Just Finished Reading: The Kingmaker’s Daughter by Philippa Gregory (FP: 2012)

England: 1465. Eight year old Anne Neville is concentrating very hard indeed. Her task is not to tread on her mothers or her older sisters dress as they approach the new Queen. It is very important that they don’t embarrass their mother and especially their father, the Earl of Warwick who has been instrumental in placing the King on the throne. Of course Warwick is far less pleased that the King has chosen his wife without his advice and destroyed years of hard negotiating with France and the possibility of marriage between the two historic enemies possibly healing a rift for all time and finally uniting the two kingdoms. But, it was not to be, love (or more likely lust) has reduced that plan to dust. But Warwick still has two daughters he can move into positions of power and position for despite the recent setback there is still much to play for. But Warwick, the Kingmaker, has not bargained on the talents and ambitions of the upstate Queen Elizabeth Woodville. Without reference to protocol or rank she, through her husband start placing members of her enormous family in important positions gaining increasing power and wealth for the Woodville clan – the Rivers. Clearly no longer under Warwick’s influence he begins to move in the background to have someone more amenable on the throne and he knows exactly who should be the new Kings wife – one of his daughters who will in turn produce the next King of England putting the Neville family is an unassailable position for generations to come.

This is the 4th book in the Cousin’s War series and is as gripping as ever. I think the most surprising aspect of the whole thing is that, essentially the same ground is covered (or at least they seriously overlap) but each looks at the Wars of the Roses from different perspectives – York and Lancaster as well as each major family involved – to give a much more rounded view of what actually happened. Of course different players give events a different emphasis and a different spin. Here the supposedly evil Richard III gets a much better press and (despite still being unable to explain what happened to the Princes in the Tower) comes out of things in much better shape if not exactly smelling of Plantagenet white roses. So much so, indeed, that I’m no longer so sure that Richard was indeed a bad guy! Oh, the power of literature. I’m going to have to research this further. Of course Richard lost at Bosworth and, as we all know the victors write the histories so maybe, just maybe, he wasn’t the complete power grabbing bastard I’ve been told since early in my school career… The author makes no bones about her overall ‘mission’ in her novels – to bring the long neglected women of that period back into the foreground of public consciousness. The problem, as she rightly states, is that even for high ranking women such as Anne and her sister Isobel there is actually little to go on in the historical record. Of necessity much in the novel has to be speculation and the serious filling in of gaps in the historical record. But, and this is an important point, the author clearly knows just how far she can go in her speculative musings. She knows the period and knows her stuff. This is historical fiction – and clearly portrayed as such - with the aim of getting people to read the history of the era and not simply leave things in the fictional realm. So much so that this, and other books in the series, come complete with a bibliography which, to be honest, you will find in very few modern novels! Needless to say that I was, yet again, deeply impressed with this slice of the continuing sage of the war between York and Lancaster. Much more to come both in fiction and non-fiction of one of my favourite periods of English history.