Literature

ALISON WEIR

Elizabeth of York: The Last White Rose Richard Hopton, Sherborne Literary Society

Elizabeth of York is an important figure in the history of late medieval and early modern England. Daughter of one king, Edward IV, wife of another, Henry VII, and mother of a third, Henry VIII, she is the ancestor of every English monarch since 1509, every Scottish monarch since 1513 and every British monarch since 1603. Alison Weir’s latest book is a fictionalised account of her life.

Alison Weir is the United Kingdom’s best-selling female historian who has written extensively about the English monarchy in the medieval and Tudor periods, including biographies of all six of Henry VIII’s queens. She is equally adept at fiction and nonfiction; this novel complements her earlier biography of Elizabeth of York, making it an interesting example of the interplay between history and historical fiction. There is, Weir writes, ‘a wealth of source material for Elizabeth’s story’ but history doesn’t always record ‘her

thoughts, emotions, motives, hopes and fears’ and once she became Queen ‘her voice was silent’. So Weir uses the imaginative power of fiction to put flesh on the bare bones of the historical record, thereby providing a more vivid portrait of the long-dead Queen. This enables her, for example, to recreate the ebbs and flows of her relationships with her siblings, her husband, and her own children – aspects of her life otherwise lost in the fog of history.

The Last White Rose succeeds triumphantly in bringing the turbulent years of Elizabeth’s life (14661503) to life. When it opens in 1470, England is convulsed by the Wars of the Roses. When her father, Edward IV, is deposed by the Lancastrian Henry VI, her mother is forced to seek refuge with her children in St Margaret’s, Westminster. Elizabeth - Bessy - is only four-years-old but already exposed to the dangerous currents of war and dynastic strife. In the following year, Edward recovers the throne and Henry VI is murdered. In 1483, Edward IV dies prematurely aged only forty-one, allowing his unscrupulous brother Richard of Gloucester to force his way onto the throne, murdering Edward’s sons - and Bessy’s brothers - the Princes in the Tower in the process. Two years later, Henry Tudor invades England to claim the crown, kills Richard at the Battle of Bosworth and ascends the throne. Elizabeth then married Henry, thereby uniting the rival houses of York and Lancaster and ushering in a new age of peace and stability.

In Weir’s capable hands, Elizabeth’s character develops from childish innocence and youthful ambition to the complexities of adulthood. We hear, for example, that Edward IV kept three mistresses and that the nineyear-old Bessy ‘understood that a mistress was a lady worshipped by a knight from afar, but that did not chime with the disapproving tone of the gossips’. Likewise, she is portrayed as being politically aware, even acute, from an early age: ‘Elizabeth noticed royal councillors murmuring in corners and falling silent when she passed by. She feared that something ominous was afoot’.

Above all, a medieval princess was expected to marry. As her grandmother tells Elizabeth at the age of thirteen, ‘You, Bessy, are destined to marry. You can serve God by loving your husband and your children. That is a holy way of life too.’ But Elizabeth’s marriage was also a question of great dynastic and political importance. At the age of nine, she was betrothed to the Dauphin, son of King Louis of France, but a few years later Louis repudiated Elizabeth in favour of another, more diplomatically advantageous princess. It was then that the idea that she might marry Henry Tudor - then a landless exile - was first mooted but much water had to flow under the bridge before this came to pass. First, her uncle, Richard, having claimed the throne, announced his wish to marry her but then changed his mind in favour of marrying her off to a Portuguese prince.

Elizabeth and Henry married a few months after his victory at Bosworth thereby uniting the houses of York and Lancaster. Their marriage may have brought a long and bitter dynastic conflict to an end but it didn’t entirely remove Elizabeth’s qualms about her status. She felt that Henry owed his title to the throne to her, that it was their marriage which legitimated his title; Henry, by contrast, justified his title as the God-given reward for victory over Richard III at Bosworth. Nor, despite their marriage, did Henry feel secure on his throne; he was forced to confront the Yorkist pretenders, Lambert Simnel, Perkin Warbeck, and Ralph Wilford while his suspicious nature inclined him to see disloyalty in every shadow.

Weir marshals an enormous cast of characters, the majority of them historical figures, adroitly and, for the most part, imbues the dialogue with sufficient period feel to lend it authenticity without it becoming irritating and obscure to the modern reader. There are moments when modern argot slips into the dialogue: at one point Elizabeth enjoins Henry to ‘Stay safe!’ which sounds more of a Covid-era injunction than a medieval valediction. Later, she says, ‘I think Henry was in denial.’ And later still admits that, ‘I was in a bad place,’ both of which phrases sound decidedly modern on the tongue of a medieval queen.

Overall, The Last White Rose offers an imaginative, enjoyable, and plausible account of Elizabeth’s life and personality, vividly recreating her turbulent times for the modern reader.

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___________________________________________ Wednesday 6th July 7pm-9pm Alison Weir - Elizabeth of York: The Last White Rose The Digby Memorial Hall, Digby Road, Sherborne DT9 3NL Tickets £9-£10 from sherborneliterarysociety.com/events