The White Queen's princesses

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 Elizabeth and Edward got whatever Elizabeth and Edward wanted and 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.  But the choice of names for the daughters of Edward and Elizabeth is pretty intriguing all round, starting with the first.  And their naming decisions perhaps give us more pointers to the politics of the court of the House of York.

First, catch your kind.  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.

 

 

Edward IV, King of England, had the common touch and wanted to keep his people with him as he tried to establish his power base at the beginning of his reign

 

And the choice of name for baby number two is another argument for Edward looking to the people rather than the court while he was establishing this new royal family.  His second daughter, born in 1467, was called Mary.  He wasn't the first king to choose the name - Edward I and Edward III had both chosen it for one of their girls but both those princesses were way down the birth order.  It had been a name for a younger girl shuffled out to the margins of royal life by a string of older siblings.  Edward and Elizabeth put it centre stage and again they chose a name used by a lot of their subjects for their own girls.  

 

 

Edward and Elizabeth's family was the first to fill the royal nursery for almost a century and their choice of names for their offspring gives some clues to the power politics being played out at the time



 

But Mary was also the name of one of Elizabeth's sisters.  And that sister had just made a marriage that yet again improved her family's standing and increased its hold on the reins of power in England.  Mary Woodville was 11 when she wed the heir to the Earl of Pembroke in 1466.  Her husband was fifteen and his father had been given his title in 1461 by Edward as a token of appreciation for his loyalty.  But he was a rival of Kingmakers Warwick's for influence and by marrying his son to the king's sister in law he became closer to the royal couple.  He was also in charge of that Lancastrian claimant to the throne, Henry Tudor.  Suddenly, Mary Woodville was at the centre of political intrigue at the court and by using the same first name for their second daughter, Edward and Elizabeth could have been showing where their favour lay right now.  And that was away from Warwick and with the new men at court.

 

 

The Earl of Warwick (James Frain) had been used to his own way before Edward married Elizabeth Woodville

 

Duchess Cecily did get a namesake granddaughter, born in April 1469.  But interestingly, the third child of Edward and Elizabeth arrived as the king's rule was under threat.  Warwick's rebellion against his former protégé would come alive just a few months after Cecily's birth which means that the machinations which led to it were already well under way.  And they included the kingmaker starting to plot with Edward's brother, George, a favourite of their mother.  It's possible that the king called daughter number three after his mum to try and get her back on side as rumours grew that he wasn't the legitimate son of his own father.  Cecily herself is linked to the claims that Edward was the child of an archer rather than the Duke of York meaning that George was the eldest living legitimate son and therefore rightful king. 

 

 

George, Duke of Clarence (David Oakes) was mummy's favourite and spent most of his brother's reign trying to grab a crown for himself

 

Edward and Elizabeth's other daughters were born after he had secured his throne once and for all and after the death of Warwick.  Surprisingly perhaps none of the four girls who joined Elizabeth, Mary and Cecily in the royal nursery was given the name of Elizabeth's mother, Jacquetta.  Given the apparent closeness between the two and Jacquetta's own elevated position it seems a big omission. Elizabeth Woodville's mother had been Duchess of Bedford and second most important woman at court in the early part of Henry VI's reign.  Her second marriage led to her living a quieter life in Northamptonshire but she still had her royal links and her royal pension for much of that time.  And Jacquetta was of royal blood herself, descended from the house of Luxembourg.  But that perhaps is why her name wasn't used.  It was distinctly un-English and very royal - not exactly down with the kids as Edward liked to be.

 

 

Jacquetta of Luxembourg (Janet McTeer) had plenty of blue blood of her own but unlike Duchess Cecily she didn't have a York princess named after her

 

Edward and Elizabeth's fourth daughter was a Margaret, the name of the king's sister.  And she was followed by Anne - who also shared a name with one of Edward's sisters.  Second from last girl Catherine shared a name with one of the sisters of Elizabeth Woodville - the older Kate was married to the Duke of Buckingham, one of the most important nobles in England.  The youngest York princess was called Bridget.  It's likely she was named after St Bridget of Sweden who's fame was huge at the time - she herself had died in 1393 and had founded an order, the Bridgettines.  Bridget of York entered religious life at Dartford, a Dominican order, and remained there until her death in 1517.

 

 

 

Elizabeth with her two youngest girls, Catherine and Bridget, in The White Queen

 

It's fairly obvious why Elizabeth named her sons the way she did - an Edward for his father, a Richard for his father and brother and a George for the other, faithless brother who he tried to tame.  But the names of her girls throw up far bigger questions and perhaps give a clue to the way that power fell in the court of Edward IV and The White Queen.

 











The White Queen's final bow

And then we came to the end.  After ten weeks, five kings, three consorts, endless princes and a plethora of princesses, The White Queen took her final bow.  Well, sort of.  She was mysteriously absent for most of the programme but her story, the tale of her rise and fall and the epic legends that arose around it were all wrapped up as we finally made it to Bosworth and got our Tudor king.  The White Queen's dynasty has begun.

The White Queen gave her name to the show but not much else this week as she wandered round the garden while England fought for her husband's crown

 

But before she could start setting up a brand new royal house, we had to get everyone else out of the way.  First to go was Anne Neville.  She started the episode looking on while husband, Richard III, made eyes at his niece, Elizabeth of York. In the first twenty minutes she was humiliated by the couple and lost her only son.  It was all too much for her and she ended up in the wrong section of the wardrobe department, emerging in Victorian garb for her boy's funeral.  And she knew the end was nigh when she started coughing while holding a hankie.  Every character in every period drama who coughs while holding a hankie sooner or later finds blood in it and dies of TB within the hour.  And sure enough, while Richard helped Elizabeth find her way round court, Anne got red spots on her handkerchief.  She lingered long enough to find out she hadn't been responsible for the disappearance of the Princes in the Tower before dying. 

Anne Neville tackles Richard III on his rather close relationship with his niece

 

Standing by as she breathed her last was Elizabeth of York who managed to look vaguely upset even though she'd spent quite a lot of time by then chasing Anne's husband.  This intriguing episode of English history took up a lot of the final part of The White Queen, partly because the scandalous attraction of niece for uncle meant that whoever won at Bosworth, Elizabeth of York was likely to be queen consort afterwards.  Except no one really found the possible marriage of uncle Richard to niece Elizabeth that scandalous.  Margaret Beaufort looked shocked at first but then went about calculating how it might affect her plans to grab the throne of England for her son while The White Queen herself managed a minor grimace and that was about it.  Even though marriage laws weren't codified until 1560 in England, an uncle was still banned from marrying his brother's daughters - it was within the degrees of consanguinity that were barred by the church.  But despite that, no one really seemed to care.  They may have had other things to think about but Richard and Elizabeth's incestuous flirtation was treated more as a case of marital infidelity than the religious, ethical and political crisis it really was.

 

 

Richard of Gloucester offers niece Elizabeth of York a hand with her music lessons while everyone else pretends not to notice what's going on

Richard III came up with one of the best all time excuses for chasing another woman that any husband has ever offered a wife - he was trying to get all his nobles to send their soldiers to fight for him rather than Henry Tudor.  Anne didn't buy it and it didn't work anyway but it made for some great scenes between the doomed king and his dying wife.  The psychological trauma encountered by Richard in the last months of his reign was brought vividly to life by Aneurin Barnard who managed to steal the episode from usual stars of the show, Margaret Beaufort and Lord Stanley.  I have never felt sorry for Richard III until now.  But unlike previous weeks where the king had spent a lot of time preparing things, this week he just got on with the business of trying to keep his fragmenting kingdom together and his determination and isolation, as well as his relationship with his right hand man Brackenbury, were poignant in the extreme.

 

He didn't get to cry out for a horse in exchange for his kingdom but Aneurin Barnard gave a great interpretation of Richard III, doomed king of England

 

Quite how Richard managed to lose at Bosworth to Henry Tudor is one of the great questions of history and along with the relationship between the king and his niece, the final fight for the crown in the battle that ended the Wars of the Roses was the main theme of the final episode.  It all came down to Lord Stanley who famously waited on a nearby hillside to see which way the fight would go before throwing in his lot with Tudor and turning him into a king.  In this telling, Stanley really was the kingmaker as he grabbed the fallen crown of England and presented it to his stepson in the aftermath of the battle.  The wait on all side to find out which way this uber powerful man would go was brilliantly done and even though we all knew the ending already there was plenty of tension as Lord Stanely kept us guessing until the very end.

 

 

Look what I found in the gift shop....Lord Stanley keeps stepson Henry amused at Bosworth

 

It was lucky really that Henry had his stepdad fighting for him because he looked terrified for most of the episode.  Henry VII ruled England by conquest but it was hard to imagine this Tudor conquering the stairs on his way to bed, let alone a king and country.  He started off looking worried, moved on to extreme anxiety and by the time his mother inexplicably turned up to see him the night before the fight he was quaking in his boots.  Uncle Jasper was left to rally the troops while Henry wibbled and wobbled around the edges.  It's no wonder Elizabeth of York wasn't keen on marrying him, he took wimp to new levels. 

 

 

Henry didn't look to keen on conquest in The White Queen's last episode

 

But then with a mother like Margaret, who could blame the boy.  Amanda Hale was fabulous as ever.  OK, we still don't know how she got out of house arrest and galloped from Bletsoe to Bosworth in about half an hour to take on her husband and then see her son before the great battle but it didn't matter.  She's always great to watch and the scene between mad Maggie and Elizabeth of York promises great things if we do get a sequel based on the White Princess' story.  But it was her sparring with Stanley that was the real highlight, as always, and Rupert Graves' snarling nastiness towards his wife made for some great viewing.  Her revenge, at the end of the battle, was totally made up and totally marvelous.  You can stay kneeling, she snarled, and treat me like a queen.  Not even hard nut Stanley was going to argue with crazy King's mother Margaret at the moment of her greatest triumph.

 

 

 

Henry got to rule England for at least five minutes before his mother turned up to claim the power and influence she had fought for over two decades

 

The Red Queen was in charge which left just one question - where on earth was The White Queen?  She was back at Grafton in her parents' home and had found a very big hessian shawl to constantly wrap around herself.  She cropped up intermittently, always with shawl, but did and said very little.  At the end, her now 30 year old son Thomas Grey appeared to have inherited the condition endemic throughout the whole series of looking considerably younger than he was meant to be but he made up for that by bringing back his half brother, Richard of York, from exile.  Elizabeth had sent him into hiding to save him when Richard III wanted to put him in the Tower of London with brother, Edward V, and he came back as the series wound to an end with a very strange fur rucksack stuck to his back.  He promised vengeance but was told by his mother that revenge was futile - a strange remark from a woman who spent a lot of time casting spells and putting curses on her enemies - but a happy ending for now for one of the York princes.

 

   

Elizabeth had a new shawl for the final episode of The White Queen

 

And that was that.  Elizabeth began this series as a mother struggling to make ends meet and that was how she ended it.  She hadn't had the best lines, the best scenes or even the best frocks but she got he last word.  Just as her mother, Jacquetta, had told her to be brave as she got ready to wear the consort's crown, the final scene of The White Queen saw Elizabeth tell her own daughter to be strong and prepare to rule.  The story came full circle, even if it had been uneven on the way there.  Elizabeth's reign as queen of England and queen of Sunday night television was over and the baton was being passed on to another Elizabeth.  And The White Queen's final words were an order to her namesake daughter and a promise of a follow up series.  Go, she told her, and be queen of England...as she herself once had been.

 

 

Her reign is over - farewell to The White Queen







 





The White Queen's mind games

From historical romp to a murder mystery, this week The White Queen went all psychological and was all the better for it.  The fate of the princes in the tower consumed this whole episode and suddenly we got a taste of what we've been missing all the way through the series - a little bit of intrigue and uncertainty. 

 

The White Queen was far from calm and collected for most of this episode

 

As we were rather clunkingly told at the beginning, it is now 1484 and we are in London.  Once we'd got that out of the way, along with the even more hamfisted introduction of the three main players in the scheming that were to follow as they were presented with their titles by Richard III, things got very interesting indeed.  All those who wanted the princes eliminated were slowly shown plotting against them while wrestling with the fact that to bin this particular set of enemies, they'd need to kill two innocent children. 

 

Edward V and an imposter posing as his younger brother, Richard of York, asleep in the Tower of London.  Their fate, still unknown, was explored in episode nine of The White Queen

Anne Neville was the first to suggest that the boys might such a huge inconvenience, they had to go.  Desperate to know they were still in Richard's safekeeping before the royal couple went on tour, she tiptoed through the Tower to stare at them sleeping only to find herself drawn into a strange conversation with the man her husband had just put in charge of the building and its inhabitants.  Admitting to him that many still believed the twelve year old snoozing behind the door was king rather than her hubby, she then confessed that a dead Edward would be less of a threat but had to go off on progress not knowing what the constable would do.  Cue queen Anne's dilemma of whether she had sent the boys to their deaths.

 

Anne's crown looks quite secure on her head her but she was worried it might wobble off because of popular support for boy king, Edward V, which led to a very unfortunate meeting on the stairs

Next into the drawing room of this medieval Poirot story was Margaret Beaufort.  Mad Maggie was plotting with just about everyone last night to get her boy on the throne of England.  When she wasn't sat, quill in hand, writing to Brittany, Westminster Abbey and the whole of the north of England, she was whispering in front of fires and in the middle of forests to further the causes of young Henry Tudor.  But Maggie wasn't going to be drawn lightly into infancticide and in one of the best scenes of the whole series, she and fourth husband Lord Stanley had a ding dong of a fight about whether she would take responsibility for ordering the deaths of the two boys who stood in the way of her son being king.  Her husband hissed venom as he pointed out she needed to do something terrible if she really wanted her son to wear the crown of England.  She muttered through tears and agreed to their deaths.  But again, Margaret was left wondering whether what she had said yes to had really happened.

 

Margaret Beaufort was told a few very uncomfortable home truths by hubby, Lord Stanley, last night.  For the first time, The Red Queen seemed almost vulnerable.

And that was where this episode came into its own.  It would be easy to give an interpretation of the facts and point the finger at one culprit for the fate of the princes but instead we were left wondering.  The curse that Elizabeth and her daughter put on Edward's killer at the end leaves a number of suspects in the frame and one may yet be revealed before the series is over.  But this week we were treated to no one really knowing what anyone else was up to.  The sense of mistrust, the fear of betrayal, the double guessing, the lack of certainty of anyone's motives were all conveyed brilliantly.  That, combined with a sharp and clear explanation of several of the plots swirling around the crown in 1484, made the whole story compelling.

Elizabeth of York may yet reveal who gets the blame for the Princes in the Tower in this telling of their story....but did she damage herself with the curse she made at the end of the episode?

But while the men had to lead the would be rebel troops and whisper poison into ears, who was really pulling the strings?  At times it looked like Elizabeth, at others like Anne and in between Margaret seemed to be backseat driver extraordinaire.  The main victim this week was the poor old Duke of Buckingham who thought he could be king as the plots got thicker and started spreading rumours that his old friend, Richard III, had killed the princes in the tower.  Well, possibly.  Whatever he did say or do was magnified into a major plot by that major plotter, Lord Thomas Stanley, who ultimately pulled everyone's strings in this episode.  Stanley ended this week richer and more powerful than ever before while Buckingham got the chop which was quite handy as yet another pretender to the throne would be too much to handle.  Never mind the strangely old Henry Tudor who was busy training at least six men to fight for him in a forest in France, we've also now got Edward of Middleham who turned up half way through as Richard and Anne's son aged ten and all but towering over both his parents.

Buckingham gets caught in the rain but there was nothing for him to sing about - the end was just around the corner of a very muddy field for the would be king of England

Richard III meanwhile was preparing for war.  A lot.  Last week every time he spoke, he ordered someone to prepare his best horses.  This week he kept telling Anne he must prepare for war.  That preparation led to him walking through a rather muddy field with at least ten men in chainmail.  But he didn't have that much time for a proper battle as he seems to have to oversee every execution in the country.  Last week he went all Julius Caesar by waving his hand to have Anthony Woodville beheaded and this week he looked on as Buckingham lost his head.  No wonder he was too tired to get out of bed at the end.

Richard preparing to kiss his wife's hand - he likes getting ready but seems to spend less time doing things than preparing for them

Richard, however, has proved himself to be the most interesting of these three York brothers by a country mile.  Edward stayed ridiculously young and shouted a lot while George never changed his top and barely spoke.  But Richard is full of internal wrangling and deep rooted anxiety which is far more compelling than the moody staring of the other two, even if he does dip into a strange Laurence Olivier doing Shakespeare impression every now and again.

Richard III does like to prepare in The White Queen - here he is preparing to make moves on his niece, Elizabeth of York

The whole episode benefitted from taking its time.  This was a more than leisurely stroll through the months that followed the deposition of boy king Edward V and the coronation of his uncle as Richard III.  While the series so far has galloped through history at a sometimes terrifying rate, this episode allowed each of the characters to show their inner strength and inner demons so that by the end we could enjoy missed meanings leading to confusion and clever plotting taking us to unforeseen conclusions.  The most unforeseen of which was Elizabeth Woodville actually be interesting for a whole episode.  The challenge she gets from her feisty daughter is what she needs to develop into a more rounded character, rather than the hagiographic vision of perfection we've been treated to so far.

Elizabeth, queen of England, has met her match in Elizabeth, princess of England

 

And with the younger Elizabeth moving centre stage, hat means that next week should be a cracker.  We got a hint of it in the dying moments of episode nine with princess seeming quite overcome by the attentions of her uncle - not surprising as she's spent most of her adult life seemingly cooped up in sanctuary and has had little experience of courtly love.  Richard could be about to lose his heart and his throne all in one summer as The White Queen reaches its finale.

Spoilers - Richard III was forced to deny publicly that he intended making his niece his second queen

Kate's link to The White Queen

Kate, Duchess of Cambridge and Elizabeth Woodville have a bit more in common than the fact that they're both labeled commoners in the strange language that tells royal history.  Ambitious mothers might be another strand that draws them together and that, allied with happy home lives as they grew up, produced two women who both knew their own minds and how to make happy lives for themselves as adults.  But one thing they have in common, a trait shared by very few other queen consorts or queens in waiting, comes down to age.  Both Kate and Elizabeth are older than their royal husbands.

 

Kissing an older woman - William and Kate do the now traditional balcony snog on their wedding day in April 2011

Elizabeth Woodville wasn't the first bride to have been born before her king.  That prize went to Eleanor of Aquitaine who was eleven years older than second husband, Henry II of England.  Eleanor was thirty and her bridegroom was nineteen when they married in Poitiers on May 18th 1152.  Her marriage to the King of France, Louis VII, had been annulled just two months earlier. 

Eleanor of Aquitaine portrayed here with her youngest son from her marriage to Henry II.  By the time John was born, the couple had got right royal rows down to a fine art

 

But the attraction each had for the other was strong and not just on a physical level.  Henry got an older, wiser, wealthier wife and a stronghold in the south of France.  He also stopped this ambitious, determined and strong willed woman throwing in her lot with anyone else and so stopped a potential threat to his plans to rule England before they got going.  Eleanor got a stronghold in the north of Europe and the chance to carve her court of love in a part of the world as yet untouched by her brand of chivalry.  And with Henry all but guaranteed the English throne by 1152, she knew she was getting another crown and a whole kingdom to rule.

Eleanor of Aquitaine was queen of France then queen of England and the first royal consort to be older than her husband

 

But normal service was resumed after that and princesses got younger while kings got older for the next two hundred years.  But in 1360 all that changed when the heir to the throne married a woman who was not only two years older than him but had already been married twice and had one husband still alive.

 

Joan, the fair maid of Kent, was in line to be queen of England but like a later would be consort, the fact she had two previous husbands didn't make her popular with her future royal in laws

 

Edward, the Black Prince was the eldest son of Edward III and the most famous knight in Europe.  And with a crown coming his way and a reputation as a soldier and a crusader, he was definitely up there on the eligible bachelors' list of the 1350s.  He apparently had a soft spot for a third cousin called Joan but she had been married before - twice.  She'd kept the first hubby a secret while he went off crusading but forgot to mention him when it was suggested she marry someone else.  And when husband number one returned to England he asked for his wife back, much to the annoyance of the second Mr Joan.  She ended up with her original spouse but when he died, the Black Prince wanted to marry her and take on her four children regardless of the second husband still being alive.  Marry they did and two more sons were born but by the time Edward III died, the Black Prince was dead as was his eldest child with Joan and their ten year old second son became Richard II.  The fact that Joan was two years older than her husband was the least of the worries the royal family had about her.

 

Joan, the fair maid of Kent seen here in a stained glass window at St Mary the Virgin church in Ware, Hertfordshire.  The man with her is Archbishop Anselm and not one of her three husbands

(photo Barking Tigs)

Richard II took up where his dad had left off and married an older woman.  Anne of Bohemia was the daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor and eight months the senior of the man who made her a queen.  When Anne and Richard married in 1382 he had just turned sixteen meaning that their ages were the same on the marriage record even though his new queen turned seventeen not long afterwards.  Their wedding happened just a year after the Peasant's Revolt where the young king had proved himself through his handling of complex politics and popular uprisings.  The couple seemed fond of one another but had no children.  His wife was hugely popular, which makes her almost non appearance in British history surprising, but her death in 1394 destabilized her husband who had already run into trouble with his lords because of his high handed manner.  The loss of his calm queen is seen by some as the beginning of the end for Richard II.

 

Anne of Bohemia was eight months older than her husband, Richard II

And then we come to Elizabeth.  Miss Woodville was five years older than her husband, Edward IV, when they married in secret in 1464.  The new queen, aged twenty seven, had to wait several months before she was acknowledged as official consort of the twenty two year old king but acknowledge her he did, much to the surprise of many of his advisers, and the marriage lasted until his death in 1483. 

 

This portrayal of Edward IV and Elizabeth from the time of his reign shows them of much the same age - the five year gap either wasn't evident or wasn't shown

After Elizabeth, another Catherine played older woman to younger husband and with a pretty similar age gap.  Catherine of Aragon was the first of Henry's Kates - and the one the others were named after.  She was five and a half years his senior when they married in 1509.  But then if you marry your older brother's widow you have to expect an age gap.  But Henry's obsession with his grandfather, Edward IV, is often overlooked and there is nothing to suggest that in the case of marriage, Henry wasn't trying to emulate a man he saw as a great English king.  An older wife had worked well for Edward - why shouldn't it do the same for Henry?

Catherine of Aragon - five years older than Henry VIII, she was the only one of his wives to be born before him

 

We all know it didn't and after that he stuck to young lovelies though the only huge age gap between him and a wife came with marriage number five where Catherine Howard was around 25 years her bridegroom's junior.

And so fast forward through hundreds of years of royal history and we have to wait until the 18th century for another wife older than her husband.  Caroline of Ansbach was seven months older than George II who was still a prince when they married in 1705.  It was the same year that the British parliament decided that George's grandmother, Sophia, was a British citizen as were all her descendants.  Sophia was the heir to Queen Anne who was three years into her reign but had no heirs and was unlikely to have any more.  So Georg became British and acquired a wife and the following year was given a British title to complete the package.  He became Duke of Cambridge meaning that Kate isn't the first duchess of that city to be older than the man who will make her queen.

Caroline of Ansbach became Duchess of Cambridge the year after her marriage to the future George II.  They were devoted to one another but Caroline died relatively young in 1737

 



And since then, queens have been younger and their royal husbands older.  But the 21st century brings new demands and the two future kings with older wives.  Prince Charles was famously much older than Diana, Princess of Wales but his second marriage to Camilla Parker Bowles made him the younger partner.  The prince was born fifteen months after the Duchess of Cornwall but as the couple have said that she will be Princess Consort rather than Queen Consort when he takes the throne, it falls to Kate to be the next older woman to wear a crown.

 

The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall on their way to a garden party

(photo copyright Clarence House)

Kate will be the sixth queen consort to be older than her king.  In this case, she is five months senior to Prince William, arriving in January 1982 while he was born in June of the same year.  She's the only one of the future queens of Europe to be born before her husband and will be the first queen consort for three hundred years to be older than her monarch.  Just like The White Queen, she's a royal older woman.

 

The White Queen - reviews so far

The White Queen review - Episode One

 

In which we meet a kingmaker and a king in love...but does he really make a queen or a fool of the girl who falls for him?

 

Episode one - fall in love with Edward and Elizabeth

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The White Queen review - Episode Two

 

A coronation, lots of babies and quite a lot of history in a very short period of time

 

Hardly a spoiler - you know she was queen

*****

The White Queen review - Episode Three

 

Things get very dramatic and very sad as friends fall out - be warned, this is a weepie....

The Kingmaker and his two daughters

*****

The White Queen review - Episode Four

 

Make room for one more queen and this one's very bad indeed....

 

The kingdom isn't big enough for all these queens - another consort makes an appearance in The White Queen

*****

The White Queen review - Episode Five

 

The Red Queen comes into her own and it's worth watching the series for this episode alone

 

Mad, bad and definitely dangerous to know - Margaret Beaufort is magnificent in The White Queen

*****

The White Queen review - Episode Six

 

More plotting from the queens in their various corners and a hidden love story that will win an unlikely girl a crown in the end

 

And then they fell in love - or did they?  Richard III and The Kingmaker's Daughter

*****

The White Queen review - Episode Seven

 

Another heartbreaker, for other reasons...this is drama from start to finish....

Edward's brother, George, isn't the biggest fan of his sister-in-law, The White Queen

*****

 

The White Queen review - Episode Eight

 

The women really are in charge by the end of this one

 

The three women running England in The White Queen

 

The White Queen Review - Episode Nine

 

One of English history's greatest mysteries is explored...and an illicit romance is hinted at...

 

 

Another queen for England - Anne Neville is just one of the suspects in the frame for the murder of the princes in the Tower

 

The White Queen Review - Episode Ten

 

This is where the story ends....a final battle for the throne of England and a queen trying to persuade a princess to swap her coronet for a crown...

 

 

Back where she began in Grafton, Elizabeth watches and waits to see who will wear the crown that once belonged to her husband and her son