Margaret Tudor, Divorce, and Dismay

I zipped through Jean Plaidy's "The Thistle and the Rose" yesterday. Though she only had half the number of husbands as her brother Henry VIII had wives, there are some similarities between these lusty siblings. According to Plaidy, Margaret had a real weakness for a pretty face, and her judgement was corrupted thereby. All of her husbands had mistresses (surprise!), and children they wanted to bring up as if legitimate. Sadly, she could not accept infidelity, past, present or future.

James IV (pictured), a connoisseur of women, was her first king, infatuation and then disappointment. Plaidy's characterization of him was, I thought, very sympathetic. It would be interesting to meet such a man- a charmer without modern morals, sort of a male Madonna (the singer).  James and Margaret appear to have worked things out pretty well.  Unfortunately the Warfare Sickness claimed a royal soldier and left his son a crown on a child.  The others were earls I think, pretty and not too bright.

Hester Chapman stressed Margaret's plainness, here Plaidy pronounces her beautiful. (Or maybe it was the clothes that were beautiful.) (Or maybe in royal circles it is close to the same thing.)

Elizabeth Woodville (My Heroine)

The breadth and depth of suffering in the daily lives of those of the nobility who lived in times of high infant mortality, civil war, and delicate political situations is palpable.  Elizabeth Woodville lost all five of her brothers, six of her seven sisters, four of her five sons, two daughters,  and both husbands.  When her time came she had little to spend on her soul.  Her poverty at the end of her life may mirror that of Margaret of Anjou, although she left key progeny and Margaret was to be at the end the Lancastrian line.

Elizabeth was grandmother to two queens, Margaret of Scotland and Mary of France, as well as that monster Henry VIII.  Edward IV couldn't have been the easiest husband, but they must have seen eye to eye as her many pregnancies suggest.  Was she a witch - no - she inspired jealousy perhaps, and perhaps the charge of witchcraft explained a marriage so "imprudent".

My heroine?  She is very person-al, genuine, gifted and beautiful.

A Few Stray Tudors

I just devoured "The Thistle and the Rose" by Hester Chapman.  This work detailed the lives of two more Tudors I knew nothing of - sisters to Henry VIII (daughters of Henry VII) - Mary and Margaret Tudor.  A long tortuous road for Margaret as Queen of Scotland from a young age was dealt with at three times the length of the relatively simple and straightforward life of Mary as, briefly, Queen of France and then Duchess of Suffolk.

Of course, the plain one, Margaret, received the tougher shakes of life.  And Mary, universally considered beautiful,  was able to enjoy Tudor court life for much longer, have a brief (82 day) reign as Queen to Louis XII, thence to marry her long true love.  One a nightmare, the other a fairy tale.  One in the wild inhospitable poorly managed land of Scotland, the other in the rich realm of France.

I side with Margaret.  She needed all the help she could get.