The Kingmaker's Daughter

Synopsis
The Cousins' War through the eyes of Anne Neville, daughter of Lord Warwick and wife of Edward of Westminster and Richard III.

My thoughts
This is technically the fourth book in Philippa Gregory's series of the Cousins' War, but The White Queen, The Red Queen, and The Kingmaker's Daughter all take place more or less concurrently. The Kingmaker's Daughter rebounds from the somewhat disappointing White Queen, but it's still not as strong as The Lady of the Rivers, chronologically the first book in the series.

This series views the Cousins' War through the eyes of the women who schemed and prayed for York and Lancaster. Gregory depicts Anne Neville as an insecure child pawn who grows into an intelligent, decisive woman. But no matter how strong or independent Gregory tries to make her, Anne Neville remains a woman in a time when women were considered the property of their fathers and then their husbands. As a result, there's a lot of Anne eavesdropping on pivotal conversations, hearing about battles second hand, and wringing her hands when she finds herself in a situation she doesn't have the power to change. There's nothing Gregory can do to make Anne Neville one of the principal players in the Cousins' War when she was mostly an observer. The decisions weren't hers to make, so Anne spends her life dealing with the aftershocks of her father's and husbands' decisions. But there's still plenty of drama and Gregory works skillfully with what she has.

The  novel follows Anne from early childhood, when she's a gawky girl in her older sister Isabel's shadow. Isabel is married off to George Duke of Clarence and their father Lord Warwick plots to put George on the throne. The family dynamics are one of the strengths of this book. Warrick's wife and daughters have no choice but to obediently follow his orders, and the relationship between the sisters is nicely drawn. There's a natural sibling rivalry between them, but they also depend on each other for support in the face of their father's ruthless ambition. Warwick's attempt to replace Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville with George and Isabel fails tragically and spectacularly, and it's one of the most harrowing parts of the entire series. Warwick forces his family to flee, and Isabel, pregnant with her first child, goes into labor in a storm at sea. Gregory suggests that if Isabel had been on dry land with midwives to assist her, everything would have been fine. But Isabel nearly dies and her child is stillborn. It's difficult to read and it's a damning indictment of the male-dominated world of medieval England. Warwick's ambition matters more to him than his own daughter.

Licking his wounds after his ignominious flight from England, Warwick devises a new plan to seize the throne. He marries Anne to the son of his lifelong enemy, Margaret of Anjou, who Anne has been brought up to fear as "the bad queen," and throws his support behind the Lancastrians. This also fails tragically and spectacularly, and Anne loses both her father and her husband in separate battles that she (and the reader) hear about piecemeal from various sources. (Minor quibble: at several points later in the book Anne looks back on Edward of Westminster and her short marriage to him with an affection that I found totally baffling considering that she didn't really know him and didn't like what she did know of him.)

Anne finds herself utterly bereft - her father and husband are dead, her mother has abandoned her to seek sanctuary in a nunnery, her domineering mother-in-law is imprisoned, and her sister has turned on her as a traitor to the Yorks. It's at this point that Gregory decides to give Anne a spine and she runs off with Richard Duke of Gloucester. Their marriage is depicted as a love match, and it's nice to see Anne finally happy (even if the cynical part of me wondered whether Richard was in love with Anne or the wealth and power their marriage brought him).

This series is well done. I'm in awe of the painstaking research Gregory did to sketch a detailed portrait of the women of this era. The women in this series are barely mentioned in the larger historical record, but they come to life in these novels. They matter. Most of the historical record was written by men and not much was recorded about the women of medieval Europe because they weren't the primary decision-makers. Gregory infuses the historical record with a refreshing dash of girl power. It's fun to read even if it isn't the way it actually happened. In some ways the scanty documentation of women gives Gregory more freedom - she's able to invent personalities and events to suit her version of history. And the women in all of her books - not just this series - are definitely more creatures of the 21st century than their own era. They're more independent and less deferential.

Bottom line
Gregory has me hooked on this series. They're like Pringles - once you pop, you can't stop. I love women in history, and this period of English history is rich with drama.

Fine print
The Kingmaker's Daughter, by Philippa Gregory
Genre: historical fiction
Photo from Goodreads
I borrowed this book from the library.