How Much Change?

I took a flight of fancy during my recovery from my operation last month - read two very pleasant court romances by Susan Holloway Scott - "The French Mistress" about Charles II's last main squeeze, Louise de Keroualle, and "Duchess", regarding Queen Anne's right arm, Sarah Churchill (pictured). They were very easy to read and quite entertaining - and led me to wonder about the evolution of court life in England over the early modern period. Both stories were told in the first person, with just enough color and not too much sartorial detail.

I know little about the period - the weakening of the monarchy due to its unresponsiveness to social movements (could that be?), the rise of Parliament, the prominent placement on the world stage. The nobility did weird stuff with the styling of their hair. The presence of lap dogs...\

Perhaps similar to the courtesans of Ancient Greece, the mistresses of Restoration England, at least as Louise is portrayed here, have unexpected political influence. Indeed, Louise is employed as a spy for the court of France. Sarah Churchill, of course, exacted great pull with Queen Anne, though she never acted as a courtesan, marrying as a young lady in waiting.

We have here come a long way from Margaret of Anjou's court, dingy as they say, with Elizabeth Woodville appearing far too fetchingly beautiful a lady for comfort, and also the ladies-in-waiting stitching altar cloths in the Tudor court. Seems like Restoration ladies played a ridiculous amount of cards rather than employing their hands at needlework. Their gaming debts remind me of modern credit card debt holes. Somehow the money wasn't real.

What was real was the commerce of the nation and its military might. The display of the court remains the same - the concept of show equalling majesty that it did in Tudor England.

I realized this post is but ramblings, but historical fiction at its best for me elicits same. I am sure I will read more of Ms. Scott's work.

United in a Disunited World

Just read a wonderfully tasty story about a pair of lovers in war torn England. The time was the 15th century and the pair: John Neville (brother of the Kingmaker) and Isobel Ingoldsthorpe, a ward of Margaret of Anjou. The novel is "Lady of the Roses" by Sandra Worth. Her work is delightfully comprehensive. Henry VI has a fairly sizeable part - called "Holy Harry" by the populace, he is gentle and somewhat simple. There is one scene wherein he stands up to his queen, in a needful request of Isobel's. I enjoyed his character depiction.

This novel tells of the excruciatingly divided loyalties, twists and turns of military alliances, and the courage of women who are mostly powerless to act but must deal with the results. The colors, tastes and weather events of the time are well described, and the period comes alive in an accessible and moving melange. (Have the hankies ready at the close)

I'll have to step back and hit some nonfiction before I read another novel. It will be hard to find another that directly deals with the Wars of the Roses so well. Any suggestions?

The Woodville Woman

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.

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.

Margaret of York - Part 2

Having finished Daughter of York, a reading undertaken last week, I found the work entertaining, but there is another book that someone should pen, and that is what happened next.  The disintegration of all that Charles the Bold (pictured) worked for, as empires do rise and fall, and how Margaret had to employ her considerable political skills to try and prevent the denouement - well, the following historical period could ask for someone to flesh out a good work of fiction for its explication.

I will not attempt a book review here, and Smith had to stop somewhere, as Margaret's hero would in historical reality be married in a couple of years to someone else it was best to stop where she did.

Charles the Bold is portrayed very severely, and looking at his portrait, straight, simple and unadorned, I find it hard to picture him as the villain as he was in this book.  He was probably very much a man of his times, and the sumptuousness of the Burgundian court required more conquest to perpetuate itself.  (I suppose).   He was, to me, a soldier no less strident than Henry V.

Margaret of Anjou was an enemy of Burgundy as a princess of France, and she never took her hatreds lightly.  She has a small role in this novel, as she should.   During the bulk of this time, having lost her husband and son,  she was a ward, so to speak,  of Louis XI, who allowed her space in his kingdom to fade out in poverty.  Another 180 degree turn in the Wheel of Fortune.

Under a fine tree (fiction)

(just setting this down - haven't researched fully)

Was it an oak tree?  It was really rather green, and the noise from the battle nearby buzzed in his brain.  The Queen, who knew how to fight a battle, had told Henry to get him hither and please, try not to be captured.  He knew that he, in marked contrast to his father, was unable to lead troops into battle.

The air was soft and warm under the tree, and ants crawled over Henry's round toed shoes.  The sky shifted as he fixed his gaze on the clouds in the opposite direction from the battle.  It is a pleasant market town, St. Albans, with a monastery.  The nearness and finality of bloodshed stabbed at his heart, and he didn't know whether to laugh or weep.  Then he lapsed into a helpless self pity .. if only he weren't king...

In times like these, he was really only happy to be swayed by Margaret.  She had evolved from that 15 year old beauty from France to someone who emphatically took charge.  She stepped in to fill the power vacuum in the marriage with an intensity that surprised him.  He loved his queen, and took heart from her vibrancy.  And now they had a fine son.  Edward's birth energized Margaret in another way, she had someone to protect, to shape into a ruler.  As Edward IV, someday he would repair the reeling Lancastrian inheritance.

The Wall (Fiction)

And of course, there was the Wall, the outward manifestation of what was going on within Henry's mind. A mind that had shut itself off, unnoticing of when the body performed any function.

He sat, or rather was arranged on a pile of rags in a vague room in Windsor Castle. The mood of the others dwelling in the castle was somber, fearful, yet daring to hope that their anointed king would soon free himself from the blankness of the Wall.

This was sometimes made unlikely, as when his mind climbed a step and he saw the ghost of a father he never had known - with a disapproving grimace on his hard haughty famous face. This apparition knocked Henry back, his head against one wall and his mind against another. Like many sons of famous fathers, he had often been able to do nothing but shrug that he was a grave disappointment to his father's example.

When the news came to him that all was lost in France, that he was the son of the one who had won all, and that as that son he had lost all, well, it was the logical outcome of the way things were going. That was when he was first blocked by the Wall. Queen Margaret could have been heard in the room crying angry tears, burning with fear of what would happen if he never stepped through that Wall. The Queen was in the middle of her first pregnancy, and she knew that the court all assumed another to be the father. She knew, however, that it was Henry, and that the same fate might come upon a child of theirs as came upon the King.

And the recurrence of a reign of a boy king at this time would be a great burden upon the country, even greater than the reign of this king who had had so many fingers in the pie that was the Regency of the boy king.

The Queen was fearful of so many things, and as she often sat in the room hoping to see some sort of life in Henry, she occasionally saw a line of spittle draw itself down from the corner of his mouth. This was so sad to see his wheel come to its nadir (sum sine regno), I am unable to reign, I am without a crown. He had seemed to be so innocent, why was he (and the realm) being punished?

Richard III Society

A few months ago I joined the Richard III Society, and recently received publications covering the last three years. The Winter 2006 issue of The Ricardian Register has an interesting article "Sheep, Cattle and Sword: Some Thoughts about Richard, Duke of York 1411-1460". I haven't had the time to go through the entire piece, but Richard is a very important person in the life of Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou. It criticises Margaret's adherence to one party as a destructive alliance enhancing civil war.

I will write more about this article soon.