THE KING’S GREY MARE (★★☆☆☆)
— reviewing the blueprint of all Ricardian novels
I debated with myself for a long time if I should try to write a review for this book. My dislike was so strong despite my already low expectations for the story, I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to be impartial in my review. I’ve given up on trying to be impartial and instead decided to explain to you how I feel about this story. This is a not-so-short review of the historical fiction novel The King’s Grey Mare written by Rosemary H. Jarman. Read at your leisure!
The first thing I need to tell you is that this book is, as explained by @lady-plantagenet, a story about Elizabeth Woodville, but not about Elizabeth Woodville’s life per se. Although it starts at the time of Elizabeth’s youth at the court of Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou (a theory that has been deemed unlikely by now) and ends at her death, the story follows a few other people near Elizabeth Woodville who impact on her life. The narration seems to be a strange mix of the third-person omniscient point of view and third-person limited. It’s like the narrator sometimes focuses on the thoughts of a certain person and that person impacts the way the narrative is told, even to the point of repeating what was said before. It sounds confusing, but Jarman strangely manages to pull it off.
The second thing about this book is that it was published in 1973 and you can tell how dated it is, not only by the way the author chose to make Elizabeth Woodville a platinum blonde to convey her superior beauty—which weirdly became the standard portrayal for Elizabeth Woodville since then—but also by some very touchy aspects of the story that are racist, sexist, xenophobic, as well as scenes based on dubious consent that are meant to be read as the epitome of romance. Although the author claims to be sympathetic to Elizabeth Woodville, I thought she made a perverse use of this historical figure, depleting her of all internal logical and sensible actions, rendering her only a pretty doll filled with spite in order to be a channel for a literal demon, Melusine. Even Elizabeth’s mother, Jacquetta, is described as possessing ‘a devil-virgin’s smile’.
[Elizabeth] rose naked from the water and came to him, her wet hair shrouding her body like a tumult of silver weed. This was Isabella, his bride, no longer the image of an untouchable saint, but wanton, mischievous, maddening.
It is a pretty passage, but Jarman’s depiction of Elizabeth borders on dehumanising several times. Not even the man who loves her (in this case, John Grey) sees her as a person, but as a nymph, a demon. Throughout the novel, Elizabeth’s unnatural beauty is used against her to associate her with the water demon Melusine. It’s like the author punishes her for her beauty, the uncanny cold beauty the author herself decided to give her. Although Jarman tries to excuse the inexcusable actions she imparts on Elizabeth Woodville as choices beyond her control (as, according to her, Elizabeth was simply an instrument of fate), that does not explain why she makes Elizabeth so cruel and devoid of any kindness. In turn, it allows other characters to treat Elizabeth with the utmost harshness because, according to the story’s internal logic and evidence, she deserves it. This is Edward IV at the time he was supposed to have fallen in love with her, for pity’s sake:
He flung down the knife and sprang up. His towering shadow blotted the sun. He cursed her, calling her wanton, bloodless, jade, a whore that should be a nun, though there was no cloister devious enough to hold her.
Really, in face of his treatment, only Jacquetta’s witchcraft and a love potion could explain why Edward married Elizabeth at all, especially as in this story Edward IV is undoubtedly already married to Eleanor Talbot (and Elizabeth knows it). Elizabeth Woodville in this story submits to her mother’s grandiose dreams of making her queen of England so she can take revenge on Warwick and the house of York who slew her first husband, Sir John Grey, at the 2nd Battle of St Albans. No at any time she’s loyal to the Yorkist cause, which feeds on the Ricardian claim that the Woodvilles were Lancastrians painting themselves in Yorkist colours in order to snatch the crown and soil the throne with their impure and grasping blood. Elizabeth not only engineers the deaths of Warwick, Clarence and Desmond, but also is responsible for the murder of Desmond’s two little boys, something I had never heard anywhere. I can only assume it’s the author’s moralising justification for the way Elizabeth would come to lose her two children. At one point in the story, a random character asks: ‘Why is the Queen’s Grace so full of hatred?’
Of course, there’s no explanation for Elizabeth’s unrelenting unkindness other than it makes Elizabeth’s enemies, especially Richard III, look better in comparison. Whilst Elizabeth made her tongue the ‘tool of blackness’, Richard’s benedictions literally lift her unspoken curses against Warwick. Whilst she rages, plots revenge and pinches her daughter so hard it breaks her skin, Richard of Gloucester is so good not even his enemies can find a sensible excuse to hate him. This is Dorset and Elizabeth about Richard at different points in the story:
‘Richard of Gloucester,’ he added disdainfully. ‘The King’s pet and popinjay. He sickens me with his talk of loyalty, his fussing with weapons, his book-learnt strategy. And Edward listens to him.’
‘The people love Richard! They love him better than they loved his brother [citation needed]. They admire him for his new statutes and his justice. Whatever the barons say, he has won the people’s heart!’
Jarman couldn’t be more impartial in her story even if she tried. Richard’s enemies hate him because he is so [checks smudged writing on hand] loyal, learned, and loved by the people. At some point, inexplicably, Hastings decides to ally himself with Elizabeth—Jarman blames it on Elizabeth/Jane Shore seducing him to the Woodville side because, obviously under the sexist logic in which her story operates, with the exception of a few individuals all women do is lead men astray. Even as Hastings takes Elizabeth’s side, he hates her so much that his decision is only explained by the author’s internal need to make Richard of Gloucester execute him in an act of undoubted justice. In the story, they even say Hastings got a trial before his execution, something that did not in any way happen in real life.
Hastings about Richard of Gloucester: ‘Tomorrow I shall engineer the killing of one who was dear to me, to a man I loved. One who himself loved me well, who rode with me against Lancaster, when he was a sickly stripling youth. Gloucester, who took my hand, not two moons ago – Jesu! who took my hand today! – saying: ‘Thank God for you, Will Hastings. Thank God for you, in these times of strife and madness.’
Hastings about Elizabeth Woodville: ‘And Elizabeth, upon whose coming I once looked with spleen and disapproval, shall be again supreme. Elizabeth, who put down venom like a ratcatcher throughout the court. Elizabeth, whose policies are loathed by me. She who broke her sovereign’s heart with Desmond’s death, and used her brother like the most skilled provocateur to bring wretched Clarence to a bubbling end. Elizabeth, who split the soul of Warwick until he knew neither day from night, nor friend from foe. Elizabeth, whose messages I meekly bear, whose will I wreak! [...] Woodville and Lancaster wench, you never warmed my lust. Yet to Edward, you were Bathsheba, Salome …’
It is absolutely vile to say the least. You could say the author is simply being ‘historically accurate’ in depicting men’s hatred of women if the text itself didn’t justify this hatred. In fact, Elizabeth truly did everything that Hastings is accusing her of in this story. Men’s hatred against women is morally justified in this novel at every turn, so it makes it even more stunning how kindly Richard III treats women, even the ones who acted against him. He welcomes not only his nieces but also Elizabeth to his court even if no chronicle ever said that he did welcome Elizabeth, and he treats Elizabeth/Jane Shore with remarkable leniency. At no point in the novel it’s mentioned Richard made Shore perform a walk of shame in the city of London, or that he wrote to Shore’s second husband trying to dissuade him from marrying her.
‘That is Lady Lynom. She was released from prison last fall. She is married now to the King’s Solicitor-General.’
‘But she was a traitor! Conspirator and harlot – condemned by the King!’
‘He pardoned her,’ said the man, dipping his head on his chest as if to weight his words. ‘He showed her mercy.’
Parts of history are omitted, bent and twisted to satisfy Jarman’s vision of Richard III as a tragic benevolent king who met his unfair end at the hands of a spiteful woman & her grasping kin and by the devious plotting of a man & his mother led by their delusions of grandeur. The story makes it clear that England becomes a worse place after Henry Tudor takes over, and, shockingly but not completly unexpected, his Welsh and Breton men are blamed for much cruelty. At Elizabeth of York’s coronation, Jarman makes them massacre civilians and, disgustingly and pointedly, a little innocent boy. All because they were unaware of English customs and decided to attack the population when confronted by English people and their traditions. I was shocked, but unfortunately, xenophobia is not an uncommon aspect to be found amongst Ricardians when talking about the Tudors.
Weigh my words, and before you run back to your mistress shed a tear. For England and Plantagenet; their curse is accomplished.
‘After today, I have had enough of Tudor’s England. We will leave at once.’
Weirdly, and this will sound like going off on a tangent, this novel also depicts a character of colour, a character described as a ‘moor’ named Salazar who came from Spain after Tudor’s victory. For no reason, he acts as the novel’s magical negro for two seconds. Jarman describes him in terms such as ‘tall, coal-black and mysterious, more elemental than man’, ‘he gathered her to his coloured breast’, ‘he looked down at her, so fair and small against his own dark mystery’. I am....... disgusted, but I feel like it was important to point this out. There was literally no reason for Jarman to include this character of colour whilst being racist about this addition.
Everyone who is associated with the Tudors is described as visually repugnant: Reginald Bray is a shadowy man who stinks and lives ‘like a hog’; John Morton has a ‘bulky body’, a fleshy face, ‘all wattles and dewlaps’, a ‘lizard eye’. Henry Tudor himself is described as having ‘dry, rust-coloured hair’, an almost lipless mouth, eyes that ‘were as cold as a preying bird’s’ — to sum up: ‘he looked like a starved infant offering macabre love’. He’s nothing but a paranoid mess who literally pisses himself on the field of Bosworth, a man not ‘altogether sure of his own manhood’ who coughs as though he had always had tuberculosis, who is constantly looking for reassurance in the pikes of his bodyguards, who uses Elizabeth of York as a baby-maker, and who betrays Elizabeth Woodville and kills her sons in the name of some obscure motto (‘Tudor must destroy Plantagenet’). Disappointing but not surprising for such a novel.
Accordingly, even ‘neutral’ characters are unable to offer any sympathy for the Tudors. This is John Grey thinking about child bride and rape survivor Margaret Beaufort when she was still in her early teens:
Secretly he thought of Margaret Beaufort with distaste. She flaunted at court as if her descent were of the most royal. Her bravado made no pretence at covering old history. The Beauforts were merely descended from John of Gaunt and his mistress, Kate Swynford. Bastards all, legitimized by Richard II with the proviso that none of the line should ever aspire to the Crown. Yet Margaret strutted like an Empress; her small black eyes could intimidate. There was something unnatural about her.
‘Didn’t you know? She wed and buried him almost within the year. She has a son, Henry, two years old. Poor Edmund never saw the child.’
‘Holy Jesu! What killed him?’
‘Margaret’s terrible learning, so they say,’ chuckled John. ‘With her philosophy and Greek, her disputations and dissertations, Edmund, unsure of his own wit, pined and died.
I could go on and on about the double standards about the Beauforts and all the other Plantagenet bastards who are depicted as noble and praiseworthy in Ricardian novels but I’m tired and this review is already long enough. In this novel John of Gloucester, Richard III’s bastard son, is a fine youth whose only ‘fault’ is his undying loyalty to his father and who is unjustly framed and executed by Henry VII, something that didn’t happen in real life. He engages in a little unnecessary and dull romance plotline with his cousin Grace Plantagenet, Edward IV’s natural daughter who is one of the only good female characters in this novel. She loves Elizabeth Woodville even though Elizabeth is nothing but unkind to her—she loves Elizabeth like a dog loves its master despite the kicks it receives, presumably because for a Ricardian author there’s nothing more inspiring than the motto ‘Loyaulté me lie’ and loyalty beyond reason is the noblest quality a person can display. Grace is so good she even tames wild animals that set out to attack her.
In contrast, fair-weather Elizabeth of York is a fickle, insipid girl who cries at every turn only to laugh scandalously loud at the next moment. Interestingly though, perhaps to prove her weak character, she doesn’t cry at her father’s death, only when she hears she won’t be considered a princess anymore. Of course, she also cries when she’s about to marry Henry VII and when she’s jilted by Richard III, the uncle she fell in love with. She’s a girl who says ‘how should I know?’ when asked about her brothers, who is ‘content to lie and wait, and reckon nothing’. Ricardian authors often make use of Elizabeth of York to prove Richard III’s worthiness but they don’t even bother to give her a full-fleshed personality. Irrational behaviour is, of course, a trait that the younger Elizabeth shares with her mother, who comes to regret her spiteful behaviour at the end of her life, after she trusted Henry Tudor only to be betrayed and imprisoned by him. Henry is the one ‘who should have earned all her hatred, all her destructive powers. She realized numbly that these had been expended on others less worthy of them’.
Perhaps the vilest thing about this novel is the way it blames Elizabeth Woodville for the death of her two sons. Jarman even has Elizabeth admit that much to herself:
I killed them. She twisted, shuddering [...] I killed them. I among others put them to death by whispers, destroyed my sons through word of mouth [...] The souls of those I love, Melusine! and their bodies too! I killed them. Like the Greeks, who, to ensure victory, act it out beforehand, I wrote their doom in chapter and verse. I cleared the road for Tudor, Beaufort, Morton. And the man who kept my sons safe I had killed with ignominy.
What else can I say? This story has all the hallmarks of a true Ricardian novel: Social justice warrior Richard III, too good, too cultured, too pure for this world? Check. Irrational, wild, vengeful and coldly beautiful Elizabeth Woodville? Check. Jacquetta the love witch of Luxembourg? Check. Despicable Henry Tudor who literally pisses himself on Bosworth Field? Check. Crying mess Elizabeth of York in love with her uncle? Check. Fragile as glass Anne Neville doomed to die from the start? Check. Woodville women serving a vengeful, bloodthirsty demon named Melusine who gives them mysterious powers? Check, check and check. It’s so extra, it even has Bishop Morton raising a young Thomas More in his household with the purpose to create a true story master to blacken Richard III’s name forevermore.
What I didn’t know was that Rosemary Jarman was at least original about the above points and every other Ricardian novel that came after Jarman’s novel in fact took from her story. I’m giving it two stars because the prose is truly beautiful at times, and there’s some interesting use of narrative foils (for example, Elizabeth Woodville and her ‘sin-eater’ Grace Plantagenet) that would be better applied to original characters than pigeonholed into historical figures. It loses three stars for poorly veiled historical innacuracy, awful characterisation, and sexist, racist and xenophobic narratives. The narration is beautiful but at times hollow in my opinion, unable to inspire any emotion. If you’re one who is looking for beautiful prose but who gets angry at the twisting of historical facts, this is not a novel for you. It will only give you a headache.
despite being very optimistic/cheerful , tanjirou does suffer from nightmares, which were caused by his experiences before/after becoming a demon hunter. he doesn’t have them every night, but they do occur every now & then. there are two types of nightmares that appear the most & have the biggest impact on him.
THE FIRST TYPE ; it starts after the death of his family. it’s not the type where they tell him that it was his fault that they died, since tanjirou strongly believes that his family would never say such things. rather, the nightmare has a much more eerie atmosphere.
he’s taken back to his house at the mountain - & everything looks normal ; there’s no blood nor corpses. it seems too normal, even. the house is in a state that would imply that someone is living in it -the air feels light & the little details, such as the scent of a recently cooked meal, are all there. but, there’s a catch - there’s a significant lack of human presence. it’s like everyone disappeared. everyone but him.
every time he has this nightmare, he goes out to search for them. the belongings of his mother & siblings are all present, even the things he knows none of them would leave behind. in the end, he leaves the house.
at first, he sees snow. it’s not unusual, but it still feels horribly wrong. he manages to make the same mistake over & over again ; he looks up, & sees nezuko’s corpse, in the same state as when he got back home on that unfortunate day. except, she’s not protecting rokuta. she’s alone, lifeless, surrounded by white. of course, tanjirou would try to move, but he would never succeed. his legs would always feel dead & he’d be stuck on his spot, unable to do anything.
THE SECOND TYPE ; this one starts after rengoku’s death. it’s much rarer than the first one, but it’s still present.
in this nightmare, tanjirou looks through akaza’s eyes -sees rengoku’s wounded body & it looks like he killed the flame pillar himself ( which is not far from the truth, in tanjirou’s eyes ; he believes that it was his weakness that caused rengoku’s death ). another thing he sees is himself -an image of a helpless boy who couldn’t do anything.
THE AFTERMATH ; after both of these, tanjirou wakes up visibly shaken. but of course, there’s no way he’d be willing to talk to anyone about it. he usually goes outside & spends a few hours there, since he usually isn’t able to go back to sleep immediately. it does take him a while to completely calm down & stop thinking about the nightmares, though he likes to think that he’s getting used to it.
