Naming a princess: politics and power

Elizabeth Woodville had been pretty unstoppable until 1466.  She had married a king, seen off those who wanted to denounce her marriage as invalid, been crowned queen of England and started to snap up some of the most eligible spouses in town for her siblings.  When she gave birth to her first baby with Edward in 1466 everyone expected it be a boy.  The queen had had two sons with her first husband and, what's more, until then Elizabeth and Edward got whatever Elizabeth and Edward wanted. They wanted a son and heir for the House of York. So the arrival of a little girl was a surprise, as was her name.  And their choice perhaps gives us more pointers to the politics of the court of the House of York.

First, catch your king.  Edward IV (Max Irons) falls for Elizabeth Woodville  (Rebecca Ferguson) in the BBC One adaptation of Philippa Gregory's The White Queen

The birth of Elizabeth Woodville's first child with Edward IV was the first time an English queen had delivered a daughter for over 100 years.  While Henry IV brought two girls with him to the royal household when he claimed the throne of England by usurpation in 1399, neither Philippa nor Blanche of England had been born to a reigning monarch.  Elizabeth's daughter was the first girl born a princess in England since 1346 when Philippa of Hainault gave birth to Margaret of England.  So the name of this young royal was highly significant. And highly surprising.  They called her after her mum.

Elizabeth Woodville and Elizabeth of York (Freya Mavor).  The choice of first name for Elizabeth and Edward's first daughter was a break from usual royal naming tradition

It's not that royal princesses weren't named after their mums at that time.  It's just that the first born daughter of a reigning monarch, indeed any monarch, had never before been named after her mother until that day in 1466 when Princess Elizabeth of York arrived.  By using the name of his commoner bride, who was already a controversial figure and highly unpopular with some of his greatest supporters, Edward IV was sending out a message.  It may have been a token of love and estimation for a woman who had captured his heart but it also let his advisers, his would be friends and his plotting enemies know that he would do things his way and that meant making his wife and her family as important as he liked.

Elizabeth of York as a young princess in The White Queen

It was also a slap in the face, metaphorically speaking, for his ambitious mother.  Cecily, Duchess of York would have been quietly confident that a first born girl would take her name.  Several English kings since the Conquest had named their first born girls after their own mothers.  Henry II started the trend, calling his first daughter Matilda.  If anyone was going to take on the power hungry Empress it would have been Henry's wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, but she gave the naming honours to her mother in law. Isabella, the She Wolf of France, named her first girl Eleanor after her husband's mother but that was before she and Edward II had grown to really hate one another. And her own name was used by her son, Edward III, for his eldest daughter even though the She Wolf was in disgrace by the time she was born.

Isabella of France, queen of England, gave her name to the eldest daughter of her son, Edward III, who she had made king in his own father's place just five years before the birth of her namesake

Cecily, Duchess of York has been a major influence on her three sons as they fought to take the throne of England.  After the death of her husband in 1460 she had continued to support their claim to the crown and once her eldest boy, Edward, had been named king of England she incorporated the royal arms into her own.  This is interpreted by some historians as showing that Cecily believed her own husband, Richard, had been the rightful king of England and therefore she herself had been a queen consort.  Regardless of that, Cecily considered herself to be Queen Mother and the most important woman at court.  To see her royal son's eldest child named after a woman she looked down on was, for her, another insult.  Edward IV, despite her support, had made a commoner queen above her and now he was naming their first born after a woman she saw as an outsider.

Cecily Neville (Caroline Goodall in The White Queen) would have had reasonable hopes of her son Edward IV's eldest daughter bearing her name.  She was to be disappointed.

But as well as being the name of his wife, Elizabeth was also the name of many of the women in Edward's kingdom.  There weren't as many first names in use in the last half of the 15th century as there are now and Elizabeth was the among the most well used of a very small pool.  Edward was a great PR man and wanted to unify his kingdom after two decades of division, caused in part by his own family.  By giving his first child the same name as many of the women that he ruled he was also sending a signal to the people who he wanted to stay loyal to him.  He was like them, one of them, not a far removed king playing fast and loose with their lives for his own ends.  Their lives were his concern and just like them, his little girl would be a Lizzie or a Betty and not a princess with a foreign name used mostly by royalty. 

It's hard to think of Elizabeth, now, as anything other than a royal name. That first York princess would go on to inspire her own descendants to share the name that had so surprised. Seven decades later, her own grandson would give it to his second daughter who would go on to become one of England's greatest monarchs, Elizabeth I. Five hundred years on, the second Elizabeth has achieved her own great heights. That unusual pick by an ambitious king and queen helped turn a popular name into a byword for royal success.