This week’s review is of Alison Weir’s latest work of historical fiction, The Last White Rose, a novel about the life of Elizabeth of York. Princess Elizabeth was born in 1466, the eldest child of King Edward IV, knowing from an early age that she was meant for greatness. Her father is popular, his reign is mostly stable, and her parents’ union is extremely fruitful: she would eventually have eight younger siblings–including two brothers, “an heir and a spare”--thus securing the succession and the continuation of the royal line. Elizabeth, herself, is betrothed to the future king of France before her twelfth birthday, promising her the queenship of “the greatest kingdom in Christendom.” As the medieval period approaches its end and the Renaissance lies just beyond the horizon, life seems pretty good for Elizabeth.
“For want of a nail [...] the kingdom was lost….” King Edward IV should never have gone fishing in the middle of winter.
The unexpected death of her father is the first domino to come crashing down for Elizabeth. Her brother Edward, heir to the throne, is too young to become king. A regency is established to help him rule until he reaches his majority, but her uncle Clarence, Duke of Gloucester, has other plans. As the future King Richard III (Yep, that Richard III.) works to seize the throne, he arrests those nobles who are loyal to his late brother’s wife and children. Elizabeth’s mother rushes her children into the holy sanctuary of Westminster Abbey, ensuring her children’s safety, but sidelining herself from the battle for the throne. Lies, violence, and assorted machinations secure Richard III’s claim to the throne as Elizabeth and her siblings are declared illegitimate by Parliament, thus denying all of them any claim to the English throne. Worse still–worst of all–Elizabeth’s mother is tricked into allowing her younger son to visit his brother at the royal court.
She would never see either of her sons again. Indeed, no one would, as they become the infamous “Princes in the Tower.” Their disappearance remains a historical mystery to this day. (As well as a novelist, Weir is a historian, and in her 1992 work of historical investigation The Princes in the Tower, Weir concludes they were killed by Richard III as long believed, and their bodies buried within the confines of the Tower of London.)
There was, ultimately, a happy ending for Elizabeth. A long-exiled claimant to the English throne, Henry, Earl of Richmond, returned to England where he led an uprising against Richard III, eventually defeating him at the Battle of Bosworth and becoming King Henry VII. His marriage to Elizabeth made her Queen of England, ended the years-long tension between the Houses of York and Lancaster, and would eventually result in the birth of Prince Henry, the future King Henry VIII.
Having covered so much of the book’s content, I wonder now if I should have provided a “spoiler warning.” Yet, what purpose would that serve for a work of historical fiction, where the briefest of visits to Wikipedia could spoil the entire plot?
Despite giving away several key plot points, I hope that you will still take the time to read Weir’s latest endeavor. Or any of her works, in fact. She is a masterful storyteller, and her works are an important attempt to write women back into a historical narrative that has long downplayed their experiences and contributions. Weir began her writing career with works of history, not historical fiction, and her first major work was The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1991). Since then, among some works on more general British royal history, she has mostly focused on the history of royal women, from Eleanor of Aquitaine (12th to 13th century) to Mary, Queen of Scots (16th century).
In moving to historical fiction, Weir broadened the canvas on which she could explore and celebrate the lives of the women she sought to discover with her works of history. Her first fictional work was 2006’s Innocent Traitor, the story of the life of England’s “Nine Days’ Queen,” Jane Grey (the great-niece of Henry VIII). From there, she has written works of fiction on just about every woman in the Tudor dynasty. In fact, The Last White Rose is Weir’s first work since her series on the six wives of Henry VIII. Weir is the only author to have ever written a novel on each of Henry’s brides, starting with Katherine of Aragon, The True Queen in 2016 and finishing with Katherine Parr, The Sixth Wife in 2021. Having written on all of Henry’s wives, and one of his daughters, it was a natural enough progression to move “backwards” and narrate the life of Henry’s mother. (It is unexplained, I would even say somewhat suspicious/confusing, that Weir has largely ignored the tragic Queen Mary I, who has yet to receive her own work.)
While works of history allow for little in the way of poetic license, Weir’s works of fiction are under no such constraint. She is delightfully unafraid of extrapolating from rumors and ongoing historical mysteries, as best illustrated in The Lady Elizabeth (2008, and, yes, that Elizabeth) and in Anna of Kleve, The Princess in the Portrait (2019), the fourth book in her Wives of Henry VIII series (and the best of Weir’s novels, in my opinion). Her works of history are illuminating, and her works of fiction are great entertainment. However, I believe Weir faces one possible problem: she has largely limited herself to writing about the same 100 year long period. As such, the same historical characters appear over and over again. While it is one thing to “be done with” Henry VIII’s nonsense by the time you get to Katherine Parr, you are also kind of sick of Parr, herself. If, like me, you have read most of Weir’s works, then by the time her own book came out, you have seen Parr in Innocent Traitor and The Lady Elizabeth, in which she plays an extremely pivotal role. Weir’s 2012 novel A Dangerous Inheritance continues the story of Katherine Grey, who you can read a lot about in Innocent Traitor. On the one hand, it is nice that everyone gets their spotlight, but after a while, you kind of want a different cast of characters.
So, what is my ultimate decision on The Last White Rose? I say read it. It is a good book. Indeed, I would recommend all of Weir’s works of fiction (Well, you can give The Captive Queen a miss….), but I believe she has put herself in an awkward situation where only her diehard fans can be trusted to stick around for much longer. Read The Last White Rose, or Innocent Traitor, or Jane Seymour, The Haunted Queen, but do not read all of them unless 1) you are a fan of “anything Tudor,” or 2) you like Weir as much as I do. Yet, for all that I like her, I have found my excitement waning with time. I mentioned Weir’s canvas earlier, and I would heartily suggest that she attempt to broaden it with her future works. You can only repaint over older paintings for so long before folks yearn for a new portrait.
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