White Queen ....still Befuddled!

[Ann]

Another gory episode of dying and head choppings off..... can't really follow who the 2 boys are in the Tower. One is Elizabeth and Edward's son. Did Elizabeth substitute another boy in place of her other son, if so, didn't first son know it wasn't his brother? Also is Richard III a baddie or a goodie?

[ladyalex]

I think the second boy was a substitute for the younger prince.
Presumably the older boy either had figured out what his mother had done or wasn't too sure what his brother looked like as they had been brought up apart all of their lives.
The older prince lived in Wales with his uncle, Elizabeth's brother Anthony, the younger one lived with his mother at court.

[zebo]

Philippa Gregory had Elizabeth substitute another boy for her youngest son, her theory being that she wouldn't have let Richard (and Ann) have both of her sons. The "real" Prince she surmises was Perkin Warbeck. Gregory also theorises that the real villan wasn't Richard but his wife Ann, she was after all a Neville and hence very ambitious. The theory of the wicked Richard only gained prominence through Shakespeare, who owed his livelihood to the Tudors, hence besmirching Richard's name was a good career move. Henry VII, and hence the Tudor dynasty, had a very weak claim on the throne after all!

[friedgreentomato]

Its brilliant and I don't find it difficult to follow at all - can't wait till next weeks episode.

[Peter Pedant]

It isnt history as we know it - Ann

[Sharingan]

I'm a Richard III fan, but I haven't been watching this, it looked as though it might be a bit too abridged to really do the situations justice. I'm one of those people who'd like 100 episode series hence my love of anime.

[VHG]

Richard III has gone down in history as a "baddie" with the hump back and club foot and so on. He is also blamed for putting the princes in the tower and then doing away with them.

But many feel Richard III does not deserve his bad reputation.

Note that soon Henry 7th takes the throne (sorry if that is a spoiler - He is the Henry Tudor who has been featured all through the series but is now a man. His mother Margaret Beaufort has insisted he will be king all along).

Henry 7th kills Richard III at Bosworth and of course he wants to make Richard III look "bad" so lots of stories were spread about Richard killing the princes in the tower and being deformed and so on.

Shakespeare also made Richard III look bad in his plays (of course the Tudors were still on the throne at the time). They do say the "winners" write the history.

Last nights episode made Richard III look indecisive, with his wife and his closest friends telling him what to do, and him doing them.

I think the TV show has deliberately had him as quite handsome and generally being a nice guy and always supporting his brother Edward while he was king, and thus avoiding the "Richard III was bad" story.

[jno]

the Richard III Society supported the car park dig that uncovered his skeleton - but were rather shocked to find he did indeed have a hunchback of sorts (scoliosis), since they had always argued that this was black propaganda from the Tudors

http://www.le.ac.uk/richardiii/science/spine.html

[Ann]

Yes Jno it was a revealing moment when the skeleton was uncovered and found to have a curved spine. We live near Leicester and it caused great excitement in our County. Wonder why Richard III in this TV series didn't appear to have a deformity?

[Barmaid]

One of the boys in the Tower is definitely Edward who was the eldest child of Ed IV and Elizabeth Woodville. The second boy in the Tower was "probably" Richard, the the other son of the pair.

There were rumours that Elizabeth smuggled her second son away, but no one really knows. For some years there were rumours of Richard having been smuggled away. Indeed during Henry VII's reign a chap by the name of Perkin Warbeck came forwards claiming to be Richard and thus the true heir to the throne.

Richard III was probably a goodie until after the death of Edward IV. I am suspicious as to what happened thereafter, but certainly within a few months of his death Richard had the marriage of EiV and Elizabeth declared invalid - thus rendering the children illegitimate and therefore unable to claim the throne. I am not entirely sure whether he had the Princes in the Tower killed - he didn't need to. There were other people who could equally have engineered this - not least the calculating and clever Margaret Beaufort.

[Barmaid]

I didn't see half these answers when I started typing. Probably time for bed........

[shaneystar2]

I'm reading the Cousins War Quartet by Philippa Gregory off the back of the series which is really good .I'm on the third book The Red Queen (Margaret Beaufort ) You might like them Ann ,brings it all to life. An enjoyable read if you like that sort of thing .
All four books 6.99 from The Book People .

[jno]

Ann, Richard's believed to have had late-onset scoliosis, so it probably wasn't visible when he was younger. It would also have made his life a misery, which may have changed his character

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/feb/05/richard-scoliosis-me-twisted-spines