Christy English

Susan Higganbotham and The Stolen Crown

Monday, March 1st, 2010 | Guest Posts

Here, as promised, is an amazing blog post by Susan Higganbotham, author of THE STOLEN CROWN, available everywhere today. Take a gander into the mind that created that novel, then run out and buy it, if you haven’t already. You will not be sorry. I devoured THE STOLEN CROWN in one day.

SUSAN HIGGANBOTHAM writes:

Though the series of conflicts known as the Wars of the Roses do not match the popularity of the Tudor era as a subject for historical fiction, they nonetheless have provided much fodder for novelists; indeed, an entire book has been devoted to the topic of the wars as depicted in fiction. When I finally decided to write my own novel about this period, then, I chose to write from a fresh perspective: that of Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, and his wife, Katherine Woodville, the youngest sister of the commoner who became Edward IV’s queen.

Buckingham is one of the more elusive figures of the fifteenth century. It was he who had been instrumental in helping Richard III seize the throne in 1483. Heaped with rewards by a grateful Richard, Buckingham just a few months later turned against him, joining the rebellion of October 1483 that bears Buckingham’s name. His reasons for doing so remain an utter mystery. Indeed, much of Buckingham’s life is so obscure that his thoughts can only be guessed at. What, for instance, did young Buckingham think as his Beaufort uncles were wiped out by the Yorkists? How close were he and Richard before 1483?

And Kate? As the youngest of seven daughters in a family of relatively modest means, she might have married a knight from a neighboring family or even taken the veil; instead, her sister Elizabeth’s marriage to the king made Kate the Duchess of Buckingham, one of the highest-ranking ladies in the land. Yet her glamorous new status was not without its price: by the time Kate was in her mid-twenties, she had lost her father, two of her brothers, a nephew, and her husband to the executioner’s axe. What did she think when her husband rebelled against the king whom Kate had very good cause to despise? Did she play a role in his rebellion?

In writing Buckingham’s and Kate’s stories, and providing my own answers to the questions above, I had a chance to take a fresh look at some of their more famous peers, especially Richard III and Elizabeth Woodville. Though Shakespeare’s portrayal of a ruthless, scheming hunchback remains the most famous fictional depiction of Richard III, a very different picture of Richard has dominated historical fiction over the past few decades. He’s high-principled, idealistic, loyal, brave, and pious. He’s deeply in love with his wife and in some novels is downright sexy (no hunchback there!). When he has faults, they’re merely the excesses of virtue that job applicants admit to when pressed to name their greatest weakness: he’s too conscientious, too generous, too trusting, too principled.

In contrast with Richard, Elizabeth Woodville has almost always been depicted negatively in historical fiction, with just a handful of exceptions. Elizabeth is greedy, unprincipled, cold-hearted, and given to dabbling in witchcraft—and this is her portrayal in novels where she is the heroine.

Was Richard really this saintly? Was Elizabeth really that evil? My research for The Stolen Crown brought me a negative answer to both questions. The historical Richard III was a man of contrasts. Though he enacted legal reforms and helped poor people gain access to the courts, he put his political enemies to death without trial. Though he could be chivalrous to women, at age eighteen he had ruthlessly bullied the elderly Countess of Oxford into giving him her estates in exchange for very inadequate compensation. Concerned that the dead should rest in peace and dignity, he did not hesitate to smear the reputations of the living—indeed, his unproven allegations that Elizabeth Woodville engaged in witchcraft continue to damage her reputation even today. Whether Richard killed his nephews remains an unsolved mystery, but as I read more about this fascinating figure, I no longer doubted that he was capable of doing so.

Just as the historical Richard was a much more complex figure than so many of his fictional representations, the historical Elizabeth Woodville was far from being the evil queen of historical fiction. The most lurid story about Elizabeth Woodville—that out of sheer spite, she had deviously procured the execution of the innocent Earl of Desmond—is based upon a sixteenth-century source, uncorroborated by sources contemporary to Elizabeth . Not even her enemies, who would have dearly loved an opportunity to do so, accused Elizabeth of having a role in Desmond’s death. The claim that Elizabeth was a practicing witch was based solely upon the allegations of Richard III, who never brought her to trial on charges of witchcraft and never offered proof of his claims. Other stories about her—such as her absconding with the royal treasury and her persecution of Thomas Cook in order to obtain his goods—are based upon the flimsiest of evidence or upon evidence taken out of its historical context. (Cook, for instance, was caught up in a web of Lancastrian intrigue and was lucky to escape with his life—others associated with him were executed.) The worst that can be fairly said about her is that she used her royal marriage to her family’s advantage—an opportunism that was hardly unique to Elizabeth Woodville. What made her case so different was that previous queens, all of them foreign-born, had left their families across the sea when they made their royal marriages; Elizabeth was an Englishwoman, with a large English family, and its members could hardly be ignored by the king. Yet the Woodvilles served the king loyally in return for the favors they received, and they suffered as much as any other noble family from the wars that engulfed England during the fifteenth century.

The Stolen Crown reflects the Richard and Elizabeth my research revealed to me, and it reflects Buckingham and Kate as I think they might have been. Yet much of the delight in reading–and writing—historical fiction is to see the vastly different interpretations that different novelists, using the same sources, can place upon the historical events. A reader might not agree with my own interpretation of the events I recount, but if I’ve gotten him or her to look at the events in a new way—and perhaps to look sympathetically upon people who haven’t caught much of a break from novelists in the past—I’ll be quite satisfied.

8 Comments to Susan Higganbotham and The Stolen Crown

Leave a comment