“I think perhaps Elizabeth is afraid of us all—of Ned’s family,” Richard decided. “Perhaps she is just a shy person, and one needs to get to know her.”

Margaret harrumphed. “I can think of many words to describe Elizabeth Woodville—spoiled, proud, secretive, seductive, and ambitious perhaps—but shy? Never!” She leaned into him. “And heed my warning: never get on the wrong side of her.”

Naively, Richard could not imagine how he would ever give her cause.

The opulence of the coronation and subsequent banquet told Richard his sister was closer to being right about Elizabeth than he had been by the way Elizabeth indelibly reminded her new subjects that day she was now queen of England. Hour after interminable hour, she made use of her new royal prerogative, forcing those once above her to kneel or stand to serve her. Richard saw with his own eyes that humility was not in her vocabulary nor in her character, and it made him wary.

As he watched her now, Richard had to admit that, seated alone on her splendid throne under a canopy of cloth of gold, her silvery hair flowing over her ermine-trimmed purple mantle, haughty Elizabeth looked regal enough. But her gaze was hard and her movements stiff, and she had none of Edward’s easy air of kingship. The forty new knights, who had been created in her honor that day, knelt to pledge their fealty, and she self-consciously held out her hand for each to kiss without once softening her expression. Whether she was quaking in her elegant, crimson-silk shoes or she was nonchalant about her new status, it was hard for observers to decide. Only she knew.

At last the trumpeters sounded the end of the feasting, and Elizabeth processed to her apartments between two bishops, with the mayor of London carrying the voide—hippocras and wafers in case of hunger in the night—on a silver salver before them.

On the road back to the Wardrobe, Margaret was seething. “Did you see she had our brother-in-law Suffolk on his knees for two hours? She had better never try that with me. I shall refuse!”

Richard chuckled. “Seeing that you are a head taller than she and a good deal stronger, I would think she would not dare, Meg.”

How wrong he was. A year later, after Elizabeth had given Edward his first (legitimate) child—a girl—she was churched with great pomp and accorded another elaborate banquet, where she was attended in silence by eight duchesses and thirty countesses. This time, the honor of serving the queen was given to the king’s sister, Margaret, and Elizabeth’s own mother, Jacquetta Woodville, both of whom had to kneel to serve her at each course and remain thus for as long as Elizabeth was eating. The meal lasted for three hours, and Margaret took ill the very next day.