“Harry York (Jed Rose) and his fiancee Julie (Edie Scrivener) are a happy couple living in New Winchester. Everything changes when Julie’s childhood friend Marianne (Anissa Disney) comes to stay with the couple ahead of their wedding and has unmistakable chemistry with the secretly dissatisfied groom. Passions rise and tensions flare as the new arrival causes the couple to question everything they knew and believed about their partner, their relationship, and themselves".
- Plot description from the 1995 comedic romance AVP (audiovisual play)
Three’s A Crowd based on the love triangle between The Duke of York, Giulia of Naples, and Marianna Carafa
“When Giulia of Naples received a portrait of her betrothed the young princess was awestruck, reportedly calling Prince Henry “the most handsome man in the Christendom”. Problems arose when the Neapolitan court commissioned a portrait of the young bride to be sent back to England. The bride to be, fearing the Duke of York would find her too plain and unappealing, insisted her closest confidante and lady-in-waiting Marianna Carafa, a scission of a powerful Italian family, sit for the painting instead. It would end up being the most important decision of the Princess’ life”.
-Agostino Serafin,
The Tragic Friendship of Giulia of Naples and Marianna Carafa (1996)
“Marianna Carafa could best be described as bewitching. With long, golden hair and alluring dark brown eyes, it was rumored she could trap the souls of men with just a single look. This power was one Carafa was pleased to take advantage of, as she lived life with such gusto that even her many detractors admitted she certainly knew how to have a good time, even if some shirked her company. This proved a marked contrast to the short and mousy Giulia of Naples, who was once scathingly described as ‘fifty shades of dull: dull brown hair, dull grey eyes, dull skin, dull personality, etc...’ Together, however, they had made a cheerful duo in Naples with great devotion to each other, a statement that seems ridiculous with our benefit of hindsight”
-Luciana Pellegrino, Marianna Carafa: The Neapolitan Mare (1977)
“The basic summary of the York trope is simple: two women, who were previously good friends, fight over a man as the two rivals keep escalating their attacks in hopes of achieving victory. The key to this plotline is in execution. A visionary can go for broad comedy, as seen in
May the Best Friend Win, where Juliet causes the beautiful Marian to get a tragic haircut and Marian forces her buttoned-up former friend to spend the whole day with painted handprints on her blouse (and yes, those handprints are exactly where you’re imagining), or agonizing drama epitomized in the terror classic
Nightmare at Hampton Court in which Mary Anne and Harold are haunted by the killer, straight-jacket wearing ghost of Mary Anne’s former friend, and Harold’s ex-girlfriend, Julissa, only to find out Mary Anne and Harald’s affair was what lead Julissa to a psychotic breakdown and later suicide.
-Gaspare Couret, The York Trope: The Origins and History of San Ysabel’s Most Famous Plotline (2002)
“Court spectators were gobstruck by the general insanity which encapsulated the Neapolitan Affair. As such, it’s hard for modern-day historians to piece apart fact from rumor. Did the Duke of York, so taken by the portrait he was initially sent, “accidentally” wed Marianna Carafa in secret instead of Giulia as Carafa would later claim or was Carafa merely ambitiously angling herself as “the true Duchess of York”? Were the two women truly ordering botched murder attempts on each other, or were both women just extremely lucky in near-death situations? Giulia of Naples long claimed to constantly wake up “short of breath, gasping for the little air available,” but her claims could point to anything from attempted smotherings, anxiety attacks (perhaps from all the supposed attempts on her life), sleep apnea, or the histrionics of a woman wanting sympathy from her philandering husband. Similar claims can be made with Marianna Carafa, by then Baroness Byron, and her fervent belief that her frequent miscarriages were the result of Giulia’s witchcraft. In the end, these were two women fighting to the death for the affection and attention of a man who was ultimately cheating both on them and with them without a care in the world”.
-Agostino Serafin, The Tragic Friendship of Giulia of Naples and Marianna Carafa (1996)
“My early years were absolutely miserable, with us children rarely seeing mama or papa except at Court. Mama, it seemed, loathed being away from papa, fearing he’d run away if she left him for even a moment as though papa were a skittish horse. Even worse was that woman, the Neapolitan Mare (a nickname for Marianna Carafa), who, when Papa was around, would act with the most insincere kindness towards us. I remember declaring to my most beloved governess that I’d rather see the ghost of the Usurper (Richard III) in the Tower then spend one more minute with the most insufferable “lady” in the land”
-Excerpt from The Letters and Writings of Lady Elizabeth Tudor c. 1581, (published 1885)
“Perhaps it’s fitting that the cultural zeitgeist has taken to calling friends turned romantic rivals Giulias and Mariannas. Devoted fans of classic AVP players still debate the 1940s love triangle termed “the true York plot.” in which the glamorous Amaia Leclair infamously slept with (and bore the love child of) Carl Giehl, the San Ysabel creator married to girl-next-door Adele Horak. Leclair, who was dubbed “the New Carafa” after the scandal, leaned into the charge, reportedly filling her home with 18th and 19th-century paintings of the Duke of York and the Neapolitan Mare”
-Gaspare Couret, The York Trope: The Origins and History of San Ysabel’s Most Famous Plotline (2002)
“A 19th-century painting of the Duke of York and Marianna Carafa hunting owned by the late famed player Amaia Leclair. While it is not a wonderful likeness of either party, with the reference for York seems to be portraits painted after the Neapolitan affair had ended and Carafa resembling the beauty ideals of the painter more than the actual woman, it does show the remarkable longevity of the scandalous romance in the popular imagination”
-Excerpt from the official program of The Royal London Museum of Art’s 2016 exhibition, “Love in the Arthurian Court” regarding Lenora Peck’s The Duke of York & Baroness Byron on the Hunt
“Ironically, the activities which lead to such a fierce rivalry between Giulia of Naples and Marianna Carafa would prove the former’s undoing. Although she had already easily delivered three surviving children: Elizabeth (1509), Henry (1512), and Julia (1514); it was the Duchess of York’s final birth that would end in tragedy. In 1518, after being delivered of an ultimately short-lived daughter called Margaret, Giulia of Naples succumbed to the perpetual fever. Rumors have persisted to this day that the real killer was poison, sneaked in by a household member bribed by Marianna Carafa or her Italian family, but no evidence to substantiate this claim has ever been found.”
-Luciana Pellegrino, Marianna Carafa: The Neapolitan Mare (1977)
“Henry’s grief was short lived. While Giulia was his wife and the mother of his three children, ultimately she had done her job. Her tomb, best remembered for its statue of the Duchess holding a baby believed to be Henry of York, emphasized that her worth in the York household was as a mother. Everything else was expendable.”
-Jeannine Levitt, His Grandfather’s Son: The Shocking Life of the Scandalous Duke of York (2001)
“After Giulia’s death finding a new Duchess of York among the royal houses of Europe was next to impossible. While the Duke was still an attractive option on paper due to his good looks and close proximity to the throne, royal fathers throughout Europe refused to hand over their daughters due to the behavior “of certain disreputable members of the Duke of York’s acquaintance,” a thinly veiled reference to Carafa. Not only was their nervous chatter about the possibility of foul play regarding the former Duchess of York’s death, but many dynastic patriarchs viewed Henry’s inability to handle squabbling between his wife and a lady-in-waiting as a stain on his virtue. Even after the Duke of York made every attempt to publically ditch Carafa, foreign rulers were still reluctant to surrender their daughters. And with that, the story was written: the next Duchess of York would be an Englishwoman.”
-Derek Chapman, The Merry Mistresses of Hampton Court: The Lives and Times of the Duchesses of York (1990)
