stands behind me.
“Your son has won a great battle,” my lady-in-waiting says tremulously. “He is King of England, acclaimed on the battlefield.”
I gasp for breath. “And Richard the usurper?”
“Dead.”
I meet the eyes of Christ the Lord, and I all but wink at Him. “Thanks be to God,” I say, as if to nod at a fellow plotter. He has done His part. Now I will do mine. I rise to my feet, and she holds out a letter to me, a scrap of paper, from Jasper.
I read it again. I have the strange sensation that I have won my heart’s desire and that from this date everything will be different. Everything will be commanded by me.
“We must prepare rooms for my son; he will come to visit me at once,” I say coolly.
The lady-in-waiting is all flushed; she was hoping that we would fall into each other’s arms and dance about in victory. “You have won!” she exclaims. She is hoping I will weep with her.
“I have come into my own,” I correct her. “I have fulfilled my destiny. It is the will of God.”
“It is a glorious day for your house!”
“Nothing but our deserts.”
She bobs a shallow curtsey. “Yes, my lady.”
“Yes, Your Grace,” I correct her. “I am My Lady, the King’s Mother, now, and you shall curtsey to me, as low as to a queen of royal blood. This was my destiny: to put my son on the throne of England, and those who laughed at my visions and doubted my vocation will call me My Lady, the King’s Mother, and I shall sign myself Margaret Regina:
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This has been a deeply interesting book to write, about a woman who triumphed in the material world and tried at the same time to serve God. She is remembered by feminist historians as a “learned lady,” one of the very few who had to struggle for the privilege of study; by Tudor historians as the matriarch who founded their house; and by less reverent memorialists as “t’ old bitch” who became a mother-in-law from hell. Trying to create for the reader a character who could grow from a child with a sense of holy destiny into a woman who dared to claim the throne of England for her son has been a challenge and a deep pleasure. Some parts of this novel are history, some are speculation, and some are fiction. In particular, we do not know who killed the princes in the Tower, nor even that they died in the Tower. Obviously, the claimants for their throne-Richard III, the Duke of Buckingham, Margaret Beaufort and her son-were the people with most to gain from their deaths.
I am indebted to the historians who have researched Margaret Beaufort and her times and especially to Linda Simon for her biography, and Michael K. Jones and Malcolm G. Underwood whose biography was the starting point for my own work. I owe Michael Jones many thanks for being kind enough to read my manuscript.
More research material and further notes are on my website at PhilippaGregory.com, and readers may like to attend the occasional online seminar there.
These are the most helpful books I have read:
Baldwin, David.
– .
Bramley, Peter.
Castor, Helen.
Cheetham, Anthony.
Chrimes, S. B.
– .
Cooper, Charles Henry.
Crosland, Margaret.
Fields, Bertram.
Gairdner, James. “Did Henry VII Murder the Princes?”
Goodman, Anthony.
– .
Hammond, P. W., and Anne F. Sutton.
Harvey, Nancy Lenz.
Hicks, Michael.
– .
– .
Hughes, Jonathan.
Jones, Michael K., and Malcolm G. Underwood.
Kendall, Paul Murray.
MacGibbon, David.
Mancinus, Dominicus.
Markham, Clements, R. “Richard III: A Doubtful Verdict Reviewed,”
Neillands, Robin.
Plowden, Alison.
Pollard, A. J.
Prestwich, Michael.
Read, Conyers.
Ross, Charles.
– .
Royle, Trevor.
