The Last White Rose

 In her author's note, Alison Weir says historical records tell us what happened but don't show the conversations or personalities. Weir is both a biographer and novelist and The Last White Rose is the fiction companion to her biography of Elizabeth of York.

We first meet Elizabeth as a 5 year old feeing into sanctuary during the Wars of the Roses. Her father, Edward IV, eventually triumphs and she, her mother, two sisters, and the newborn heir return to their life of luxury. Bessy adores her splendid father, but as she approaches her tenses he sees him age prematurely. She also watches as relations with her favorite uncle, Richard of Gloucester, decline.

When she was 17, the family once gain returns to sanctuary. Edward IV is dead and Richard has taken Edward V hostage before usurping the throne and allegedly killing his two nephews. Bessy finds herself her family's backbone, caring for her sisters and trying to temper the conspiracy-tinged rants of her mother. Here, I think Weir could have shown a better transition from the calm regal queen to the paranoid captive. We don't see the Queen's point of view, so maybe she was a bit suspicious from the start but it's a bit jarring. During this captivity, Bessy still hopes to marry Henry Tudor but willingly accepts the advances of her uncle Richard whose queen is dying of tuberculosis. Simultaneously, she plots with Lord Stanley, Henry's stepfather, to help with Henry's invasion. Richard and Henry meet on Bosworth and Henry becomes Henry VII.

Henry's claim tot he throne was tenuous, but he won his crown on the battlefield so it shouldn't matter. Still, his marriage to the heir of the Yorkist King should, ,in the dowager queen's eyes, make them co-regnants. Henry disagrees and Bessy, more concerned with bearing and supervising the upbringing of their children, doesn't object. What does vex her is Henry's parsimony and (warranted) suspicions. He's challenged by two pretenders and a feeble minded cousin of Bessy's and she can't agree with his imprisonment of her feeble minded relative. She objects, but cannot act.

Still, their marriage is happy and Bessy loves her children...except, perhaps, Arthur. She regrets her inability to bond with him - when he was a premature infant, frail child, or a boy installed in a distant palace. She questions whether he's healthy enough to marry Catherine of Aragon, and henry admits that perhaps he two should live apart after consummating the marriage. That act, which years later led to the Great Matter, most likely never happened and Arthur dies of tuberculosis a few months later. And his mother mourns.

Arthur's death leaves the succession less secure. Elizabeth's prior pregnancy had been difficult, but she and Henry decide to have another child. in giving birth to her seventh child, a girl named Katherine who died soon after, Elizabeth sealed her fate. As she hemorrhages and dies, she sees the faces of her loved ones who died before her. Weir uses this trope in most of her novels and it's effective if wearing a bit thin. Other than that, The Last White Rose effectively fleshes out the frame of Elizabeth of York