Elizabeth Woodville: Mother of the Princes in the Tower

Rating:
Summary: Elizabeth Woodville: Mother of the Princes in the Tower
Review: I enjoyed this book very much. I had previously held to the opinion that Elizabeth Woodville was a social climbing, ambitious and manipulative person who was able to influence her husband to do whatever she wanted. This, of course, was based on the accounts of a later time when the Tudors were "looking back in anger".
This book puts her in a more sympathetic light and shows that she was truly a woman of her time.
I would recommend this book to anyone interested in Richard 111 and the Wars of the Roses.

Rating:
Summary: A fun biography of an interesting woman
Review: My primary interest in history--or at least that period in which I did my MA--has always been in the ancient near east. Over the past four or five years, however, I have been branching out more. Of late in particular I have been filling in what I learned of English history in a survey course I took years ago. I've read some on Richard III, on Edward I, II, III, and IV and on Edward the Black Prince. I've followed up on King Harold and his "difference of opinion" with William of Normandy, etc.

In reading some of these works, I find that I've learned only tangentially anything about the women of these episodes. When I came upon a reference to David Baldwin's book on Elizabeth Woodville Mother of the Princes in the Tower, my curiosity was immediately aroused, and I decided to find out something more about one of these women in the background, to see what part they actually played in the drama of their times.

Like most people interested in English history, I know the Shakespeare Richard III and the story of the little princes in the tower. Having read some of the history of the period, I realized too that the queen was not well liked by many of the more influential and established nobility of her husband's realm. These individuals tended to depict her as a small town upstart who capitalized on her personal beauty to better all of the members of her family at the expense of the "legitimate" nobility. This set the stage for a very shaky government; one tested more than once by the disaffected, and created the drama of the Tower and of Richard III. Baldwin gets at the character of Elizabeth by looking at the extant documents of the time and by analyzing how the woman fit into the on going politics of her husband's reign rather than by following the contemporary accounts circulated by the woman's detractors.

I was particularly fascinated by the degree to which each phase of English history links naturally with its predecessor and its successor--not that this is particularly surprising perhaps. Some of the histories of other countries have far more discrete hiatuses between phases. This flow is particularly noticeable when it is viewed from the perspective of Elizabeth Woodville and her family. The royal genetics of the period was definitely convoluted. It was amazing how interrelated were not only the branches of the royal family with one another but with some of the nobility as well. (Looking at other genealogies reveals the degree to which the nobility of most of Europe were interrelated.) That "six degrees of separation" thing was definitely in operation here and pushed to the limit. It left the possibility of Elizabeth's either mending the rift between the houses of Lancaster and York, which is what the author theorizes was the intention of Edward IV, or exacerbating it. It also left a lot of people with a potential claim on the throne and with incentive to cause trouble--which is how the rift began in the first place. The chain continues into the future through the connection of the Tudors with the ultimate patriarch, Edward III. Elizabeth, her daughter--mother of Henry VIII--and her two sons help complete that link. Fascinating.

FOR THOSE WRITING PAPERS IN HISTORY, HISTRIOGRAPHY, SOCIOLOGY, POLITICAL SCIENCES, WOMENS' STUDIES: One might look at how documents like accounts can be used to clarify lifestyles (clothing, expenses for servants, etc), status, power structures, etc or to write a biography such as this one. One might write a paper on the use of power by women in history, on how women acquire power within a society or at what the study of women and other "background" figures reveal about events during a particular episode in time. One might compare less favorable studies of Elizabeth Woodville with this one to determine to what extent the author's assessment of her reign is accurate. One might look at the story of the princes in the tower as it is told in Shakespeare--or Josephine Tey's novel Daughter of Time--and as it is presented in Baldwin's biography of Elizabeth to determine who might actually have committed the murders.

A fun biography of an interesting woman

Rating:
Summary: A fun biography of an interesting woman
Review: My primary interest in history--or at least that period in which I did my MA--has always been in the ancient near east. Over the past four or five years, however, I have been branching out more. Of late in particular I have been filling in what I learned of English history in a survey course I took years ago. I've read some on Richard III, on Edward I, II, III, and IV and on Edward the Black Prince. I've followed up on King Harold and his "difference of opinion" with William of Normandy, etc.

In reading some of these works, I find that I've learned only tangentially anything about the women of these episodes. When I came upon a reference to David Baldwin's book on Elizabeth Woodville Mother of the Princes in the Tower, my curiosity was immediately aroused, and I decided to find out something more about one of these women in the background, to see what part they actually played in the drama of their times.

Like most people interested in English history, I know the Shakespeare Richard III and the story of the little princes in the tower. Having read some of the history of the period, I realized too that the queen was not well liked by many of the more influential and established nobility of her husband's realm. These individuals tended to depict her as a small town upstart who capitalized on her personal beauty to better all of the members of her family at the expense of the "legitimate" nobility. This set the stage for a very shaky government; one tested more than once by the disaffected, and created the drama of the Tower and of Richard III. Baldwin gets at the character of Elizabeth by looking at the extant documents of the time and by analyzing how the woman fit into the on going politics of her husband's reign rather than by following the contemporary accounts circulated by the woman's detractors.

I was particularly fascinated by the degree to which each phase of English history links naturally with its predecessor and its successor--not that this is particularly surprising perhaps. Some of the histories of other countries have far more discrete hiatuses between phases. This flow is particularly noticeable when it is viewed from the perspective of Elizabeth Woodville and her family. The royal genetics of the period was definitely convoluted. It was amazing how interrelated were not only the branches of the royal family with one another but with some of the nobility as well. (Looking at other genealogies reveals the degree to which the nobility of most of Europe were interrelated.) That "six degrees of separation" thing was definitely in operation here and pushed to the limit. It left the possibility of Elizabeth's either mending the rift between the houses of Lancaster and York, which is what the author theorizes was the intention of Edward IV, or exacerbating it. It also left a lot of people with a potential claim on the throne and with incentive to cause trouble--which is how the rift began in the first place. The chain continues into the future through the connection of the Tudors with the ultimate patriarch, Edward III. Elizabeth, her daughter--mother of Henry VIII--and her two sons help complete that link. Fascinating.

FOR THOSE WRITING PAPERS IN HISTORY, HISTRIOGRAPHY, SOCIOLOGY, POLITICAL SCIENCES, WOMENS' STUDIES: One might look at how documents like accounts can be used to clarify lifestyles (clothing, expenses for servants, etc), status, power structures, etc or to write a biography such as this one. One might write a paper on the use of power by women in history, on how women acquire power within a society or at what the study of women and other "background" figures reveal about events during a particular episode in time. One might compare less favorable studies of Elizabeth Woodville with this one to determine to what extent the author's assessment of her reign is accurate. One might look at the story of the princes in the tower as it is told in Shakespeare--or Josephine Tey's novel Daughter of Time--and as it is presented in Baldwin's biography of Elizabeth to determine who might actually have committed the murders.

A fun biography of an interesting woman

Rating:
Summary: Worth reading, but not compelling
Review: Readers with an interest in the Wars of the Roses will find this book about Elizabeth Woodville, Edward IV's Queen, and the mother of the "Princes in the Tower", perfectly readable, but not extremely compelling. This may be due to the relative scarcity of reliable, original source information about her. (I think much of the contemporary information about her is speculation about how she, a widow from the gentry class with two children, managed to attract and win the King, suggesting that witchcraft was involved.) My sense is the book may go a little far in "white-washing" her historical reputation as grasping, selfish, proud and haughty. I just don't think the sketchy information the author was able to marshall was convincing enough to really establish what kind of person Elizabeth actually was, one way or other.

Also, regarding the earlier reviewer's suggestion that Elizabeth's negative reputation owes to the Tudors "looking back in anger", it might pay to remember that Henry VIII's grandmother was, in fact, Elizabeth Woodville (his mother's mother), so I'm not certain how much her historical reputation is a result of this. I think it actually owes a lot more to her contemporary Yorkist rivals, who were threatened by her very unexpected emergence onto the scene and potential power she could wield as the King's wife, than to the later Tudors, a dynasty Elizabeth's own daughter founded when she married Henry Tudor.