This novel, like her other royal historicals, follows a familiar pattern whereby Philippa seems to line up the historical facts and then ‘colours in’ the gaps as she feels appropriate for the history that she has imagined.

I have a lot respect for Philippa Gregory’s writing and I don’t think anyone could dispute her devotion to research and historical re-imaginings. This was a novel of profound significance and it’s one that has never been culled from my bookshelf in the twenty years since I purchased it.

Philippa Gregory is known extensively for her historical novels about the royal families of England, but I first came to her work with a novel on slavery, A Respectable Trade. Henry is the first Tudor King and thus Elizabeth becomes the ‘mother of Tudor House’. The story follows the first dozen or so years of the marriage between Elizabeth York and Henry Tudor. Having recently watched the television mini-series, The White Queen, I was keen to continue with that story and The White Princess picks up where that left off rather nicely. Then she has to meet the Pretender, whose claim denies the House of Tudor itself. Forced into marriage with Henry VII, she must reconcile her slowly growing love for him with her loyalty to the House of York, and choose between her mother’s rebellion and her husband’s tyranny. Beautiful eldest daughter of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville – the White Queen – the young princess Elizabeth faces a conflict of loyalties between the red rose and the white. The haunting story of the mother of the Tudors, Elizabeth of York, wife to Henry VII.

The White Queen by Philippa Gregory