I am an ardent fan of Elizabeth Woodville. The last book of historical fiction that I have read - "The King's Grey Mare" by Rosemary Hawley Jarman presented a complex portrait of this lucky then unlucky woman. The Wheel of Fortune may have been her principal tarot concept card. The witchcraft angle is deeply scored, the interfering mother, Jacquetta of Bedford a force to be dealt with.
Married for love to her own Sir John Grey and ensconced in beautiful Bradgate Park, her fortunes change abruptly for the worse when he is killed in battle, and then change again in the famous scene under a spreading woody tree where she captivates Edward IV. Many children later, the Wars of the Roses shift against her husband, and she folds into Sanctuary. After Edward's death, she is at the mercy of Richard III and Henry VII. Though she has a beautiful woman's power, and the weapon of her fecundity, she comes to be powerless and boxed out towards the end of her life.
Jarman's book held the first portrait of Henry VI as a little more than a bit player in my fictive reading experience. He is a caricature of the henpecked husband, and his monkishness powers one of the early scenes with Elizabeth at his court (or rather Margaret of Anjou's court). It was very good to see him with a speaking part in a novel.
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