The Lady of the Rivers

Synopsis
Jacquetta, a Burgundian princess, is married off into the English royal family as a teenager. She gains her footing and forges her own destiny - and that of a dynasty.

My thoughts
This is technically the third book in Philippa Gregory's "The Cousin's War" series, but it's chronologically the first. Jacquetta is Elizabeth Woodville's mother, and The Lady of the Rivers succeeds where The White Queen stumbles. The forbidden love story between the widowed Jacquetta and her late husband's groom is vivid and passionate, even after they've settled into a comfortable married life and produced a bevy of children.

The narrative of The Lady of the Rivers flows better and than it does in The White Queen and I felt a connection with Jacquetta that I just didn't feel with her daughter Elizabeth when I read The White Queen. This is partially because The Lady of the Rivers is a coming of age story and I was able to watch Jacquetta grow from a proud Burgundian princess into a strong-willed and powerful member of the Lancaster court. The Lady of the Rivers is also more successful at weaving the water goddess Melusina into the narrative than is The White Queen. In The White Queen Jacquetta and Elizabeth whistle up winds and mists and storms to defeat their Lancastrian foes, which felt like a cheat to me. The use of magic was more intuitive and less invasive in The Lady of the Rivers. And the book ends with a sweet tie-in to the beginning of The White Queen.

Not only is it more entertaining and satisfying than The White Queen, it also fills in some important background information. Margaret of Anjou, who haunts The White Queen from afar, is more fully fleshed out here. Philippa Gregory does an incredible job straightening out a very complicated era in English history. My husband and I watched the premiere of The White Queen on STARZ last weekend and I had to keep pausing the action to fill him in on the relationships between the characters. I read Alison Weir's non-fiction history The Wars of the Roses six years ago and found it similarly confusing. Everyone had the same names, which was complicated further by the fact that they were sometimes referred to by their family names and sometimes by their titles. I had no such confusion with Gregory's books. And Gregory writes decent battle scenes, too. She sends Jacquetta with Margaret of Anjou to watch the action, which was very effective. Later, she depicts the anguish of women watching for their men to come home from battle.

Bottom line
Read this first and then move on to the rest of the series. It's a fast, engaging read, and it sets up the rest of the action nicely.

Fine print
The Lady of the Rivers, by Philippa Gregory
Genre: historical fiction
Photo from Goodreads
I bought this book.