Because I write women's history I rarely have the luxury of a full and fair biography to study. Until about 1960 there were very few histories written about women at all, and often I am faced with a blank or-worse-with an unfair condemnation of the woman. Tracing Elizabeth of York's life was often speculation, and sometimes I found myself simply rebelling against the picture that the medieval chroniclers tried to force on the real woman; those who spoke of her "truly wonderful obedience." Clearly, we cannot believe that she was only the passive pawn of Tudor ambition, a baby-making machine who chose a married motto of "Humble and penitent" when she had been raised by a rebel, was a princess of royal blood, and her own motto before marriage was "Sans removyr" which means {surely defiantly?} "unmoving" or "unchanging." A young woman of eighteen, who has witnessed her father driven from the throne and restored, her mother give birth in prison, her brother disappear from his own castle, who has engaged in an adulterous love affair with the king while betrothed to his enemy, and who claims the defiant motto "unchanging" is not anyone's pawn!
( Philippa Gregory )
[ The White Princess ]
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