How to do a century in less than 60 seconds

I was wondering before part two of the White Queen whether there would be a bit more history and how they would tell the part of the story that involves Elizabeth not providing an heir for almost six years.  The answer to both questions was - quickly.

First, the history part.  Last week's episode was very light on fact and detail.  This week they tried to make up for it but instead ended up galloping through decades of one of the most complex periods in England's past in about twenty minutes and leaving no one any the wiser for it.  There were very vague allusions to treaties with Burgundy and France and a couple of mentions of nasty battles here and there but no detail, no substance and no real understanding on what on earth was going on.  We know there are two sides in this war, mostly because of some very clunky dialogue involving references to Lancaster and York, but that's about it.  No hint of why so many people thought they could and should be king of England and certainly no references to how they went about it.

The main historical problem lies in the relationship - or lack of it - between Edward IV and the man who made him king, the Earl of Warwick.  Edward spends most of the time wandering around in a rather nice ivory coat and badly fitting crown while looking lustily at Elizabeth.  In the opposite corner, Warwick has a nice black coat and fur trim and spends most of the time wandering round looking angrily at Elizabeth.  There is no hint that the two men have ever spent more than five minutes in one another's company.  I'm all for not patronizing the audience and letting them work things out for themselves but there's a big gap between allowing viewers to pick up the back story and leaving it out altogether and the White Queen is in danger of falling a long way into the hole.

But we know that Warwick ruled England and picked who wore the crown for the best part of two decades.  And that means politics and power and armies and money and none of that gets a look in.  Warwick has such contempt for Edward in this version of the story that we wonder why he ever made him king in the first place.  And how did he get to hold so much power?  He was explained away last night as a man who likes a lot of land - is that it?  Is that how he came to hold so much sway over a whole country and set cousin against cousin, by property dealing?  Last night he captured two kings in less than half an hour and yet we still haven't got a clue how he came to be so powerful.  There were a few references to him 'kingmaking again', as if it were a hobby he indulged every now and again, like remembering he had an expensive train set in the shed and should really go and switch it on for a laugh.  But what kingmaking was and how he would do it were left mysteriously unexplained.

Another glaring omission is the well documented grasping ambitions of the Woodvilles as a whole.  Here, their determination to marry every wealthy heir in the country is seen as a way of protecting the vulnerable Elizabeth and wholly supported by her husband.  In reality, the hasty way in which the queen snapped up spouses for nearly all her siblings was seen as display of gold digging and power grabbing at its very worst.  And leaving out the most notorious of those marriages damaged the show's historical integrity.  Elizabeth's brother, John, was married at the age of twenty to one of the wealthiest women in the country.  It's just that his bride, the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, was around 65 at the time of their wedding and a close relative of Warwick.  Leaving that out may make the Woodvilles look better but it took away one of the main reasons for a major event in the show - Warwick's decision to execute John and his father, Earl Rivers. 

And then there's the thorny issue of Elizabeth's lack of male heirs.  We all know a queen's number one job was to produce boys, and lots of them, to keep her king happy and the crown on his head.  This was dealt with much more strongly with Warwick's evident delight in his rival's ability to produce a son underlining the importance of a king having someone to succeed him.  And in the end that is what it all came down to - a male head on which to rest the crown.  The power and politics went on regardless but it was the theatre, the spectacle, the public life that everyone took notice of.  In that sense, perhaps The White Queen isn't so inaccurate after all.