The misfortune of Anne Neville

 

Richard III usually gets plenty of attention on the anniversary of his death, August 22nd. Whether he ever offered his kingdom in exchange for a horse is lost to the mists of time. Sadly, too, is much of the nuance of the story of his wife, Anne Neville. Anne was briefly Queen of England but her husband packed so much drama into his short reign that there's barely a whisper of Anne whenever his tale is told. I have to say I have always found Anne rather fascinating and rather sad in some ways. So my focus, on this anniversary of the Battle of Bosworth, is the misfortune of Anne Neville.

Richard III and Leicester City's football fairytale

He lost his crown but is now being credited with Leicester City winning theirs - Richard III, King of England and unlikely football icon

His famous statute in Leicester has worn the team's scarf and there is even a placard reading 'A title, a title, my Kingdom for a title'. It didn't come to that as Leicester City won the Premiership with two games to go and sent just about every football fan in the world into dream land. Richard III lost his crown but he is being credited with helping a team everyone had written off win theirs in the most romantic story football has known.

Face to face with the past

It's understandable that there weren't too many princes called Richard in the centuries after the reign of Shakespeare's great villain of a king who bore the name.  Richard III was turned into one of the nastiest monarchs ever by the Tudors who followed him and who wanted to prove it was right they ruled because what went before had been so bad.  It worked and for centuries the idea of a prince called Richard would have seemed just a bit odd given what the history books told us about the last king with the name.  Five hundred years after his death, Richard is being rehabilitated.  And the royals have another prince with the name.

Richard of Gloucester face to face with Richard of Gloucester as the Queen's cousin visits a museum featuring an exhibition about the villainous king

Not only that but this Richard is also of Gloucester as well.  The third king with the name was Duke of Gloucester for much of his life and the latest Prince Richard ended up with that title as well after his older brother, William, was killed in a plane crash.  The modern Prince Richard is the patron of the Richard III Society which has sought, for decades, to show the full picture of the king rather than the one dimensional version of Shakespeare.  And it was as their patron that the 21st century Richard of Gloucester came face to face with the 15th century version as he toured an exhibit about the discovery of the king's bones in Leicester in 2012.  Scientists modelled a version of Richard IIIs  head based on that discovery and it was that which stared back at the Queen's cousin in recent days.  Two men, one name, one title and for one moment face to face across the centuries.

Burying The White Queen's enemy

Richard III is big news at the moment.  The curly haired, Lord of the Rings-esque version of his story gracing the screens in The White Queen has made him into a small screen sensation but back in reality, plans for his funeral are taking shape.  The strangeness of burying this king of England five centuries after his death is becoming more real by the day.  Now the plans for his tomb in Leicester Cathedral have been unveiled and started up the row over his final resting place again.

 

The computer generated image of how the tomb of the last Plantagenent king of England, Richard III, will look if he is buried in Leicester Cathedral

 

The tomb is a stark reminder of his allegiance to the House of York, made in white and filled with symbolism.  The White Uncle would rest in a cream coloured tomb carved from Swaledale fossil limestone, mined in Yorkshire close to Middleham where he spent so much of his life and the place which gave his only son, Edward, his title.  His final resting place would be set on a huge white rose, on the floor of the cathedral.  The tomb will be topped by a deeply carved cross and bear his name, his dates and his personal symbol of a boar.  And around its edge, his motto Loyaulte me Lie. Its poignant meaning is 'Loyalty binds Me'.

 

 

Richard III, King of England, will be buried in state over five centuries after his death

 

It will certainly be a more ornate tomb than that of his brother, Edward IV, who's own burial place in St George's Chapel, Windsor is simple and discreet.  His final resting place is next to his wife, Elizabeth Woodville, and among many other kings of England. 

 

 

Windsor Castle, the final resting place of Edward IV

 

Just two things stand in the way of Richard's burial in Leicester.  Firstly, local planners have to give their approval as the whole project, which will cost £1.3 million in total, will also change the internal layout of the cathedral as well as its windows and lighting.  Secondly, a judicial review has been granted after the Plantagenet Alliance argued that the king would have wanted a burial in York and that the decision to bury him in Leicester was done without a full enough consultation.  A judge agreed to the review but warned against turning his final resting place into a second War of the Roses.  All this means that the plans to hold his funeral in May 2014 will probably be put back depending on the legal process.  But at some point in the next year or so, this controversial king will finally be given a royal funeral, five hundred years after his death.

 

Anne Neville, the odd queen out

To catch a king - the romance and politics behind a royal marriage have long fascinated historians and novelists alike. What is it about the women who wear a consort's crown that makes them marriage material for monarchs?  The hint of a love story is enough to send hearts racing and pens pounding paper while the heartbreak of young women left in miserable marriages because it suited the ambitions of their husbands, fathers and brothers has a poignancy all of its own.  In England, monarchs have ascended the throne with a spare consort's seat to their left with astounding regularity.  Kings complete with queens on the day they took the throne were a rarity and from 1377 until the rise of the House of Stuart in 1603, just one queen was already wed to her king on the day of his accession.  And that was Anne Neville.

 

Anne Neville (Faye Marsay) and Richard III (Aneurin Barnard) save money by being crowned at the same time in The White Queen

From the accession of Richard II on that fateful day in 1377 to the rise to the throne of Edward IV in the bloody battles of 1461, all English kings had been free and single - if not always young - when they took the crown.  Youth had certainly played a part in some kings not having wives to be crowned alongside them - Richard II was just ten when he became king as was Edward V and although that didn't preclude marriage or betrothal, it also meant there was still time to find a bride if no arrangements had already been made.  Henry VI had been just nine months old and even medieval royals, on the whole, considered that too young for a promise of marriage.

 

Henry VI (David Shelley in BBC One's The White Queen) was 23 years into his reign when he married for the first (and only) time - a record for an English king.  But then he was just 24 at the time of the wedding.

But the political instability surrounding the crown had also played its part.  Edward IV was 19 when he became king but he was also a usurper and they weren't top of the shopping list for ambitious fathers looking for husbands for royal princesses or wealthy heiresses.  That wariness about hooking up with wobbly kings might have had a bearing on the marriage prospects of Henry V.  He was heir to the throne because of his father's usurpation and while dad, Henry IV, negotiated marriages for his two daughters to European royalty, none of his surviving sons married until late into his reign.  Henry IV himself had taken the throne unmarried, his first wife dying five years before he became king.  All told, the kings of the Wars of the Roses didn't exactly attract royal brides like bees to honey.

 

Mean, moody and marvelously good looking, Edward IV (Max Irons in The White Queen) was too busy fighting battles to find himself an eligible European bride so became yet another single king

 

But then kings fighting for thrones had other things on their minds than marriage.  Once the crown was secured, the choice of bride was perhaps even more important for usurpers than kings who ruled by right of birth.  And from Richard II through to Richard III, choosing who to ally the royal house with via the marriage of the king was of huge importance.  Richard II's advisers linked him to powerful families in Europe while Henry IV chose a women with political clout of her own.  Henry V picked a bride who could give him another kingdom while Henry VI's advisers chose someone who might just help their failing war in France.  Edward IV had changed everything by marrying a commoner but Elizabeth Woodville's real power was in destablising the dominace of Kingmaker Warwick at a time when Edward was in danger of falling into the pattern of a puppet king.  Edward IV picked a bride who would make him powerful where it mattered - in the heart of his own court.

Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville made each other very powerful indeed

 

Anne Neville was not a potential queen by either standard but then Richard wasn't choosing a consort on the day of his wedding.  He had no realistic prospect of being king and needed a powerbase to stop himself being written out of the story of the three sons of York as a poor relation.  Anne had cash and needed a husband to protect her as her brother in law - and Richard's brother - wanted her fortune and had his hands half way round it.  Their marriage suited them both as younger siblings of splendid families.  But it wasn't a marriage of a king and a queen.  The main beneficiary was Edward IV.  He was now more secure on the throne than ever and he owed his crown this time mostly to himself.  Whereas his accession in 1461 had been the work of the three York boys and the Kingmaker, this time round Edward had fought for the right to rule and won.  And strong kings can divide and rule.  By allowing Richard to marry Anne he antagonized middle brother, George, who wanted the Neville fortune to fall intact to his wife, Anne's sister Isabel.  The wedding of 1472 made sure that Richard and George would never come together to side against him.  He had all his men, friend and foe, where he wanted them.

 

The marriage of Anne Neville to the man who would make her his queen, Richard III, in a scene from The White Queen

 

 

Which makes Anne Neville an accidental queen of England.  When Richard became king it didn't take long for rumours to surface that he wanted rid of his wife.  Whatever the source of those whispers, the queen consort had few friends to defend her and her death in 1485 was followed soon afterwards by suits of interest from Richard III to a Portuguese princess.  The fact that Richard was only linked to women of royal blood after Anne's death - even if two were his nieces - demonstrates that he was reverting to type when choosing a queen.   Anne may have bucked the trend for queens just as much as The White Queen, Elizabeth Woodville, but she never came close to enjoying the success as consort that her rival did.

 

Last Battle for Richard III

Richard III, the last of the Plantagents to rule England, is now the subject of a court battle.  The king's remains were found beneath a car park in Leicester last year and confirmed as his bones earlier in 2013 after detailed analysis.  The government then said he would be buried in Leicester but now some of his distant relatives have won permission for a judicial review into the decision.  They want him buried in York.

 

 

Richard III, King of England, is now the subject of a legal argument

 

The Plantagenet Alliance says the king would have wanted to be buried in York.  His remains ended up in Leicester after being taken there by the victorious Tudor troops after the Battle of Bosworth which took place nearby.

 

 



King Richard's field at the Bosworth site

(photo Bill Sibley)

 

The judge who allowed the review suggested a panel of independent experts make the final choice of where to bury the king.  Justice Charles Haddon-Cave said the Ministry of Justice should have allowed a consultation before deciding to lay the monarch to rest in Leicester but warned everyone involved against turning this into another War of the Roses.

 

 

Richard and a horse - Shakespeare's famous words have him offer his kingdom for one as he faces death at Bosworth

 

Wherever the king ends up is likely to draw a massive tourist trade and the actual burial itself will be a major event attracting visitors from around the world.  But the prestige of being the last resting place of one of the best known, and most infamous, of English kings will bring its own kudos with it.  The battle has begun

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