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:
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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
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.
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:
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
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