Book Of The Week 7/10/13: The Kingmaker's Daughter by Philippa Gregory

The Kingmaker's Daughter

by

Philippa Gregory

This novel is the fourth in the series that Philippa Gregory calls The Cousin's War Series  and it is the fourth one that I have read.  I have thoroughly enjoyed this series.  The stories are all centered around The War Of the Roses in the late 1400's and takes place in  England.  Each story is told from a different woman's point of view but covers most of the same events.   In this manner one gets a sense of all sides of the story in this time when two families were trying to obtain or hold the throne and willing to go to any extreme to do so.   The women are pitted against each other and do not like each other so that the heroine in one book is the hated one in another.  Anne Neville is the heroine in The Kingmaker's Daughter.   She is the wife of King Richard III.   Philippa Gregory paints Anne as a very admirable person in this novel.   Anne's father is Richard Neville who places King Edward IV on the throne by teaching him many things and helping him win the battles that over throws King Henry VI.   Richard Neville has only two daughter's and therefore does not have a son of his own to put on the throne.  His goal is to have his daughter marry a  king and in this manner make his future grandson a king.  Only King Edward IV marries who he pleases and messes up Richard Neville's plans.  As the complicated relationships play out through out the novel,  Richard Neville's two daughters end up each one married to one of King Edward IV's brothers and Anne's husband ends up king after the death of Kind Edward IV.   Both Anne and King Richard III are painted in this novel as people who hold themselves to high standards of honor.  Never the less a good amount of head lopping off and poisoning goes on in the book.  There is a lot of treachery with people having ambitious goals and not so many scruples about how to achieve them.  It occurs to me that part of the reason for insanity in the royal lines back then might be more than cousins marrying too closely related people.  It may well be that the sociological environment did not foster good mental health.  To be as isolated as they were emotionally within a court where every one acted like friends on the surface but tried to destroy each other in reality had to be difficult.  One never knew if any one was a true friend or not.  And no one ever knew who the real father was of anyone so they would just have parliament declare an heir to the throne invalid because they decided to call the Queen  unfaithful and then place themselves as next in line to the throne.   There was also the accusation made more than once that one couple or another didn't complete marriages quite legally so their offspring didn't count either.  Amidst this plotting the theme of how women were used back then to obtain alliances and secure agreements is made clear along with the fact that women had no choice in the matter.  They were required to obey their father and then later obey the husband that her father decided was best for the father for her to marry.   Anne and King Richard III ran off and eloped when they were hardly more than children so their marriage was a love story.  The novel also contains some rather graphic descriptions of child birth along with other word pictures that describe the daily life of gentry in the late 15th century.   Click on the links on the title, author's name and in the first line of the text above and watch the video below for more information.