Weekly Reader Philippa Gregory Edition: The Kingmaker's Daughter (The Plantagenet and Tudor Court Series Vol. IV) by Philippa Gregory; In Depth Look at King Richard III and his wife, Anne Neville

Weekly Reader Philippa Gregory Edition: The Kingmaker's Daughter (The Plantagenet and Tudor Court Series Vol. IV) by Philippa Gregory; In Depth Look at King Richard III and his wife, Anne Neville




By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews


Spoilers: King Richard III has gotten a raw deal by history and William Shakespeare. For centuries, he had been labelled as a tyrant king and called “The World's Wickedest Uncle” for his supposed role in the disappearance of his nephews. Shakespeare wrote him as among the worst villains in his veritable Rogue's Gallery and considering his Gallery also features such notable sinister characters as King Claudius, Iago, Julius Caesar's assassins, Goneril and Regan, and The Macbeths, that's saying quite a lot

Lately authors and historians have sought to vindicate Richard's name. There is a King Richard Society which studies his true character. Many historical fiction such as Sharon Kay Penman's The Sunne in Splendor and nonfiction have told events from his point of view. Richard III's skeleton was even discovered underneath a carport and identified by DNA testing thereby giving him a proper burial.

In her Plantagenet and Tudor Court Series book, The Kingmaker's Daughter, Philippa Gregory continues that trend of making Richard a more nuanced even romantic figure by showing him from the point of view of his wife, Anne Neville.

Gregory only used a male perspective twice in the entire series. The Virgin’s Lover is largely told from the point of view of Queen Elizabeth's lover, Sir Robert Dudley and in The Other Queen, George Talbot, the Earl of Shrwsbury is only one of three pov characters that include his wife, Bess and Mary Queen of Scots.

It is unclear why Gregory did not choose Richard himself to be the narrator of this volume. Perhaps she wanted to keep the female narrative going during the Cousin's War. Perhaps she didn't feel comfortable using Richard's voice. Perhaps Richard had been done before most spectacularly in Sharon Kay Penman's The Sunne in Splendor.

Either way, Anne Neville is an equally compelling character because she gives us different perspectives than we have seen thus far in the series of such people as her husband, Richard, her father, Richard Earl of Warwick “The Kingmaker”, and Elizabeth Woodville. We also learn what it's like to be a young child being used as a pawn manipulated and used by others for their gain until they have had enough and take power for themselves.

One of the first things that sets Anne's narrative apart from the previous narrators in the series is her youth. While Jacquetta of Luxembourg and Margaret Beaufort were in their early teens when their stories began, they were considered mature women by Medieval society, both preparing for arranged marriages or future goals. (Margaret's devotion to religion made her particularly mature for her age.)

Anne's novel begins when she is about 9 years old and she acts every bit like the child she is.
Anne complains about always being last, having to enter behind the rest of her family. She fights and plays dress up with her older sister, Isabel. She admires Queen Elizabeth Woodville from afar thinking she is the most beautiful woman she has ever seen and King Edward as the bravest most handsome man that she has ever seen despite him being on the outs with her father. She and Isabel tease Edward's younger brothers, George and Richard because they all used to study together.

The comparison of Anne's youth with the previous narrators is like those Dear America books which are narrated by girls from different time periods. You read volumes that are about girls caught up in the middle of a war or settling into an arranged marriage. Then you read the next one and another girl talks about a crush on a boy at school or troubles with her math homework and you remember “Oh yeah, they're just kids!”

The beginning of The Kingmaker's Daughter reminds you that many of these characters were children or teenagers when the Cousin's War began and were involved in situations in which they had absolutely no control.

Having no control over her circumstances is an ongoing theme in Anne's life especially when her father is the scheming Richard Earl of Warwick The Kingmaker. Once Warwick falls out of favor in Edward's court because of his rivalry with Elizabeth's family, The Rivers, Warwick is forever scheming to make another king. He uses his daughters as bargaining chips bouncing them around from one marriage to another. Both Isabel and Anne are too young and too naive to reject their father and go along with his ideas even when Anne's conscience tells her that Edward and Elizabeth are right and her father is wrong.

First, Warwick marries Isabel and George in a failed attempt to make George, Duke of Clarence, king. In a display of how little he regards his daughters, Warwick forces a heavily pregnant Isabel to sail to Calais during a severe storm causing her to lose the baby. This incident causes Isabel to look at her father less favorably and begin to take charge of her life. For Anne, it takes longer.

When George turns his coat and reunites with his brother, Warwick tries a new tactic with his younger daughter. He weds Anne to Edward, the Lancaster heir and son of the York's sworn enemies King Henry VI and Margaret d'Anjou. Anne suddenly finds herself surrounded by people she once feared including the somewhat unstable Edward and Margaret, whom Anne had nightmares of her as the “she wolf.” However, Anne's time with Margaret d'Anjou and even Elizabeth Woodville is not ill-spent.

Through an unlikely pair of role models, Anne begins the seeds of taking control of her own life. Through Elizabeth Woodville, she learns about glamor and hiding a duplicitous nature. Though Anne grows to resent and despise Elizabeth, she learns to conceal much of herself and that she has to connive to get her way instead of being the trusting schoolgirl going along with others.

Margaret d'Anjou teaches her about strength and to fight for those she loves. Though the French queen is fierce and frightening, Anne admires her Independence and unwillingness to compromise. It is Anne's admiration for these two unlikely women that allows her to come out from her family's shadow after her father and husband's death and her abandonment from her mother. Instead, she is able to take charge of her own life and marries the man that she has grown to love, Richard Duke of Gloucester.

Like Anne, Richard is also multifaceted in Gregory's novel. He is fiercely loyal to his oldest brother to the point that Warwick never tries to recruit him to take the throne because he knows that he would never betray his brother. Though he doesn't care for Elizabeth Woodville or her family himself, Richard keeps much of his dislike for them buried until after Edward's death for the semblance of maintaining peace between the various factions.
He is a strategic and consummate fighter as he battles many and kills several important characters like Edward Lancaster.
Richard is even a romantic figure particularly in his chapters with Anne. He is protective of the circumstances that Anne is in after Edward Lancaster's death and she is in the care of the suddenly abusive Isabel and George. He cleverly helps engineer her escape and proposes marriage to her.

For those who hold to Richard's more devious reputation, Gregory hasn’t lost sight of that either. Anne's snobbish mother points out that since Richard did not wait for a papal dispension to marry Anne, he could legally put her away any time he wants. Also when Elizabeth of York, Elizabeth Woodville's daughter serves as Anne's lady in waiting he pays a little too close attention to her sending tongues wagging. So in this version, he is not a diabolical villain or a saint. But a very realistic human character, one who can inspire love or loathing in those around him.

A common theme in the Plantagenet and Tudor Court Series is the idea of the Wheel of Fortune, a card in the Tarot that symbolizes that we either rise very high or fall very low. This theme is particularly prominent in The Kingmaker's Daughter as we see various characters ascend and descend at nothing more than the turn of the wheel. Of course we see the Lancasters fall in favor of the York's only to rise and fall again with the Yorks rising and falling as well. (One of the more moving passages calls back to Lady of the Rivers and shows old friends, Jacquetta of Luxembourg and Margaret d'Anjou trace a wheel's circle with their fingers as Margaret is being led to prison for the final time.)

We also see other characters rise and fall as well. George and Isabel are held in high esteem by Warwick then fall out of favor for Anne's marriage to Edward of Lancaster. Isabel accuses her sister of being a traitor failing to notice that Anne just like Isabel is caught up in the schemes and destinies of others. When Anne falls back down as Edward's widow, Isabel takes the opportunity to cruelly lord over and control her inheritance. The two don't reconcile until after Anne's marriage to Richard and Isabel has had two children before her death, possibly from poison. George, once loved by his brothers and his mother's favorite,is also executed after scheming against Edward and Elizabeth and made to drown in a case of malmsy wine.

Even after Richard and Anne become king and queen, they are constantly in fear of when they will fall. They have one child, Ned, but the boy's early death turns their reign into one of grief.
There are also plenty of supporters of the Yorks and when Richard declared Edward’s children illegitimate because of his early marriage, there is fear that Elizabeth’s supporters will topple them. Anne is in fear to the point of paranoia that Elizabeth is scheming against them either by poisoning or by magic curses.
When Edward and Elizabeth's sons are sent to the Tower of London for safekeeping, Anne says a few words which weigh on her conscience when the boys are reported missing.

That's not to mention Henry Tudor, the bright young upstart who has his sights set on the throne and is slowly gaining supporters or the previously mentioned Elizabeth of York who is becoming a vibrant beautiful contrast to the often sickly and depressed, Anne. Anne eventually accepts that the Wheel of Fortune falls on everyone even herself and there is nothing anyone can do to stop it.

The Kingmaker's Daughter shows the growth in Anne Neville from a naïve girl, to a controlled woman, to a nervous queen fighting against and ultimately resigned to her fate.