It’s a three-post day on the blog today! Just like buses… Depending on where you are when you read this, and indeed when you read it, the Drama channel in the UK is reshowing The White Queen this afternoon, following the first books in her Cousins’ War series. From 4pm, around about now, there’s going to be a marathon until 8pm, and, I presume (no TV book yet), that this will be repeated next Sunday.
This couldn’t be more perfect for me. I cannot write in silence, and these days, tend to enjoy, if there’s one on, having a historical documentary going on in the background as I work. Most of Kindred Spirits: Royal Mile was written to the backdrop of David Starkey’s Monarchy, so much so, that when I came to read the actual book, having met him after a talk and got a signed copy, I started to recognise sentences from the shortened version he had put together for TV.
There aren’t many characters from The White Queen in my current work-in-progress; they come later, in The White Princess, although there is Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Derby and Richmond, and (Spoiler Alert), mother of the king-to-be, Henry VII. I’ve never really warmed to Margaret Beaufort, but writing about her has been an interesting exercise. I’m fairly sure my version of her has been partly shaped by my reading, and as I definitely lean towards the Ricardian camp of books, she generally doesn’t come out as the nicest of women. Still, having her interact with not only her son and daughter-in-law, but her great-grandchildren, the offspring of Henry VIII, has been rather appealing, giving her a reason to be the grumpy old woman I’ve always pictured her as.
If I’m honest, the greatest appeal in The White Queen for me is Philippa Gregory’s interpretation of Richard III. This was really the first dramatization featuring my favourite monarch that I let myself watch, and only really because I knew from the books that it was a sympathetic representation (yes, biased, I know…). Aneurin Barnard as Richard III (or Duke of Gloucester, as he starts here), and David Oakes as the Duke of Clarence, really shaped by ideas about the two men when I picture them now, as characters in Kindred Spirits: Tower of London. The series was first shown just as the idea for the book was starting to form, ahead of NaNoWriMo 2013, and seeing the two men really, I think, helped me shape them as ghosts. The fact that both are rather pleasant on the eye also helped, I’ll admit!
Having heard Philippa Gregory speak last summer, just before her previous novel was released, I know how much effort she puts into her writing. She also spoke at Alnwick Castle, so many years back now, when I was still living in Hexham, and she spoke about how she hated writing about what might have happened to the Princes in the Tower. For anyone who hasn’t read her books, I won’t give the game away as to who she thinks was the guilty party, but the fact that she was still upset about writing the deaths of these two little boys, who would naturally have been long-dead by now anyway, really affected me.
I would still like to be Philippa Gregory when I grow up, so perhaps working on the next Kindred Spirits draft tale whilst her interpretation of history is on in the background, will sort of rub off and help in some way. I can but hope!
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