I Can't Write Without The Internet

The Grammys and the BAFTAs both happened this week/last week, depending on which part of the world you're in. Eddie Redmayne won something, Kanye West made a fuss, just usual things. I couldn't care less, to be honest. I was more concerned about the fact that Sophie Hunter's dress didn't seem to have any pockets for her to put her free hand into (Seriously, if you search Google Images for 'Sophie Hunter BAFTAs' you just get a bunch of pictures in which her right hand is dangling uselessly by her side.) than about who was winning what.

I've been busy with exams (Which is apparently a good enough excuse for me to completely neglect my blog, but not a good enough reason to stop watching Downton Abbey.) so I haven't had time to write a post that isn't just a string of random words. Please excuse me.

At the end of last year, I wrote a short blog post about the life of Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick. I knew that I had to write it about a month before it was actually to be published, but, as is usual with me, I only started to write it half a day before it was due, by which time the editors were breathing down my neck and there was really no room for error.

Just one glitch - my Internet wouldn't work. I reset my computer. I reset my modem. I yelled at my modem. I yelled at my service provider (they couldn't hear me). I yelled at everything that wouldn't feel upset that I was yelling at it. It was all to no avail.
So I just typed out a string of gibberish. That is literally what I did; Sat in front of a screen and typed out words from the top of my head. Thankfully, my Internet was working the next morning, and I typed out something halfway decent about The Kingmaker, or else I would have just handed in that nonsense.

But I didn't delete my senseless ramblings, for some reason, and so here they are today, passed off as a blog post, for you to read and make what you will about my competence as a writer. Have fun!

~

What do we know about Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick? Probably nothing.

Battle of Towtown, Battle of Barnet, Battle of Tewkesbury, Battle of Bosworth, Battle of Agincourt, Battle of Whatsits.

I can’t write without the Internet.

I wonder what Plantagenet Somerset Fry has to say about the kingmaker. Let’s see.

I wonder – will it be under Edward IV or Richard III? Or Henry VI? Definitely not under Edward V. I should check the index.

 Checked. I was right on all counts. There is a mention of Warwick in the section about Henry VI and the Wars of the Roses, Edward IV, Richard III and also in the introduction to the House of York.

I don’t know anything about the Earl of Warwick, but I can name all the children of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville. In order of age, they are:

Elizabeth

Mary

Cecily

Edward

Margaret

Richard

Anne

George

Catherine

Bridget

Is that ten? Yep.

Fie upon Elizabeth Woodville.

Why was Warwick called the Kingmaker? He only made one King. And restored one King. Technically, that’s not making a King. His daughter married a King, though. He was a Queen maker.

Richard Plantagenet’s sons were such narcissists. All their boys were either called Edward or Richard or George. 

Edward, Richard, George. 

Edward, Richard. 

Edward. 

Did no one think to name a child after their poor dead brother who had died fighting for the York cause? NO. Because the three sons of York are too important to think about anyone but themselves.

Henry VII had a son called Edmund. He died. Edmund, not Henry. Well, Henry died too. All of them are dead. It's been half a millennium.

Kingmaker, kingmaker. Something something Wars of the Roses.

~

Now, I'm not an expert on Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, but I do know a fair bit about The Kingmaker - enough to write a couple of paragraphs at the very least - and so it's strange that I couldn't muster a simple sentence like "After his death, the Earl of Warwick's younger daughter Anne married King Edward's brother, Richard, Duke of Gloucester" or something. 

As much as I like to assure myself otherwise, I'm handicapped without the Internet. Either that, or I was just very sleep-deprived when I sat down to write that piece. 

Oh, well. Something something Wars of the Roses.

N

Random Book Review : The Red Queen

The second episode of Wolf Hall was on television last week. I haven't watched it. I saw the first episode when it came out, but then I decided not to watch the rest because I have exams, and I really should be studying (I say that, but then I spend my days watching the older seasons of Downton Abbey instead, so I haven't a prayer of passing. Unless, for some reason, all the questions are about Downton. Or Prince George).

I read Wolf Hall at the end of last year, and since it's been adapted for TV, now would be the perfect time to 'review' it. Instead, I am going to talk about a book that was made into a TV series a long, long time ago.

Like its counterparts - The White Queen and The Kingmaker's Daughter - The Red Queen is set during the Wars of the Roses and told from the perspective of an important woman - this time, Margaret Beaufort. Margaret was the mother of King Henry VII, a descendant of John of Gaunt and Katherine Swynford, and the ultimate victor of decades of war between the Lancastrians and the Yorkists.

Now, it's no secret that I have grown to love the Wars of the Roses. The thirty odd years between the time King Henry VI starts to go mad and is overthrown and King Henry VII's ascension in 1485 is one of my favourite periods in English history. Which is odd, because I have very firm bias against the charmed House of York. So strong that I don't even feel sorry about the certain imprisonment and probable death of the Princes in the Tower, ever though they were only boys. So strong that I never choose white when I'm playing chess. I always play with black.

But there's just something about The Red Queen. It invokes pity, like none of the other books in the series did. I felt sad when Edmund Tudor died. I felt sad when Richard, Duke of York and Edmund, Earl of Rutland died. I felt sad when Henry Stafford died. I even felt sad when King Edward died. And I was practically in tears when the Stanley army charged onto the battlefield and smashed poor, poor King Richard's head in.

I also felt sorry for Margaret Beaufort. She had an extremely poor lot in life. By the time she was my age, she had been married twice, and had a young son who she loved so much, and had such great hopes for, but who she almost never got to see. She spent 28 years championing Henry's cause, sending him to Brittany where he wouldn't be in danger, and marrying men who she thought could protect her interests, only to have two of them die on her and one of them betray her and her son the minute Perkin Warbeck showed up. Elizabeth Woodville, on the other hand, spent these same 28 years living in comfort, with all her children and her one, loving husband, and achieved the same end result as Margaret - a child on the throne of England and a dynasty descended from her.

And yet you can't help but be in awe of Margaret Beaufort. The other day, I was on Pinterest (I have become addicted to that website after my friend Pippa Peters - here's a link to her blog - introduced me to it) looking at pictures of Aneurin Barnard, and I happened upon this one of the cast of the BBC series based on this book:

Two things that I noticed; One, George and Isabel are clearly the most handsome couple of the lot. And I'm not just talking about the actors - look at this beautiful stained glass window of them in Cardiff. Two, Margaret Beaufort (played by Amanda Hale, far left) doesn't have a husband standing with her.

Margaret Beaufort had three marriages - two more than Isabel Neville and one more than each Elizabeth Woodville and Anne Neville - and yet none of her husbands are important enough to be remembered in history. She treated men in the way that the patriarchal society of the 15th century treated women - as nothing more than a means to have children by which to fulfill their dynastic ambition.

It takes a certain amount of courage to carve your own path as a woman in Medieval England. It also takes a certain amount of selflessness to fight so hard to put your son on a throne that should rightly be yours, which makes Margaret Beaufort one of the most extraordinary women of the Middle Ages - second only, perhaps, to Empress Matilda. She was the kind of woman who makes you glad that a bloody dynastic war ended in her favour.

~

I liked The Red Queen, even though I spent most of the time that I was reading it morbidly depressed because someone or the other had died. You can buy The Red Queen on Amazon (click here) or on Flipkart (click here) if you live in India.

N