In The White Princess you contend that Elizabeth would have despised Henry Tudor as the murderer of her uncle, King Richard III. How compelling is the historical evidence that Elizabeth and Richard were in fact lovers?

The most compelling piece of historical evidence is missing: a letter from Elizabeth to the Duke of Norfolk begging him to assist her marriage to Richard, which makes clear that she is in love with him and that they are lovers. The letter was copied but the original lost. Other suggestive evidence is the record of gossip at the time, and perhaps most persuasive–Richard had to deny in public that he was intending to marry Elizabeth–so many people thought that was his intention.

In the novel, you examine the rise of pretenders: lookalikes like Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck who sought to gain political advantage through tenuous or false connections to the royal family. To what extent was the mysterious disappearance of the princes in the Tower the explanation for this upsurge of imposters? Were pretenders always a problem in this era?

There was a surge of imposters against the Tudors and also a lot of potential rival heirs. Henry Tudor was the last most likely heir of the Lancastrian side but the Yorks were very fertile and there were many possible heirs that could claim the throne and show a better claim than the Tudors. Henry’s fear of rival claims was rightly strong. His inability to produce the bodies of the princes or explain how they died made his problem even worse since anyone could coach a pretender. Personally, I think that “the boy” the youth that Henry said was Perkin Warbeck probably was Richard of York, and this opinion is shared by several historians whose books are listed in the bibliography at the end of the novel. It’s a fascinating mystery–we certainly don’t yet have a definitive answer.

This is your twenty-fifth book. How did the experience of writing The White Princess compare with some of your earlier books? Which one has been your favorite book to write?

The White Princess was one of the most controversial books, I think. My view of Henry Tudor was not common when I started the novel but during the writing a very fine biography by Thomas Penn was published that tended to share my view of him as suspicious verging on paranoid. Imagining what this would be like for his wife–herself the daughter of a phenomenally popular king–was also new. But while the material was new and difficult, the writing was very fluent. I really loved Elizabeth of York and her mother Elizabeth Woodville and some of the central characters of the books were great favorites that I had worked on through several previous novels.

Before becoming a novelist, you were also a journalist and historian. Do you ever think of returning to either of these professions?

Of course, I am still a historian. Mostly I present my research in fictional form so I am a novelist as well, but my book The Women of the Cousin’s War, written with fellow historians David Baldwin and Mike Jones, was published as a popular history book. I enjoyed telling the history of Jacquetta Duchess of Bedford, without fictional devices but I enjoyed writing Lady of the Rivers, my novel based on her life, even more.