One of my favorite shows on Starz is ‘the white princess’.
I love how they describe it as women waging war for power.
I get this, if you read history from this time you get the impression that women just did not exist, beyond giving birth and who married each of the men. Women appear to be placeholders for real people (aka men) and had no ability to act, pawns in a much larger scheme. There is no doubt these women wielded a lot of soft power. They could whisper into the ears of the men who held the power, they could suggest, hint, and as women I knew used to say: kiss her king across the chess board. The problem with soft power is that it requires the men do as she wants. As we see in ‘the white princess’ the rise and fall of the Queen mothers soft power over those with real power, in this case the king. In the end the king not only has thrown her out of ‘her’ rooms, but out of his life, when he literally throws her out. The King’s wife, aka the Queen (Lizzy), taking all the power his mother once had and then holding all that power herself.
Lizzie does not realize how powerless she is, unlike her mother who does realize, when Lizzy visits her mother. Her mother is surprised by her daughter’s visit and when Lizzie returns ‘home’ is met by the king who tells her she wouldn’t have been able to go visit her mother if he didn’t allow it.
But there were women who held their own power, for instance in the Duchess of Normandy and Isabella I of Castile as portrayed in 'the white princess'. These women appeared to have governed in their own right in this version of history (whether they did in historical reality is another thing entirely).
And while I love that they are presenting us with a tragedy, the true tragedy is based on a modern perspective, that the King’s mother, indirectly, killed ‘the children’. This is only true from a modern perspective. No one at the time would’ve considered a person's age in anyway important.
The other tragedy is: what people will do for power. And how blind people can become based on that lust. They will use whoever they can to grasp what power they can, aka the dowager queen uses her daughter to keep her hand as close as possible to that power, convincing her daughter to keep her pregnancy, marries Henry VII, and becomes queen. This is also unlikely given that any child conceived out of wedlock would not be a legitimate heir to the throne. And given the King’s claims being weak already it seems twice as likely he’d be extremely careful about his eldest son’s claims.
Then there are the justifications people make for their actions “it is God’s will” (Margaret Beaufort and Prince Richard). And how they will use anyone or kill even those they love for power (Margaret Beaufort (Michelle Fairley) kills Jasper Tudor (Vincent Regan)), urging her (dowager queen Elizabeth Woodville, Essie Davis) Lizzie to marry Henry VII, and not abort their baby. And indeed the dowager queen’s joy at the plague ravaging England. She didn’t care about the people of England who she eagerly wanted power over. (Compare this with Trump’s lust to win the 2020 election, when Americans were dying from COVID. He did not care if Americans were dying, he just wanted to hang on to the presidency whether it was for the immunity from legal action or to continue using us to bankroll him or both?)
And I get th'e impression that this meant to be contrasted with what people will do for love. Lizzie (Jody Comer) makes it very clear she loves her son and his siblings and then her husband. We get the hate/love transition so common in romances, because how else can we possibly know they truly love each other? (Sic) invented even before Jane Austen and been used ever since in all romances.
Finally the show demonstrates what is good governance, versus the paranoia of losing power. Do you help your subjects as Lizzy does during the plague? Or do you constantly seek to punish people who might seek whatever power you have away from you as the King’s mother does, 'and you must punish her, severely', 'you must come down hard'...
But doing research on this period in history I learned one thing, women in this era did not wear underpants so they were all running or walking around commando! And in case you are wondering...
I love how they describe it as women waging war for power.
I get this, if you read history from this time you get the impression that women just did not exist, beyond giving birth and who married each of the men. Women appear to be placeholders for real people (aka men) and had no ability to act, pawns in a much larger scheme. There is no doubt these women wielded a lot of soft power. They could whisper into the ears of the men who held the power, they could suggest, hint, and as women I knew used to say: kiss her king across the chess board. The problem with soft power is that it requires the men do as she wants. As we see in ‘the white princess’ the rise and fall of the Queen mothers soft power over those with real power, in this case the king. In the end the king not only has thrown her out of ‘her’ rooms, but out of his life, when he literally throws her out. The King’s wife, aka the Queen (Lizzy), taking all the power his mother once had and then holding all that power herself.
Lizzie does not realize how powerless she is, unlike her mother who does realize, when Lizzy visits her mother. Her mother is surprised by her daughter’s visit and when Lizzie returns ‘home’ is met by the king who tells her she wouldn’t have been able to go visit her mother if he didn’t allow it.
But there were women who held their own power, for instance in the Duchess of Normandy and Isabella I of Castile as portrayed in 'the white princess'. These women appeared to have governed in their own right in this version of history (whether they did in historical reality is another thing entirely).
And while I love that they are presenting us with a tragedy, the true tragedy is based on a modern perspective, that the King’s mother, indirectly, killed ‘the children’. This is only true from a modern perspective. No one at the time would’ve considered a person's age in anyway important.
The other tragedy is: what people will do for power. And how blind people can become based on that lust. They will use whoever they can to grasp what power they can, aka the dowager queen uses her daughter to keep her hand as close as possible to that power, convincing her daughter to keep her pregnancy, marries Henry VII, and becomes queen. This is also unlikely given that any child conceived out of wedlock would not be a legitimate heir to the throne. And given the King’s claims being weak already it seems twice as likely he’d be extremely careful about his eldest son’s claims.
Then there are the justifications people make for their actions “it is God’s will” (Margaret Beaufort and Prince Richard). And how they will use anyone or kill even those they love for power (Margaret Beaufort (Michelle Fairley) kills Jasper Tudor (Vincent Regan)), urging her (dowager queen Elizabeth Woodville, Essie Davis) Lizzie to marry Henry VII, and not abort their baby. And indeed the dowager queen’s joy at the plague ravaging England. She didn’t care about the people of England who she eagerly wanted power over. (Compare this with Trump’s lust to win the 2020 election, when Americans were dying from COVID. He did not care if Americans were dying, he just wanted to hang on to the presidency whether it was for the immunity from legal action or to continue using us to bankroll him or both?)
And I get th'e impression that this meant to be contrasted with what people will do for love. Lizzie (Jody Comer) makes it very clear she loves her son and his siblings and then her husband. We get the hate/love transition so common in romances, because how else can we possibly know they truly love each other? (Sic) invented even before Jane Austen and been used ever since in all romances.
Finally the show demonstrates what is good governance, versus the paranoia of losing power. Do you help your subjects as Lizzy does during the plague? Or do you constantly seek to punish people who might seek whatever power you have away from you as the King’s mother does, 'and you must punish her, severely', 'you must come down hard'...
But doing research on this period in history I learned one thing, women in this era did not wear underpants so they were all running or walking around commando! And in case you are wondering...
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