✖ ▒ OH, WHAT A COINCIDENCE! i was just thinking of [ ELIZABETH OF YORK ]. most swear their resemblance to [ KEIRA KNIGHTLEY ] is unmistakable, but she has been around since the [ LATE MIDDLE AGES ]. it is rumoured that the [ CIS FEMALE ] was born in [ LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM ] in the year [ 1466 ], even though they don’t look a day over [ THIRTY ]. what a shame, though: they were once famed for being [ AMBITIOUS ] and [ STEADFAST ] ; yet now, they seem more and more [ STUBBORN ] and [ INTERFERING ]. but while [ ELIZABETH ] spends their days working as [ A POLITICAL AIDE ], they are already notorious around town for [ CRAFTING PRECISELY THE RIGHT WORDS AND FITTING THEM INTO SOMEONE ELSE’S MOUTH; METICULOUS & BEAUTIFUL PENMANSHIP; “ANCESTRAL” HALLS SHORTER-LIVED THAN YOU; THE CENTURIES’ OLD GLEAM OF A CROWN; A WAY TO WIN ON EITHER SIDE OF THE BATTLE ]. when you live forever, you might as well make the most of it. ( shannon. 20. bst/gmt+1. she/her. )
MUN STUFF:
hello hi there, friends! i’m shannon, i really hate ( most of ) philippa gregory, and this is the historical love of my life, elizabeth of york. i hope i make you all love her as much as i absolutely adore her. if you’re invested in the experience, i recommend listening to ‘the tower’ by ludovico einaudi while reading about her because it really helped me get my feelings about her down onto paper.
BASICS:
FULL NAME: her majesty queen elizabeth of england.
MONIKER / NICKNAME: lizzie; the white rose of york ( nicknames. )
TITLES: queen consort of england ( 1486-1503 ), princess ( 1466-1483 officially; regarded a princess by some after this date until her coronation as queen consort in 1486. )
GENDER && PRONOUNS: cis female && she/her.
DOB && AGE: eleventh of february, fourteen sixty-six ( age five hundred and fifty-four; immortally thirty. )
PLACE OF BIRTH: westminster palace, london, england.
ZODIAC SIGN: aquarius.
ETHNICITY: white.
SEXUAL ORIENTATION: bisexual
ROMANTIC ORIENTATION: biromantic
PHYSICAL APPEARANCE:
FACE CLAIM: keira knightley.
HEIGHT: 5 ft 7 in (170cm)
PHYSICAL BUILD: slim, rectangular.
EYE COLOUR AND SHAPE: brown; deep-set.
HAIR COLOUR AND STYLE: brown; varies.
USUAL EXPRESSION: neutral.
ACCENT AND SPEECH STYLE: received pronunciation; measured speed.
DISTINGUISHING MARKS / CHARACTERISTICS: pierced ears & an outline of the rennes cathedral tattooed on her wrist that she got done ten years ago.
CLOTHING STYLE: varies heavily; in her job, she likes suits now.
JEWELLERY AND ACCESSORIES: she still wears her wedding ring from the 1480s, and possesses earrings in the likeness of the tudor rose, though she can so rarely wear the latter.
FAMILY:
FATHER: edward iv of england
MOTHER: elizabeth woodville
SIBLINGS, IF ANY: nine full, two half.
EXTENDED RELATIONS: cecily neville (grandmother) && richard iii of england (uncle.)
SIGNIFICANT OTHER(S): henry vii of england (husband, 1486—, legally ended upon her “death” in 1503). there has and will be no one else.
CHILDREN: seven or eight, including henry viii of england.
HOUSEHOLD PET(S): none; they die too soon. she used to keep greyhounds in her heyday.
FAVOURITES:
COLOUR: red && white; the colours of lancaster and york.
WEATHER: when it is overcast but comfortably so, and rain is on the horizon so the air is refreshing when it caresses your face. quintessentially english.
FOOD ITEM: the christmas roast. it reminds her of raucous and happy times with her family.
BEVERAGE: burgundian wine.
TIME OF DAY: just before dawn, when everything is peaceful & the world could just seem... perfectly endless, and yet, so small.
TELEVISION GENRE: drama. political & nordic noir. think borgen & the killing.
FAVOURITE ERA LIVED: 1486-1503; the years of her marriage.
PERSONALITY:
HOBBIES: gambling & music & reading & dancing & writing & watching theatre.
PET PEEVES: people who chew loudly. tardiness.
ALLERGIES: none known.
MBTI TYPE: estj-a.
ENNEAGRAM TYPE: type one, with a two wing: “the advocate.”
SLEEPING HABITS: restless. not as regular as they should be.
OLDEST BELONGING: her wedding ring from the 1480s.
HOME: chester square, belgravia.
DAUGHTER, SISTER, NIECE AND WIFE
No one else will ever be all four to kings ( Edward IV, Edward V, Richard III, Henry VII ) but that distinction — much like your life — is marred by instability, grief and strife.
Your father became sick: whisperings of poison persist, and you must admit you are not sure of the truth. Your brother disappeared to the Tower: whisperings of murder exist, and you must admit you are not sure of the truth. But you are sure that your uncle met his end upon Bosworth field, and on the matter of your husband you are sure that you love him.
At first you were not sure, at first it was not easy, but such is love.
Sweet Elizabeth, daughter of scandal: the fairest of her father’s children by his second marriage to Elizabeth Woodville. They call her ‘common,’ though she is beautiful; they are not audacious enough to call you half-common, because it is only descendancy from the God-chosen King that matters to them.
There would be more daughters before Elizabeth Woodville gave unto her husband sons, and by then they are talking.
THINGS I PROBABLY DON’T NEED TO WRITE CREATIVELY BUT YOU DO NEED TO KNOW, A SAGA:
Elizabeth of York was the first-born daughter of Edward IV and his wife Elizabeth Woodville; she was widely believed to be the fairest of his children. She had two older half-siblings from her mother’s first marriage, and would have nine full-blooded siblings: Mary, Cecily, Edward (V), Margaret, Richard, Anne, George, Catherine, and Bridget. Bold denotes the two ‘Princes in the Tower’ and italics denotes siblings who died in infancy.
In childhood, she was betrothed to the future King Charles VIII of France, but the French failed to keep to their end of the agreement & it was called off. Previously, she had been betrothed to a noble’s son, but this too was repudiated after the father rebelled against Edward.
The former King Henry VI was briefly returned to the throne when Elizabeth was but four years old. Elizabeth, her siblings, and their pregnant mother lived under religious protection until Edward was restored in 1471.
In 1483, Edward IV died, and the unexpected nature of this death & the age of her brother — also named Edward — combined by the ambition for power held by her uncle the Lord Protector ( Richard, Duke of Gloucester ) threw the succession into doubt. Once again, they were forced into sancturary.
Ultimately, both Edward V and the younger Richard disappeared shortly after her uncle took the throne as Richard III, known as the Princes in the Tower, with much credence lent to the theory that they were murdered; the Titulus Regius, in declaring the late King’s controversial — as Elizabeth Woodville was a ‘common’ widower and the marriage secret — marriage invalid, bastardised their children and robbed Elizabeth of York and her siblings of status & rights to succession.
When whispers began of an effort against Richard for the throne, the strongest claim was undoubtedly Elizabeth of York’s own. But there had been no queen that ruled in her own right, and would not for some years, and so Elizabeth Woodville arranged for her to marry the Lancastrian claimant Henry Tudor, who traced his line through a legitimised bastard line.
It was illegal for a Beaufort to take the throne, but it was agreed that they would support his efforts, perhaps due to Elizabeth’s vitriol toward Richard for the disappearance of her son. Henry vowed to marry Elizabeth in 1483.
Henry Tudor won the battle of Bosworth Field and was crowned Henry VII: he married Elizabeth in January 1486, their first child, Arthur, being born that autumn.
The marriage initially was politics-born, but they came to love one another deeply, and there is no evidence of the king having kept a mistress.
FROM DEATH TO “DEATH”
18 March, 1496
The eighteenth of March, fourteen ninety-six, is immortalised in your mind as the day that you died. You were thirty that day — giving birth to your fifth child, Mary — and you are thirty now, utterly untouched by the centuries.
The death must have lasted mere moments; no one beyond your attentive husband noticed, and it was some time beyond then that the both of you began to believe it.
It was the tallest of the tales your mother told you in her confinement at Bermondsey before her death four years ago. But when they told you she was dead ( perhaps of plague, demanding a rushed & private ceremony ) it would take a fool not to wonder whether the machinations of Elizabeth Woodville, the queen dowager, would continue from beyond the ‘grave.’
( The Reaper himself surely could not stop so ambitious a woman: and were it not for the king’s mother, perhaps you could have been more like her. You wonder whether you would want to be. )
Time passed, and yet none upon your face. Henry holds you close in anxious murmurings of what they will do to you if you are discovered; whisperings between kisses of witch-burnings.
You know, though you wish that he was not, that he is right to be afraid.
4 April, 1502
For all the world and time, no worse news could be imagined; the existence of those without faith is one without pity or mercy & you have always tried to keep your love of God intact, but it is oh-so-difficult when the world itself is so malignant as to take your little prince away.
Why is it, then, that you must live and yet bury your son? Why must his wife live on and yet he must die? You are not a spiteful woman. But even you, in this all-consuming grief, must be allowed your bitterness.
You remind your husband of the grace of God: it does not help you believe it.
You remind your that you have a son and two daughters, and that Arthur is with God, and it does not help you believe it.
You remind your husband that you are both young and have time enough yet.
It does not help you believe it.
As soon as you are gone from him, having remained strong for Henry’s sake alone, you buckle, and you wail, and you scream in defiance; it is hopeless, of course, for you to have insisted on sparing him your grief. When you need him, he will always come, until he can no longer.
10th February, 1503
Your newborn daughter Katherine stopped breathing, and something trapped the scream in your throat like a reassurance: some hand over your mouth whispering wait, until the baby girl wailed and began to move again.
She is too young to have the burden of forever on those tiny shoulders, you think, but did any of you ever get a choice in whether or not you wanted to be Time’s Atlas? You say nothing of the occurrence to anyone bar your dearest beloved, who you trust with an implicitness thought impossible the day you married him.
How could one of the white rose trust one of the red?
Your blood still mars the bedsheets, too much of it, dark & damning; they thought the sanguine waterfall would never stem, skin growing paler and paler, until you were a paper ghost. Of course, you knew that you would not die. The doctors didn’t: they call you a miracle. The bells are rung for joy, but when they are gone, there is rue upon your husband’s face. Not long ago, they began to comment upon your unchanging visage, like an ever-fresh flower, and you both knew.
“It won’t be long before—” You press your finger gently to his lips, and he moves it away. “It’s time.”
“I know.”
11th February, 1503
The tower is just barely lit by the sun; you have been here many times before — a highlight of the fact the world still thinks the reality of childbirth, the suffering that comes with a miracle, to be a matter of shame — and he has always hated the separation from you, but this time, in the eyes of the nation ( he will deceive even his mother ) you will not leave it alive.
Cast your gaze back over your shoulder, and ask the most natural question of the immortal race: how did you get here?
To this liminal space, this balancing-act, between the past ( for this home of yours will be your past, your life with him will be your past, but your love for him will be your present, your tomorrow, and your always ) and forever? Can you process the endlessness of it — of forever — my love, where so many empires, overestimating their longevity, have failed; can you understand, darling, that you will watch the crumbling demise of so many more without him?
( When you see his vision misted over with tears, is your husband still the most beautiful, lovable thing you have ever beheld? He is. He is, and no matter how the centuries pass — no matter how many kings, queens and vagabonds you lay eyes upon — he always will be; they will brand him a penny-pincher and a miser as loss haunts him, but you will remember him like this, in the most pain he has and will ever be in, but selfless anyway, because here’s the kicker they all forget: he loves you. )
“My Lizzie,” he murmurs to you, kisses the backs of your fingers, and it is a vow. Even in the depths of his pre-emptive sorrow, he looks up. His mother always says he was God-chosen to be king, but it has always been you who puts him on his knees. “Happy Birthday.”
You promise yourself then — ruminating on the fact you have never had an unhappier birthday than this — that you will never forget it.
LIFE AFTER “DEATH” ( POST-1503 )
As is hinted, Henry knew of Elizabeth’s immortality & assisted her in faking her “death.”
Elizabeth has had a long time to live.
The sole large expense never recorded in the royal books by Henry was to send her away and give her a life of means: the most painful act her husband ever undertook, but which he did because he loved her so dearly. Henry never remarried: though he spoke of it ( had to, because his wife was ostensibly dead ) he staved it off with the instructions he gave to those searching for a second wife.
Hint: they perfectly described Elizabeth.
For some time, the parted couple sent letters, before they deemed even that a risk to their wellbeing.
Elizabeth was once a pious woman. She is not, anymore: an eternity of time and of watching all die around her will rob any woman of her faith. She was renowned for gentleness and generosity, and that is not entirely lost upon her, but the same grief that forged the Winter King from Henry has touched her, too.
She is more cynical, more bitter, but she is still trying. It was necessary for her to change: even at first, knowing she had forever to live, she had to force herself to accept the life Henry gave her & not bequeath her money to others who needed it more, as suddenly she needed it to maintain her own life throughout the centuries.
Throughout her life, though, this attitude has meant she has built up enough money to both give comfortably and be comfortable. For example, now, she is both heavily charitable but lives in Belgravia.
Many lives have passed: in just one, for example, she has been a teacher, just as she was to her son Henry. She has settled in this life on a political aide, so she can more obviously move the world.
The years have made her more ambitious.
She just hopes she will find hope — and her husband, because she knows that if he were dead he would feel it in her heart — before she indelibly becomes the Winter Queen.
TRIVIA ( some things I love & a note on some I have elected to ignore )
Obligatory note that I would sell my soul for someone to play James McAvoy as Henry VII.
Among other things, the Queen from “Sing A Song Of Sixpence” is reportedly Elizabeth of York, and Henry is the King counting his money.
However, Henry’s penny-pinching nature only blossomed after Elizabeth’s death ( or in this case ‘death’ ) and prior to that death he was very liberal in spending money upon his wife and family.
Elizabeth may also have inspired the Queen of Hearts on modern-day playing cards.
She was particularly tall for Tudor women — perhaps inherited from her father — as most were much shorter than five-foot six or seven.
History believes Elizabeth had little political influence, but that perhaps is not so true as they believe.
It is true that Margaret Beaufort exercised a grand deal of influence and was loudly opinionated, but Elizabeth was able to influence matters through gentle whispers in her husband’s ear, and through love. She did not live for the applause: never had done. Elizabeth was known to be heavily charitable. So why would she make fanfare of her achievements in her husband’s court?
I know Henry VIII isn’t allowed, but Elizabeth would bitch slap him. She would. It has to be said.
