Exclusive interview with author Alison Weir and a review of her book about the forgotten queen
Rating: Three Stars
By Gabrielle Pantera
“I had a eureka moment when I discovered in Elizabeth’s expense accounts, a hitherto undetected link between her and the man who was said to have murdered her brothers, the Princes in the Tower,” says Elizabeth of York: A Tudor Queen and Her World author Alison Weir. “My jaw just dropped when I made the connection…which is there for all to see. When I investigated further, I found even more links. That’s the joy of research.”
When it comes to research, Weir is nothing if not meticulous. The details that Weir provide are staggering. There is much we don’t know for certain about Elizabeth of York. Weir uses might have, would have, and could have to create an engaging story. Sometimes it would have been nice to have a more concrete idea of what Elizabeth was thinking, of why she did things.
Elizabeth of York was the daughter of a king, the wife of a king and the mother of a king. Her father was Edward IV and her mother Elizabeth Woodville. Her uncle Richard III usurped the crown from her brothers, who were missing and presumed dead. Richard III was immortalized by Shakespeare as one of history’s great villains. Elizabeth was the rightful heir to the throne, with her brothers missing and presumed dead. However, she had no power and even had to contemplate marrying Richard at one point, before Henry Tudor’s defeat of Richard at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 allowed him to marry Elizabeth, strengthe his claim to the British throne and united the houses of Lancaster and York were united, ending the War of the Roses.
“After completing the original version of my book, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, in 1974, I spent several years researching England’s medieval queens, including Elizabeth of York, so the idea of writing a book about her has been in my mind for decades,” says Weir. “I’ve always been interested in her, and feel that she has been overshadowed by the six queens who came after her. I wanted to go back to the original sources, update my research, and see what it turned up.”
The scale of Weir’s research is evident in the 27 page bibliography, in the back of the book.
”Most of the documents I neededb to consult are in print, sometimes on-demand these days, or accessible online, so there’s a lot less leg-work than in the Seventies,” says Weir. “I was fortunate then to have had the advantage of using Norwich Library’s wonderful reference section, which had the extensive Rolls Series of chronicles and many other primary sources. Sadly that library burnt down, but the books were saved. However, they are not all easily accessible now.”
Elizabeth of York is Weir’s twentieth published book, with sixteen history books and four historical novels. She recently completed writing a novel about Elizabeth I, The Marriage Game. “A lot of my writing and research remains unpublished, but I’m working on that,” says Weir.
Eleanor of Aquitaine won the Good Book Guide award for the best biography of 1999. Two of Weir’s books are in development for films: The Lady in the Tower: The Fall of Anne Boleyn and The Captive Queen. Weir has made presentations in the Great Hall at Hampton Court Palace, where she last spoke in November about Elizabeth of York.
Weir says she is currently comprehensively updating and rewriting her book The Six Wives of Henry VIII.
Weir was born in Westminster and still lives in London.
Elizabeth of York: A Tudor Queen and Her World by Alison Weir. Hardcover, 608 pages, Publisher: Ballantine Books (December 3, 2013), Language: English, ISBN-13: 978-0345521361 $ $30.00 also available as an ebook.
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