Annie Garthwaite’s second novel, The King’s Mother, picks up the story of Cecily Neville to follow the purposeful power plays of four rival royal mothers during the 15th-century Wars of the Roses. Here she reflects on their careers – and on her own determination to bring their stories to the fore.
Shortly after the publication of my first novel, Cecily, while on a whistle-stop signing tour, I visited a bookshop in Whitley Bay. As I scribbled away at the back of the shop, a couple came over to chat. They were both enthusiastic. He was a teacher.
“I’ve been teaching the Wars of the Roses to my sixth formers,” he told me. “The boys love it, of course, plenty of battles. But I couldn’t get the girls interested at all.” He looked disappointed. Then smiled. “So I gave them each a copy of Cecily, and now they won’t talk about anything but the Wars of the Roses!”
This is perhaps the most gratifying endorsement of my writing I’ve ever received. More than 40 years ago a teacher handed me a novel (We Speak No Treason by Rosemary Hawley Jarman – give it a try) that inspired my love of history and sparked my fascination with the characters you’ll find in The King’s Mother.
Now here was another teacher using my novel to encourage a new generation of women to consider the role of women in history; the indelible marks they’ve made on the past that can still be felt in our present. Marks which, all too often, are overlooked.
There are four women at the heart of The King’s Mother. I imagine the average man on the street might be able to name one of them, perhaps two on a good day. “Margaret Beaufort,” he might say. “Wasn’t she Henry VII’s Mum?” Well yes, she was. But that’s not all.
As well as being the firmly guiding hand on the tiller of the first Tudor King’s reign, Margaret found time to support the development of printing, translate works of theology, found schools and build churches. The Tudor age may be long gone, but the two Cambridge Colleges Margaret established still operate, and Lady Margaret Hall, the first women’s college at Oxford University, was named in her honour.
Then there’s Cecily, of course. As my new novel opens, she is triumphant as her eldest son is crowned King Edward IV.
But she’d walked a hard road to achieve this triumph. She had upheld her husband’s interests in the face of adversity and, after his death, put her shoulder to the wheel of her son’s cause – and pushed.
While Edward fought his way to the throne, she embarked on a battle of her own. With no sharper weapon than her wit, she held the gates of London closed against Marguerite of Anjou’s army, winning the support of the men in charge of the city with persuasive oratory and cool-headed political lobbying.
Had she failed – had Marguerite taken London in January 1461 – there would likely never have been a Yorkist dynasty. And if no Yorkist dynasty, then no Tudor dynasty, either. No Henry VII, No Henry VIII with his six wives, no break with Rome, no Elizabeth I. In fact, rethink the last 500 years and more of English history.
We have Cecily to thank for that.
It seems tragic to me that most traditional historians overlook medieval women and their achievements.
If they think of them at all, it’s only in relation to their men: To them, Cecily is Edward IV and Richard III’s mother. Margaret Beaufort, Henry Tudor’s. Marguerite of Anjou is no more than Henry VI’s queen and Elizabeth Woodville, the mere queen of Edward IV.
Well, they were those things, of course, but they were also part of an elite female network of power and influence that shaped high-impact political events.
All four were women of intelligence, determination and skill, operating firmly ‘in the thick of it’, surviving and indeed engineering multiple regime changes.
I suppose The King’s Mother begs a question: Did Henry VII bring down Richard III to end the House of York? Or was it Margaret Beaufort that brought down Cecily to achieve that goal? Henry Tudor may have won at Bosworth, but he’d never have made it to the battlefield without his mother’s behind the scenes manoeuvrings.
I’d go so far as to say that it’s impossible to understand the Wars of the Roses – to understand any history, frankly – without considering the motives and machinations of the women.
Returning to that teacher I met in Whitley Bay; I thank him for giving the young women in his class a glimpse of their female heritage and an insight into what their own power might be.
And I’ll close with one more story from my book-touring days.
At a history festival in the summer of 2023 at which I’d given a talk about Cecily, a young Ukrainian man came up to me, his daughter, (I’d hazard around three years old), hitched in his arms. Perhaps they were refugees from the conflict, I don’t know.
He wanted me to sign his copy of my book and dedicate it to his child. “I want her to read it when she grows up,” he said. “I want her to know she can be like Cecily. That she can be strong and make a difference in the world.”
I felt a lump in my throat. He had summed up in so few words the reason why I write.
The King’s Mother by Annie Garthwaite is published on 11 July, 2024.
Read more about this book.
Annie’s taking part in an extensive King’s Mother book tour.
For more about Cecily, have a look at Annie’s feature, Finding my matriarch, Cecily Neville.
And if you’re interested in the Wars of the Roses, Edward IV, Richard III and the rise of the Tudors, here are some more Historia features you may enjoy:
When the Wars of the Roses got personal for Nicola Cornick
Kirsten Claiden-Yardley writes about Thomas Howard, the man behind the Tudors
Joanna Hickson looks at Henry VII’s statecraft and asks: What’s in a Date?
Toby Clements interviews Conn Iggulden about the tumultuous years of York versus Lancaster
Tony Bradman reviews Kingmaker: Kingdom Come by Toby Clements
There’s more about powerful medieval women in:
Female networks of power in the Middle Ages by JF Andrews
The personal and the political in the Middle Ages by Catherine Hanley
To have and to hold: pawns in the medieval marriage game by Anne O’Brien
Images:
- Lady Margaret Beaufort: © St John’s College, University of Cambridge via Art UK (fair use)
- Cecily Neville, Duchess of York, detail from image of the women of the Neville family from the Horae ad usum Parisiensem, Meister der Münchner Legenda Aurea, c1430: Bibliothèque nationale de France (public domain)
- Margaret Beaufort by Rowland Lockey, 1598: St John’s College, Cambridge via Wikimedia (public domain)
- Margaret of Anjou as a widow, illumination from the Books of the Skinners Company, c1475: Wikimedia (public domain)
- Elizabeth Woodville as a crowned queen, illumination from the Books of the Skinners‘ Company, 1472: Ann Longmore-Etheridge for Flickr (public domain)
