Elizabeth Of York

Weir, Alison

£10.99

Elizabeth of York would have ruled England, but for the fact that she was a woman. She is one of the key figures of the Wars of the Roses and the Tudor dynasty. In youth, she was relegated from a pampered princess to a bastard fugitive under siege in sanctuary. Yet the probable murders of her brothers, the Princes in the Tower, left her heiress to the royal House of York. In 1486, to consolidate his position after overthrowing the last Yorkist King, Richard III, Henry VII, first sovereign of the House of Tudor, married Elizabeth, thus uniting the red and white roses of Lancaster and York. The marriage was successful and produced seven children. But Elizabeth is an enigma. She had schemed to marry Richard III and his councillors clearly feared her vengeance. Yet after marriage, her ambition to be queen satisfied, a different picture emerges, as she proved herself a model consort.

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Publish Date: 07/08/2014

Description

Weir perfectly combines the dramatic colour and timing of an historical novelist with the truth to fact of a scrupulous historian’ The Times

Britain’s foremost female historian reveals the true story of this key figure in the Wars of the Roses and the Tudor dynasty who began life a princess, spent her youth as a bastard fugitive, but who finally married the first Tudor king and was the mother of Henry VIII.

Elizabeth of York would have ruled England, but for the fact that she was a woman. Heiress to the royal House of York, she schemed to marry Richard III, the man who had deposed and probably killed her brothers, and it is possible that she then conspired to put Henry Tudor on the throne.

Yet after marriage to Henry VII, which united the royal houses of Lancaster and York, a picture emerges of a model consort – mild, pious, generous and fruitful. It has been said that Elizabeth was distrusted by Henry VII and her formidable mother-in-law, Margaret Beaufort, but contemporary evidence shows that Elizabeth was, in fact, influential.

Alison Weir builds an intriguing portrait of this beloved queen, placing her in the context of the magnificent, ceremonious, often brutal, world she inhabited, and revealing the woman behind the myth.

Additional information

Weight 418 g
Dimensions 198 × 129 × 35 mm
Author

Publisher

Imprint

Cover

Paperback

Pages

xvi, 556 , 16 unnumbered of plates

Language

English

Edition
Dewey

942.051092 (edition:23)

Readership

General – Trade / Code: K