“The Red Queen” - Philippa Gregory

 (Tudors and Plantagenets book 3)

👑 Based on the end of book 2, I assumed that Gregory would pick up the story of the former queen in book 3, but she does not. Instead, she dedicates this book to the point of view of one of Elizabeth Woodville’s enemies: Lady Margaret Stanley. It makes for fascinating reading to be presented with the total opposite POV from the prior novel. Here, we learn more about how the Cousins’ War arose, the dwindling capacity of Margaret’s cousin King Henry VI (not yet deposed by Edward), and ultimately, the rise of Richard, Duke of York’s regency.

👑 We got a glimpse of her personality in book 2 when Elizabeth Woodville mockingly refers to Margaret’s self-proclaimed holiness. It is on full display in this novel. She was shadowy but significant in book 2 where as an adult, she schemed to bring her son Henry Tudor back from exile. She is willing to play Lancaster or York, and switch alliances as necessary to her one end: to crown her son King of England.

👑 We meet young Margaret Beaufort (later Tudor, later Stanley) at age 10. Her self-imposed piety teeters on a vainglorious mania to see herself as a martyred saint. Her ego is stoked by tales of Joan of Arc, to the point that she is convinced that she is a second coming of Joan and has a desperate desire to feel special and receive public adulation. 

👑 Married at 12, pregnant at 13. Margaret was used as a vessel to produce an heir for the Beaufort/Tudor clans. Perhaps her lifelong insistence that she held a special communion with God and the Virgin Mary, stemmed from her painful awareness that the Beaufort clan sorely wished that Margaret, what with her close kinship to King Henry VI, had been a boy. Failing that, she knows she is a disappointment who can only redeem herself by producing a male heir for the House of Lancaster. Her family treated her as a worthless nobody and she, therefore, craved greatness.

👑 After her difficult labor and delivery, when a son is born to her, we can sympathize with her torment when he is immediately whisked out of her arms.In scenes where she devolves into a hysterical, petulant, self-aggrandizing fool, I had to remind myself that she was but a lonely teen, ignorant of reality, and with a difficult childhood behind her.

👑 Gregory portrays her as believing her entire identity hinges on her belief that she alone communicates directly with God, and that God has willed it that her son would would be the second heir to the throne. That’s really all she has. Denied an education, or her passionate desire to pursue the vocation of a nun, she has conflated her identity with her piety (moral superiority) and her need to lift her son to greatness.

👑 Much as I found Margaret to generally be intolerable, Gregory writes delicious delusions into this character. It’s quite fun to read! Just when it appears she has finally come to terms with her own ambition and vanity, she falls back into self-righteous hypocrisy, lobbing condemnation at Elizabeth Woodville that we, the readers, recognize as more applicable to Margaret herself. 

👑 I particularly appreciated Margaret’s unhinged monologues where she uses her self-serving view of God’s will to justify the murder of innocent children. There were definite Lady Macbeth vibes as she wrestled with her ambition and silences her conscience. She may cloak herself in piety, but she is a shrewder player in the York-Lancaster battles than most of the men around her. 

👑 To balance out the powerful voice of Margaret, Gregory introduces her second husband Sir Henry Stafford and her third husband Lord Stanley. They are the only ones to clearly tell Margaret that she confuses her so-called communion with God with piety. They tell her it’s not holiness, but a simple, ugly hunger for power and importance.

👑 Margaret’s relationship with the son she barely knows, is fascinating. And we get a preview of drama to come, in the form of her interaction with Elizabeth Woodville’s eldest daughter: Elizabeth of York. I found myself wide eyed at the sort of MIL Lady Stanley might possibly make one day. Yikes.

👑 It is truly a marvel that Gregory wrote an entire, compelling novel about quite possibly the single most insufferable fictional personality I have come across in recent memory. Don’t be put off that the entire novel is from Marge’s POV!