Is the White Queen losing her power?

Elizabeth Woodville was queen consort of England for 19 years and according to the history books kept her power for that whole time.  So influential was she that according to some versions of England in the 15th century, her brother in law Richard snatched her two sons who became the Princes in the Tower because he feared her ruling the country through them after the death of Edward IV.  So it was strange to see this fascinating queen reduced to a simpering bystander in last night's edition of The White Queen.

Elizabeth had a lot to deal with but did most of her coping in slow motion with fuzzy edges.  From finding hubby in bed with his mistress to watching her mother die, events rather overtook this feisty woman and turned her from medieval powerhouse to subject of a problem page.  There was none of the steel and grit that makes Elizabeth one of the most mysterious and admirable women in British history.  And none of the scheming and hard edges that let her survive this most turbulent of times.  I do hope she grows a backbone before next week because Rebecca Ferguson is doing a great job with the strange spin she's been given - it's certainly missing some of the grit Elizabeth showed in Philippa Gregory's novel.

Edward wasn't quite so smitten with his wife in this week's installment of The White Queen


But while The White Queen was having an identity crisis, The Red Queen was having a whale of a tmie. Mad Margaret Beaufort decided to get married after being rejected by Jasper Tudor.  With what passes for her heart broken, she sent a very skinny man wtih a strange beard off to court to get her a Yorkist husband so she could turn herself into a kind of crazy Trojan horse inside the enemy's camp.  Her shopping list for potential mate was hilarious and the scene with soon to be hubby number three, Lord Stanley, when they bantered their way to a medieval pre-nup was the highlight of the whole hour.  Rupert Graves and Amanda Hale are more than a match for one another and as Lord Stanley and mad Maggie were the real driving force into getting Henry Tudor on the throne, the dramatic denouement of the series is in safe hands.

Lord Stanley may be just about able to keep mad Margaret Beaufort under control



The Neville sisters, meanwhile, didn't have a great week.  Isabel, out of nowhere, went feral and had half an hour as a mini despot before remembering which show she was in and reverting to type.  Anne, annoyingly called Annie through most of the episode, seemed to be enjoying the most liberating of imprisonments of all time, constantly wandering around castles before being told to get back to her room.  It's a shame there wasn't time to bring to life her story between the death of Edward of Lancaster and her marriage to Richard of York.  The legend that has a Princess of Wales and future Queen Consort hiding as a maid in a London house to avoid being sent to a convent by George, Duke of Clarence is a fabulous tale that needs telling.

She might have ended up as Queen Consort but legend has it that Anne Neville had to do the dishes for a few months to save her fortune and her freedom from her brother in law

But that's part of the White Queen's problem.  There just isn't enough time for all these amazing stories.  The men got far more of a look in this week but they need to if we are to see the full implosion of the House of York that happened in the mid 1470s and which left Edward IV so exposed.  But then to do full justice to that we need to curtail the other big issue which brings us back to Elizabeth.  She is just too nice in this telling of her story.  A little bit of mean would go a very long way to bring this story fully to life.

Let's hope Edward annoys his wife even  more next week so we get a bit more steel from the rose of the House of York



And as we've just lost the marvellous Jacquetta we need something.  She's been the sensible voice of scheming ambition in this show.  Janet McTeer gave another star turn as the ultimate pushy mother fading into ill health and death.  She'll be missed as much as the woman she played was when she left the stage.  Her death left Elizabeth to weave her name into history on her own.  Hopefully next week we'll believe, once more, that she was capable of doing just that.

Jacquetta of Luxembourg, mother of a queen of England and grandmother of a second, took her final bow in this week's episode

A dark enemy for The White Queen

At last a shadow that's been hanging over The White Queen since it began disappeared, turning into a real live person before our very eyes.  Just when we thought 15th century England had no more room for any queens, along came the much talked of but so far unseen Bad Queen - known to history as Margaret of Anjou but to everyone else in the show, until now, as the ultimate Wicked Witch of the West and creator of all the country's woes.

 

Margaret of Anjou (Veerle Baetens) swept onto our screens last night in red velvet and a very strange pair of pumps

 

She appeared to make a truce with Warwick who was lurking in a rather nice Belgian townhouse plotting away while his Countess and daughters wrang the sea water out of their clothes after the dramatic and traumatic voyage that ended last week's episode and saw the family driven into exile when daddy Kingmaker's plot to put George of Clarence on the throne failed, quite possibly because George had barely spoken a word in the whole series. 

George, Duke of Clarence, brother of King Edward IV, would be traitor (played by David Oakes)

Warwick had decided his only chance of getting his hands on power again in England was by backing another decidedly quiet character, the deposed Lancastrian king Henry VI, who has said very little so far and most of that in Latin.  And if you want Henry on the throne, you have to do business with his missus, the now legendary Bad Queen.  And business they did, him on his knees offering allegiance, troops and the youngest of his daughters as a wife for Margaret's son Edward and she, imperious in red velvet, offering little in return until Henry was definitely king again.

Margaret of Anjou and her son, Edward of Lancaster, just before his wedding to Anne Neville, daughter of the Earl of Warwick

Meanwhile another Margaret, currently Lady Stafford but known to history by her maiden name of Beaufort, was plotting away loudly and dangerously.  She's been convinced for years that her son, Henry Tudor, will be king while nearly everyone else has been convinced she's almost as mad as poor old King Henry.  But now they're all coming round to her way of thinking, even little Henry.  The relationships between him and his mother and between Margaret and her second husband, Stafford, are amongst the most believable and touching in the whole series.

 

Henry Tudor became a mummy's boy in this episode of The White Queen - but what will Uncle Jasper, looking on, think of the development?

Certainly more touching than the increasingly tedious love story between The White Queen of the title and Edward IV.  He was conspicuous by his absence this week, as he was in England in 1470 when he fled his country, queen and crown as Warwick closed in.  We saw him in two fleeting scenes with Elizabeth including the by now compulsory passionate embrace and promises to return that they seem to get round to every week.  It's not that the romance isn't important in their tale, it's just that there is so much more to this Queen Consort and her king than sloppy kisses and longing looks.  They were a real power couple, Edward choosing a wife who could help him consolidate his power against the overmighty Warwick and Elizabeth choosing a husband who could help her own ambitions and those of her family.

Edward IV and Elizabeth did a bit more than gaze at each other longingly in their almost twenty years of marriage

It is unfortunate that the two episodes featuring hardly anything of The White Queen of the title have been the best of the series.  Yet again, the Neville girls stole every scene they were in.  Isabel is turning into a truly fascinating psychological study of all it was to be a high born woman in medieval times, weeping in private and smiling in public as she's pushed from pillar to post and York to Lancaster by her scheming father and husband.  And Anne is perhaps the most interesting of them all.  Played to perfection by Faye Marsay, this Anne is girlishly ambitious and romantically optimistic even in the face of manipulation and marriage to the superbly brutish Edward of Lancaster.

 

Isabel and Anne Neville had to do just what Dad told them - it brought both of them close to the throne of England but only one went on to wear the consort's crown

The history is being explained very well and although we've still had no actual battle action there's a great sense of the way England's fields were soaked in blood in a war that cost a huge amount of lives and affected nearly every family in the land.

But I did begin to wonder last night whether the story might have been even more powerful told from the angle of Jacquetta of Luxembourg.  We were given several hints last night of how every single person in the tale is linked to her - and the most clunkingly disappointing moment came when Margaret of Anjou told her soon to be daughter in law, Anne, of her close relationship with The White Queen's mother.  It was all a bit explanatory whereas seeing things through Jacquetta's eyes would have allowed that to develop more naturally.  Similarly, when the Queen's mother was on trial for her life her mention of her bond with Margaret was shoe horned in rather clumsily.  As Jacquetta delivered her grandson, a prince and future king called Edward, it wasn't lost on anyone that she'd done the same almost twenty years earlier when she helped her friend, the Bad Queen, as she gave birth to another Edward who was at that point destined to be King of England.  Janet McTeer is fabulous in her role and a bit more of her all the way through could fill in some of the gaps that are inevitable in trying to spin such a complex yarn in so short a time.

Elizabeth Woodville and her mother, Jacquetta of Luxembourg

 

 

We had plenty of thrills at the end as Elizabeth fled with her baby daughters into sanctuary in Westminster Abbey and some quite terrifying scenes as Edward of Lancaster consummated his marriage to Anne Neville.  The poignancy of mad old King Henry VI meeting little Henry Tudor was beautifully done and it's all setting the scene for next week when we get to the crux year of 1471, the year of two kings and two queens.  And a lot of pretenders to the throne.

The White Queen is on BBC One on Sundays at 9pm.  All pictures from the BBC.