The White Princess

Praise for

PHILIPPA GREGORY

“The queen of royal fiction”

—USA Today

“There’s no question that she is the best at what she does.”

—Associated Press

“A mesmerizing storyteller.”

—Sunday Telegraph (London)

“One of historical fiction’s superstars.”

—Historical Novels Review

“Gregory . . . always delivers the goods.”

—New York Post

“Gregory defines what it means to be a writer of historical fiction.”

—RT Book Reviews

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For Anthony

PREFACE

First, let me welcome you to this novel, especially if you have come here from watching the Starz TV series. This novel, like all my recent novels, is solidly based on the facts and inspired by the real women of history whose stories have been neglected or even concealed in the past. Here you will find generations of women who have fought to make their way in a difficult world, and in many cases won their own way despite all the odds. These are the heroines of our history—every bit as courageous and colorful as the better-known men.

The White Princess is a novel about a young woman who was at the center of the Tudor takeover of England, a princess from the previous ruling family who had been the adored daughter of a charismatic and glamorous king, Edward IV, and his wife, the famously beautiful survivor Elizabeth Woodville—the subject of my novel and TV series The White Queen.

As usual with a woman’s history, the record tells us very little about Elizabeth of York. We know when she was born, February 11, 1466, and we know that she was a petted and favored daughter. Her parents did not send her away to a nursery palace nor did they marry her young and send her to a foreign court. They kept her with them during their struggles to hold the throne, and so she suffered two periods of imprisonment in sanctuary with her mother and siblings. The first time, they were freed by her father’s triumphant return and restoration, but the second time was at his death and they were in hiding from her uncle Richard III. Elizabeth’s mother negotiated with King Richard, and released her daughters to his court, even though both her sons had disappeared from the Tower while under his protection. To me, that indicates that it is very unlikely that Richard was the known murderer of the “princes in the Tower”—and this, of course, raises the question as to what happened to them—the true heirs of the throne of England, the greatest obstacles to Tudor ambition.