The White Queen -The White Queen

Fotheringhay Castle, Fotheringhay, Norwich, England, Summer 1469

I believed that Warwick could not stop my families rise. I believed he was done as a center of influence. I am wrong, I am so very wrong. We are not so powerful, my family and I are not powerful enough. I do not think, I even, of all people, who is afraid of Warwick's ambition and greed, should have thought of his envy and enmity. I do not for see, and I have all queens with growing sons of my own should have foreseen, that Warwick and Edward's bitter mother might come together and think to place another York boy on the throne in place of the first boy they had chosen, that the kingmaker might make a new king. 

I should've been more aware of Warwick, as my family pushed him out of his officers and one of the lambs that he might have one for himself. I should've also seen that George, the malleable Duke of Clarence, was bound to interest him. George is a son of York, like Edward, but greedy, easily tempted, and above all else and married. Warwick looked at Edward and me and the growing strength and wealth of the Riverses family Edward, and beginning to think that her happy he might make another king, another thing again, a king who would be more obedient to him. 

I am now the mother to 11 children, Lizzie (1456), Marie (1457), Cis (1459), Baby (1460), Margie (1462), Bianca (1462), Dickon (1463), Annie (1464), Georgie (1466), Kate (1467), and baby Brigette, whom I call by the French version of her name who was born in November 1468. Jackie still has her three boys, Claire gave birth to another daughter Lucy, and Margaret to her fourth son Richard soon after. Elizabeth has recently given birth to another daughter named Marcella who is the youngest of our children here, and she and her husband are waiting, with rising anxiety, for a son. 

Still, the atmosphere is light hearted as we round up the children, desperately trying to get them into carriages. "Oh, look at your hair!" I exclaim helplessly as I stare at Bianca's golden red curls, which are currently knotted.

"Mother! Mother!" Little Annie yells as she dances around my skirts causing me to giggle. 

"Cecily," I call, "can you hold Annie's hand?"

Cecily, my dearest little Cis, is no longer so little anymore. she has just turned 10 years old and is coming into a personality of her own which has my pride and her father's stubbornness. Someone consider those things our two worst qualities. However, I find that she is extremely loyal and protective of her younger siblings when she isn't very much annoyed with them.

"All right," she grumbles as she takes Annie's hand.

"Coming through Mother!" A voice sounds behind me as Lizzie rushes down the hallway, Henry Tudor close in tow. 

"Your Grace!" The polite young man acknowledges as Lizzie as he drags him down the hallway. Poor boy, I'm afraid he'll have his work cut out for him.

When I get down to the courtyard at the Palace I see that the rest of my ladies in waiting are already there with their families. Helene has been married to a second cousin, Theodore d'Baux, Who also happens to be the older brother of Lulu. Lulu, has recently made a marriage to one of Warwick's many cousins, George Neville, who will one day inherit the Barony of Bergavenny. She is already pregnant with their first child who is due at the end of this year. Ria, who made a respectable marriage to Sir Maurice Berkeley, Is also traveling with us along with her two young children, Maurice (1467) and Anne (1469). I am also in the early stages of another pregnancy that was announced to the court just before Edward and the rest of the lords departed for a progress which had been carefully planned out. 

Edward started the progress as a pilgrimage with my family as Elizabeth's sons Thomas and Richard and Edwards on younger brother Richard are already with him along with the rest of my wonderful male relatives. It is a journey to give things to God as well as to dispense justice and patronize and show the English populace that my husband and I are nothing like the mad Lancaster king in the tower or his natter wife in France or Scotland. It is also to silence any petty rebels that might want to come out doing the usual, raising troops, slandering my family, and demanding justice and freedom the usual nonsense by which good men are tempted from minding their fields to go to their deaths.