Philippa Gregory’s The Cousins’ War series is set during a particularly turbulent period of English history, a period now popularly described as the Wars of the Roses when cousin fought against cousin, brother fought against brother, and dynasties were forged and destroyed. The first book in the series, The White Queen, followed Elizabeth Woodville as she rose from relative poverty to become the wife and, even more impressively for her time, shrewd advisor to King Edward of York. With this second book, The Red Queen, Gregory turns her attention to Margaret Beaufort, the mother of the Tudors.

The Margaret Beaufort of The Red Queen is an ambitious and passionate woman who never falters in her loyalty to the red rose of the Lancastrians and her belief that her family are the true rulers of England. As a young girl it seemed that her ambitions were to be thwarted when, after the annulment of a brief and unconsummated marriage to John de la Pole, Margaret’s cousin King Henry VI selected her as a suitable bride for his half-brother Edmund Tudor, 1^st Earl of Richmond. Margaret was twelve when she married twenty-four year old Edmund Tudor and this second marriage lasted even less time than her first. At the age of thirteen Margaret was a widow and was seven months pregnant with her first child.

Margaret is still, however, determined to turn her lonely life into a triumph. After her son is born in 1457 Margaret sets her heart on, one day, having the boy crowned King of England. She names the boy Henry after the ruling King and allows him to be raised by his father’s family from the age of two and pledges him in marriage to the daughter of her enemy Elizabeth Woodville, before permitting him to go into exile in France at the age of fourteen. Although her son is scarcely ever in her presence, Margaret works tirelessly and quietly to manoeuvre him into a position of power, giving only scant thought to the potentially terrible consequences of her plans for herself, for England or even for the boy himself. A savvy political operator, Margaret works her way through another loveless marriage, treacherous alliances, dangerous plots, and positions herself into a trusted position in the court of the usurper Richard III.

When she is widowed yet again, Margaret enters into her fourth and final marriage to the ruthless Thomas, Lord Stanley, and her fate is once more in the hands of another. Gambling that her husband will support her, Margaret masterminds one of the greatest rebellions ever attempted as her son Henry returns from exile, gathers his army and prepares to seize the Crown.

The Red Queen is a great continuation of The Cousins’ War series. Margaret Beaufort was an exceptional woman whose place in history is all too often overlooked. From an extremely young age she felt the privilege and burden of her family and, having identified a role model in Joan of Arc, never wavered from her principles and single-minded pursuit of her goals. In a time when women were subservient to their men folk, Margaret gave the outer appearance of conforming to societal norms while always working to ensure her own interests were taken care of and, of course, finally succeeding in a plot that her male relatives had failed to pull off for years. She may have been a schemer, but Margaret Beaufort certainly got a lot done. As well as the events of The Red Queen, she would eventually act as regent for her grandson Henry VIII and so would wield ultimate power, if only for a short period, over England. There was clearly a great deal to be said about Margaret’s life and Philippa Gregory has done a great job of pacing The Red Queen so that the most universally significant points of the story are brought to the forefront and fully developed, while never ignoring the more mundane elements of Margaret’s day-to-day, public life.

Of course, for all her achievements and undisputedly great impact on history, Margaret Beaufort was a hugely complex character and, like all those who scheme for power and glory, she could never be described as a “good” person. In her push for power for her son, one of the gravest accusations that can be levelled against her is that she played some role in the murder of the princes in the tower. That being a mystery that has never been solved, in The Red Queen Philippa Gregory opts to give Margaret Beaufort a definite role in the murders that is both believable and tragic, particularly since this book should be read after Gregory’s interpretation of the life of the princes’ mother, Elizabeth Woodville, in The White Queen.

Philippa Gregory is a masterful writer of historical fiction and The Red Queen lives up to the high standards she has set with her previous books. It being historical fiction, there are some historical inaccuracies in the story but they serve to add drama and pathos to the narrative and do not distract from the overall truth of the book. The Cousins’ War is a fine series and, if the books that follow The Red Queen are of the same standard, may end up being even better that Gregory’s Tudor trilogy.

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