioned by her husband. She and Henry still lay there together, their graves topped with an elaborate bronze effigy.
The last Plantagenet to wear any royal crown (her uncle Richard being the last to reign), Elizabeth of York was titular predecessor and mother-in-law of Katherine of Aragon. She was a great-grandmother of ‘Nine Days Queen’ Lady Jane Grey and a grandmother, great-grandmother and great-great-grandmother to Scottish monarchs James V, Mary Queen of Scots and James VI and I of Scotland and England. An ancestor of today’s British royals, she is an important genealogical link of continuum between Norman rulers, from whom the Plantagenets sprang, and Queen Elizabeth II.
While this is not my clear favourite Weir biography, neither is its subject the most exciting historical royal. Just because their most glittering subjects are already covered does not mean any great writer such as this should cease working. Like the great Lady Antonia Fraser, Alison Weir displays uncommon bravery by taking on certain of history’s less widely popular figures, having already claimed her place as one of this genre’s contemporary giants. This was, overall, another truly absorbing, entertaining and enlightening addition to my ‘Read’ list. I closed the last page having come to know personally a great lady who should have been queen in her own right and today would have been.
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